Sermon of Laura Vennard
All Saints Parish
The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
October 5, 2008
Text: Matthew 21:33-46
Last Christmas, my husband Tom and I visited our children and grandchildren in remote, rural East Corinth, Vermont. East Corinth is Northeast of Barre by twenty miles and you can't get there from here. Our daughters and their families live on a 250 acre farm, known as Lost Meadow. The land is owned cooperatively by seven families. Although each family lives in its own home, the residents of Lost Meadow gather collectively to work in the vegetable garden, mash apples for cider or tap trees for maple sugar.
Each Christmas the children and families and friends of Lost Meadow enact the story of the birth of Jesus in a Christmas pageant. The preceding week excitement fills the air as the children learn their parts and create their pageant costumes. There are Joseph, Mary, wise men, wise women and many angels. The pageant is even more wondrous as it is held outside in a real stable and graced with cats, dogs, horses and goats and one very recalcitrant donkey.
The day before the pageant I was sprinkling glitter on my three year old granddaughter Josie's angel costume, while her mother Allison explained why we were having the pageant. "Tomorrow is baby Jesus birthday and we will all celebrate." Josie looked up excitedly,
"Where does Jesus live? Can we go see him?"
Allison and I smiled. I said the first thing that came to mind, " No Josie, Jesus lived a very long time ago but today he lives in me and in you."
With round eyes Josie pointed to her stomach and said, "You mean in here?"
Literal, concrete, joyful, that's my granddaughter. If I had said Jesus lives next door Josie would have run outside to find him for the sheer joy of connection. Josie is a child who awakes each day to embrace the world. All of life is wonder and excitement for Josie. In her presence all of life is wonder and excitement for me too.
Josie showers her love and enthusiasm on the whole family. To know Josie is to feel her energy and spirit. We do not sit for a family meal without Josie counting everyone; sisters brothers cousins friends – to make sure no one is left out. If Jesus was someone important, Josie could not wait to gather him in to her circle, make him one of her people and count him in for dinner.
What if Jesus lived next door? Would we go see him? Would we call him neighbor? What kind of relationship would we have?
Today's Gospel passage is a harsh one. Jesus tells a parable of tenants in a vineyard, who steal from their landlord and ultimately resort to violence against him, by killing his slaves and later killing the landlord's son.
We are meant to understand that the Landlord is God, the tenants the people of Judah and their religious scholars, the Pharisees. The people have turned against the landlord, have not only ignored, but turned violently against God.
When I read this passage I could not help but wonder how this happened. Were these people, these tenants all inherently horrible, nasty people? What turned these people into murderers? What if we look at this story through their eyes? Why did these tenants turn against their landlord? The gospel states, "the landowner planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country."
Perhaps, in the tenants' eyes, the landowner was an absentee landlord. Jews, 2,000 years ago were forced to live under oppressive Roman rule. Their temples were defiled with images of the Roman emperor, their treasury diverted for the uses of the Roman state. They were taxed heavily. Perhaps these tenants toiled in harsh living conditions, shared meager food, the price of donkeys may have gone up, perhaps water had been diverted from their field to a Roman aqueduct that flowed to a palace. Maybe there was no market for grapes, or wine.
In conditions such as these, anger and fear may have overcome their faith in a just and merciful God who loves and provides for his people. Acting from this anger and fear the tenants turned on the landlord.
I don't think that God is an absentee landlord, but I do think that it is possible to see God that way. The Gospel tells us that the Landowner cared for his tenants. He planted a vineyard, to provide lush verdant fruit, dug a wine press, ensuring a means of production, and then built a fence and a watchtower – to protect them. I don't think that God went to another country. I think that God was searching for his people, yearning for his people, and the people could not see it. The people could not see it because they had forgotten how to look. The relationship was severed.
Rabbi David Wolpe in his book "Why Faith Matters" writes: "Faith begins with a question, the first question in the Bible. In the garden God calls Adam "Where are you? This essential call is addressed to each of us at every instant at all times. The Bible answers the first question with the second. The second question is asked in the aftermath of murder. When Cain kills Abel, God asks of Cain, "Where is your brother?" We find out where we are, the first question, by discovering whether we care for others, the second question. Cain's response to God is also, revealingly, a question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" Though he intends the answer to be no, it is a question that we understand needs to be answered, "YES". "
God is always searching for us, calling us into relationship with him and with our brothers. Our job is to respond with a receptive heart.
How do we sustain this relationship with God?
Habits of faith hold us in relationship with God and God's creation. Deep communicative prayer is one such habit. Worshipping in a community like All Saints, another. Living in gratitude is another. How can you ever have enough gratitude for the sheer wonder of existence? How could I ever give enough thanks for my exuberant granddaughter Josie?
Stewardship is perhaps the most powerful habit of faith. To give consciously of oneself, time, talent and treasure is to cultivate a receptive heart, to open a pathway to God.
Like the Jews of Jesus day, we live in anxious times - global warming, unjust wars, a national election, the price of gas, the price of food and the potential breakdown of our financial system. We can choose to react as the tenants in the parable. We can let fear and anger govern our actions. It is easy to shut down, to turn inward, to hide, to horde, to turn on each other, or God. Or, we can consciously choose to respond with actions that open our hearts to the incredible miracle of existence. We can hold up our end of the deal as tenants in the Lord's vineyard.
This is the time of year, the harvest time, when we are asked to prayerfully consider our stewardship commitments to All Saints parish for the next year. I admit that giving generously, particularly of "my money" still does not come easily to me. I don't readily open the door and invite Jesus to dinner.
Today, and every day, I pray that I will have the courage to look fear and illusions of scarcity in the face and act generously, to open my heart. I do know that when I do I feel a freedom and peace that is better anything else. Slowly I have come to learn that giving, in particular giving to this church, this community, where I find people searching for all that is good and holy, is not about what the church needs. It is about what I need.
This small act, my pledge, is also my stand. It is my stand in the world against greed and selfishness and fear. It is my embrace of my role as "my brother's keeper". It is my celebration that God created the whole world, the Atlantic Ocean, the Rocky Mountains.. and also had the time to create me.
This commitment brings me joy and gives live meaning to the words of Psalm 19.
"The statutes of the Lord are just
And rejoice the heart.
More to be desired are they than gold
In keeping them is great reward."