Sunday, October 5, 2008

Year A, Proper 22

Proper 22, Year A
Patronal Feast/Stewardship Kickoff

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Psalm 19
Phillipians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46

Preaching with St. Francis Episcopal Church


You spend enough time somewhere and you begin to feel like you OWN the place.
Enough time in a favorite cafe or restaurant
leaves us with an expectation
that there will always be a seat for us at OUR table
Or,
maybe its a surge of traffic
that leaves us wondering aloud what so many bad drivers are DOING
on OUR section of bryan boulevard

Enough time, enough familiarity,
and a sense of ownership gradually settles in.
We might not even notice it there at first;
at least
not until its pulled out from under us.
Someone takes our favorite seat at the restaurant
The short cut around Bryan that we always treasured
suddenly becomes common knowledge

Something happens
that sends our sense of ownership crashing to the ground.
One might call this a "reality check"
Kind of like the one the wicked tenants of the vineyard
Are about to get in this mornings parable.

I experienced this kind of reality-check myself recently
When I became the last of my friends to finish my undergraduate degree
And the time finally came
For my two best friends and I
To move out of the house
We had rented together for the past four years
of college.

I call this: The Parable of the Wicked Tenants
of the Bachelor Pad.
The landlord in my story didn’t expect us to produce any crops
Or even come to collect what was due to him
At the end of our term
But I think its fair to say that he expected us
To take care of what belonged to him
While we were tenants there.
Now, like I said,
You spend enough time somewhere
and you begin to feel like you own the place.
You could say that the three of us
Did a lot of living while we leased that house
And we DID care for it
if only in the special way
That only a trio of early twenty something undergrads could.
(Our current Sunday morning audience
prevents me from sharing some of the more colorful details.)
Suffice to say, that OUR reckoning occurred
At the end of our lease
When the time came for our landlord
To show the place to prospective new tenants.
It became VERY apparent VERY quickly
That OUR idea of a happy home
Did not quite match up to the image
That our landlord expected to see upon his return.
We had to make a FEW minor changes
To spruce the place up.
Among many things,
This included ditching the movie theater seats
We had found on the side of the road
That were serving as a lovely perch on our front porch.
But perhaps the thing we were sorriest to see go
Was the giant plywood spray painted bulls eye
That we kept out back.
You see, we had this friend
Who would visit us and crash on our couch all the time
And he just LOVED throwing knives
So we kept this giant, plywood, spray painted bulls eye out back
For him to practice on each time he came to visit.
Our landlord was not amused.
[When he finally sent his only daughter
To review the place before showing
Possibly the only thing we could hold to our credit
Was the fact that we DIDN’T throw her out of the house
In a last ditch attempt to claim heir to something
That never belonged to us in the first place.]
By the time we were finished DIVESTING the house
Of everything that we identified with
It became painfully apparent
That we never really owned the home
We had taken the liberty of so much ownership with.
We were promptly shooed away from the environ
Of so many treasured memories,
And some very nice young women
Were ushered in to take our place.
I am sure that house
SMELLS much nicer these days.

Now, there are some SLIGHT differences between MY story
And the story from this mornings Gospel
(And I’m not just talking about the fact that there WERE NO
1st century Galilean bachelor pads in the parables of Jesus)
The BIGGEST difference, rather, is that
The tenants of this mornings parable weren’t wicked
Because they trashed something that didn’t belong to them
They weren’t wicked
Because didn’t care for the vineyard enough
They were wicked because they cared for it too much.
The tenants of the vineyard
Were GIVEN land to lease
And then their leassor left.
The tenants of the vineyard
Put a season’s worth of hard labor into that land
They spent the first hours of the morning
Checking the temperature of the soil
And the last hours of the day
Fretting over whether the frost would be enough
To kill the crop completely.
The tenants of the vineyard
Spent more than enough time in that place
They spent ALL their time there
And they loved it as their own.
They took ownership of it.
They came to HOLD IT
As their POSSESSION.
So what do we EXPECT them to do
When the servants of their landlord come knocking?

THIS
is not a pretty picture to paint
of the Kingdom of God.
If the Kingdom of God
Is anything like the vineyard in this parable
Then God looks like an absentee landlord
And the Kingdom looks like a place
That EVERYBODY
-servants and tenants alike-
Keeps getting kicked out of.
Its a picture that should set us ill at ease
But it is PRECISELY the image
that Jesus is trying to convey
To the scribes and the chief elders of the Temple.
The scribes and chief elders of the Temple
Who just moments before have asked him:
“By what authority are you doing these things?
Who gave it to you?”
This parable
Is part of an answer to that question
And because it is a question
That we still find ourselves faced with
Two thousand years later
We also ask:
Which part of us, here, now
Is Jesus speaking to in his answer?
Where do WE fit in to this story?

If we were 1st century Christians
Among the original audience for Matthew’s Gospel
We would probably find ourselves identifying most strongly
With those lucky souls about to inherit
The vineyard snatched away from the wicked tenants.
For the early Church
This parable was an allegory
Depicting the failure of the religious leaders of the time
A failure to recognize the word of God
in those prophets sent to instruct them.
In this sense, the tenants of the vineyard
Are the elders, priests, and scribes
While the servants of the landlord are the succession of God’s prophets
And the Son of the landlord is Christ himself
Handed over to others to be killed.
The first Christians heard this story
And the wickedness of the tenants
Was absolutely palpable
And there was a new church that just couldn’t WAIT
for God to kick out the bad guys
So they could get to work and do a much better job.
Now, if this kind of mentality sounds familiar
It might be because we’re in the middle of an election year,
And this is exactly the kind of attitude that most of us adopt
As we’re advocating for our choice of new leaders.
The people in charge have messed it up
They need to be on their way out
And OUR people are the ones who are going to set it right.
This mentality also happens to be very easy
For people my age to adopt.
It seems to US at times
That we have INHERITED a world
That has been duly messed up
By those who came before us:
That we INHERITED a fragile ecology
Ravaged by industrialization
That we INHERITED a failed economy
That rewards greed even as it
Renders assistance to the least among us
All but impossible.
The idealistic YOUNG
Have always identified with the new wave;
Those about to INHERIT a kingdom
That the pervious tenants failed to recognize
As precious to God.
The earliest Christians were ready,
THEY were going to get it right this time.
THEY were the stone the builders rejected
And they were ready to squash the builders
As the brand new cornerstone.

But is this really who WE identify with
In this parable?
If we are honest with ourselves
We may begin to admit that we
Are much more like the first tenants
Than we might care to imagine.
After all, our Church is not one century old
But twenty
And we have had plenty of time to live into our role
As tenants of this Kingdom.
From this end of the story,
We might begin to wonder
About Who
WE’VE thrown out of the vineyard.
We might begin to wonder
Who WE failed to recognize
As a prophet and servant of God.
Was it the woman protesting the war
On the street corner
That we drove past, rolling our eyes?
Was she a prophet?
Was it the man begging for change
That we shrugged off
Before he could get a word in otherwise?
Was it the television pundit
Spewing vitriol about our politics of choice
Before we changed the channel?
Was he a servant of God?
Or what about the men holding hands in the park
That we looked the other way to avoid seeing?
WHO has come knocking at our door
For a piece
Of what we’ve spent our whole lives protecting?
We may wonder WHO has been trying
To force their way into our lives
With a word from God.
We MAY EVEN BEGIN to argue to ourselves
That there’s a REASON
Why prophets get KICKED OUT of the vineyard
In the first place.
They make us uncomfortable,
And their demands are unreasonable,
And they are often extremist to the point of being obnoxious.
“Sure, sure”
We might say to the prophet
“War is wrong,
But how else are we going to pull out of this mess”
Or maybe:
“Yes, yes, I know,
There are people starving-
But what am I supposed to do about it?
What good will changing my own ways do
When no one else will follow suit?”

Prophets make unreasonable demands
They ask for too much
But that is precisely because
The God they serve
Is asking for EVERYTHING.
Everything that we’ve labored so long for
Everything that we’ve conjured by the work of our hands
Even our very selves,
And THAT is simply TOO MUCH
For us to bear.

So one by one
We show them the door.
We kick them out of the vineyard
Lest they ask for more than we are ready to give.

I ask you again:
Who ARE WE in this story?
Are we waiting to inherit a kingdom
Done wrong by those who came before us?
[Pause]
Or have we already locked the door shut
To ensure that NO ONE will take hold
Of what we’ve made?

I tell you:
We, in this place,
here, today
are not called to be EITHER.

We, the members of this Church
are not named
after a TENANT of the vineyard
We are not even named after future TENANTS
About to inherit the Kingdom of God
WE
Are named after one of the very SERVANTS
Who came to knock on the vineyard walls
Demanding what is God’s
For God’s own self:
Francis.
St. Francis who shunned his family’s wealth
To their embarrassment
For his naked stroll through city streets.
Francis whose community of simplicity
Stood in direct contrast to the indulgent wealth
Of the Church in his day.
Francis who spoke the word of God so fervently
That he preached to BIRDS
When the world grew tired of hearing him.
WE bear HIS name.
We bear the name of Francis, God’s servant
And messenger to the harvest time/
We BEAR the name Christian
The name of God’s own Beloved Child sent to claim
God’s Own World
for God’s Own Self.
We have been charged with this difficult work
Of asking for too much
Of answering to a God
Whose love for us is so complete
And is such a foundation for everything that we have made
That it possesses everything we have
And everything that we are
[That it demands everything we have
Everything we are]
More than we can even imagine possessing for ourselves.

When you spend enough time somewhere
You begin to feel like you own the place
And whether we trash it while we’re here
Or become so possessive of it
That we cannot imagine giving it up
To the community God is establishing with us
Doesn’t matter:
What matters is that we are called as servants
Charged with a message
To bring
to the laborers of this Kingdom
to the stewards of this world /
A message we are charged to bring
To our families
To our coworkers
To our politicians
To our institutions
And not least of all
To ourselves.:
That THIS belongs to God.

So the next time you find yourself in the midst of life’s abundance,
The next time you find yourself in the middle of
Life’s Great Harvest
I challenge you to take a chance
and be a prophet;
be a servant for God
With Francis
And with Christ:
find someone nearby, tap them on the shoulder
and remind them that these fruits belong to God/
that God is giving them to us to share together.
Just wait and see how many vineyards
you can get yourself thrown out of
Talking like that.

And when you do finally go
You might as well just leave that giant
plywood, spray painted bulls eye in the back yard

You never know:
The next tenants
Might enjoy
throwing knives
As much
as the old ones did.