St. Paul Lutheran Church, Minden, Nebraska
Sunday Sermon – 16th Sunday after Pentecost – October 2, 2011
“When the Crops Are Harvested!”
Text: Matthew 21:40,41
A-WOL! A-W-O-L! As some of you know, A.W.O.L. is military short-hand that stands for a soldier “away without leave” or more technically, “absent from duty without official permission but with no intention of deserting.”
When a student is absent from school the technical term for that student (which is not all that technical) is “absentee”; not present and accounted for.The student is somewhere else.
So also when a landowner or “landlord” is “somewhere else”, not close, but lives a long way off from the land he/she owns. That land-owner or “landlord” is referred to as an “absentee landlord.”
Now I don’t follow this very closely but when “absentee landlords” live a long way off from the land they own and never come around to see what’s going on with the land - or when the tenants are left totally on their own -- that can sometimes give rise to problems.
For example, when “absentee landlords” enter into leases or rental agreements with tenants who need the land and agree to work the land, take care of the land and get the land to yield better than average crops, as this goes on year after year after year it can happen that some tenants become pretty possessive about the land to the point they feel “entitled to it” and lose sight of the face that they’re still only tenants.
Or sometimes it’s a problem when tenants who work the land start to resent the fact that a larger & larger percentage of the fruits of their hard work go to an absentee landlord who doesn’t have anything to do with the land other than what he/she can get off of it without having to lift a finger for the crops or profits they get. Agreements are agreements but sometimes they don’t seem all that fair.
Again, I don’t follow this very closely, but I have heard especially where such absentee landlord/tenant relationships exist down south, that another name for a tenant is “share-cropper” which comes from a tenant working land they don’t own for a “share of the crop.”
Now, having said all of that helps me point out that what’s going on in this parable Jesus tells about the tenants who took matters into their own hands;what’s going on in this parable where tenants were not good tenants but “wicked” tenants; tenants guilty of rebellion, violence, even murder; what’s going on in this parable(which is another parable about life in the Kingdom of God); is that on the surface this parable proclaims the judgment of the landlord against the tenants for taking matters into their own hands & not sharing but acting like THEY own the vineyard and that THEY are in charge of what to do with the vineyard even when what they do does not meet with the purpose or approval of the absentee landlord -- and thus the absentee landlord sends his servants to straighten the situation out.
Now we may think that’s a bad kind of situation to get into and that the absentee landlord has got himself a real problem. But in this parable of the tenants the way Jesus tells it . . the absentee landlord who represents God is a pretty patient, pretty charitable landlord . . and the tenants who (according to Jesus) are the spiritual leaders of God’s chosen people, the Jews; are the benefactors of God’s patient, merciful blessings of life & land &the promise of salvation which God has graciously entrusted to them, but, and this is a pretty important but, like it or not, God holds the tenants accountable! God has a judgment against the religious leaders of Israel for thinking, acting, laying claim to the Kingdom of God as if they are owners & not tenants.
So, first of all, this is not a parable about ownership but about stewardship; and how easy it is to forget; how easy it is to lose sight of what it means to be tenants in the vineyard of God’s Kingdom. How easy it is to be tenants who take matters into our own hands and do as we please because God seems so absent, so distant, so . .
Although Jesus directed this parable at the scribes & Pharisees, the chief priests & elders of the people, implying they were guilty of God’s judgmentfor their self-serving, possessive, self-righteous attitude & actions, there’s also room in this parable for us too -- hard as that may be to believe.
And it is hard to believe! Much as we in America are conditioned to live the “American way, to live the American dream” of possessing & owning for ourselves; much as we are conditioned by idea that ownership is not a bad thing to have & to work for; much as we believe in hard work, just rewards, and enjoying the fruit of our labors; much as we like to think owning is better than renting, owning is better than leasing, better than sharing; much as we value what we own, what we have worked hard for, what we like to call “mine” “ours” - while this may be the way it is in the kingdom of this world, this is not the way it is in the Kingdom of God. Not where God is the ultimate landlord; Creator; Provider; Giver of every good and perfect gift – especially the gift of salvation and the Kingdom of God’s grace.
So, yes, this is not a parable about ownership. It’s a parable about stewardship. It is a parable not just about what God’s chosen, covenant people are privileged to have, but what do the leaders of God’s chosen people do with what they have?
What do we as God’s chosen people do with all that we have and how often, how daily, how gratefully, how obediently do we view what we have as a trust from God to return to God what He wants us to return to Him. . which God ends up giving to others.
The message, the point of comparison in this parable is that in the Kingdom of God’s free & abundant, saving grace, even if we as people of God, believers in Jesus, can claim membership, partnership in this Kingdom by virtue of being baptized & confirmed, then everything we have & own as God’s covenant people, as Kingdom of God people, is to be received and viewed a trust from God. All creation, all that God the Creator provides, all that Christ the Redeemer has accomplished for us and for our salvation, is entrusted to us by God; not just for us to have & take care of for ourselves but for us to share with others, all others, & not lay claim to it for ourselves.
If this parable is about stewardship & being held accountable for good stewardship, it raises the question, “What have you done with what you have been given? What are you doing with what you have as “a child of God & and heir of salvation?” What problems does God have with us receiving & owning & possessing to the point that acts like we are God and not God’s tenants?
In Jesus’ parable, after all the violence & brutality; killing & rejecting the messengers that the absentee-landlord sent to straight-en things out, when the absentee landlord finally risked sending his own son, one can imagine that “what the son said to the tenants was that they be good tenants, take care what had been entrusted to them, and that they give their landlord what they produced, not because he needed it . . but because they needed it. They needed to share in order to remember who they were. They were guests who needed to take their lives, their status as tenants into their hands like wrapped and ribboned gifts and to return the favor by sharing.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine, p.99)
In the parable, the tenants would have none of it, and they killed the son. So it happened that the Jewish leaders succeeded in having Jesus, who claimed to be God’s Son, killed too.
But the rest of the story is that Jesus would not stay dead and to this day, in His Word and Sacrament, in the Kingdom of God’s gracious rule in the hearts of believers, Jesus is still coming, speaking, en-couraging, calling, pleading with all who would believe in Him and follow Him to remember “we are tenants, we are God’s guests.
We are blessed to inhabit this earth and live in the vineyard of God’s Kingdom, so long as we remember whose earth, whose vineyard, whose salvation it is and how we are to use what God has entrusted to us” lest we forget who we are and where we came from and forget how richly God has blessed us with His grace to be a blessing to others and thereby bring upon ourselves the destructionthat those tenants brought upon themselves. Not joy but judgment!
“No matter how many times the tenants reject the truth, the truth remains to judge them. Does it judge us too?” (Eugene Peterson, “Praying With Jesus”, June 21)
When a student is an absentee student, not present and accounted for, but somewhere else, that student is still held accountable for the lessons that need to be learned and the homework that needs to be done. Otherwise the student is judged & held accountable & receives a failing grade, or an incomplete.
When God is an absentee landlord, when God is God the giver of every good & perfect gift, when God is the Lord our God, Creator,
Redeemer, Counselor & Comforter, it is our lesson to learn, our life to live, our sins to confess, our Lord & Savior Jesus to trust that we live not unto ourselves, but for the glory of God and the good of all others around us.
To be soldiers of the cross, not AWOL; to be students of God’s grace & not skip classes; to be tenants in the vineyard of God’s Kingdom and now the owners means “we are expected to represent God’s interests, being as generous to others as God is with us.” (BBT, Gospel Medicine, p.100)
May God grant it for Jesus’ sake.
