A Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost
The Rev. Patricia A. Gillespie
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80
Philippians 3:14-21
Matthew 21:33-43
"Only let us hold fast to what we have attained." That's the advice the Apostle Paul offers in today's reading.
So, what have you attained that you want to hold on to? Is there a great accomplishment of which you are rightly proud? Or is there some gift you have received that you treasure and want to hold fast? A big success or a prized possession?
Personally, I'm pretty proud of my web pages. I work hard on them. Other people seem to think they are rather good. There are other things, too, that I'd really like to hold fast. For example, I'm really proud of my children. Sure, I made my share of mistakes as a mother. But I worked hard at it, and I love them. Parenting is an accomplishment to hold fast.
Most of you have lived long enough to have some really significant accomplishments. Successes as teacher or parent or friend. A well cared for home or a well run business. A long marriage or a fruitful ministry. Good things to hold fast.
And we have shared accomplishments too. As a church, we can be proud of how we worked together to discern a ministry team. And of how we rallied round our fallen wall and are raising money and rebuilding our church. Good things to hold fast.
It was like that for the tenants in the vineyard. It was a significant accomplishment. A vineyard was then, is now, and will always be great deal of work. Cultivated grapevines must be carefully pruned and trained to grow in a position that makes the grapes accessible to the people who hope to gather them. Wild grapes, on the other hand, are very difficult to harvest. Pests of all sorts, from the little foxes of the Song of Solomon to the big raccoons of central Minnesota, find the carefully cultivated vines delicious, and so they must be protected. It's a bit easier these days because the owner of a vineyard can invest in nifty plastic plant protectors. Still, then and now, a vineyard demands extensive preparation and constant vigilance.
A well kept vineyard is a real accomplishment, an attainment to be held onto. And then along comes someone who, it seems, had nothing to do with that vineyard and lays claim to part of the produce.
Remember your great accomplishment? the one we just thought we heard Paul tell us to hang on to? Imagine some stranger coming along and taking credit for it, claiming a share of it.
I think about my website; for example, about the prayer page and all the time spent working on it. It looks good. It does some rather interesting technical stuff, rotating prayers, saints' calendars and such. It enhances some people's prayer life and gets more people prayed for more often. And then I imagine some adolescent techie coming along and setting up a forwarding program so that every time someone tries to get to MY prayer page, instead they are sent to his home page.
It's a real ripoff. And then I know just how those guys in the vineyard felt.
Or it feels kind of like having done a successful annual stewardship drive to balance the budget. Our whole parish works really hard on it. And then we get the note that our diocesan fair share was increased. Hey, this is our church, not theirs! OK, sure, let's get rid of that messenger fast. Crumple up that fair share note and toss it.
This is our vineyard. It's our accomplishment. Let's kill the heir, who never does any work anyway.
"Have you never read," Jesus asks us, "'The stone theat the builders rejected has become the cornerstone'"?But what about OUR accomplishments? Have we neglected something when we consider them? Did God somehow send us a building stone that we neglected? Did we miss an important messenger?
How easy it is to forget that very little we do is our own private accomplishment. How easy it is to assume that what we have belongs to us alone. We, too, are only tenants. The foundation stones of our lives and accomplishments came from elsewhere. The very ability to accomplish anything -- our intellect and talent and strengths - are gifts from God. We owe God big time.
And God still sends us messengers, often unexpected ones. Usually when they show up we are looking at what we think they have come to take from us. Sometimes these messengers appear as problems or pain or loss in our lives. So we throw them out or beat them up; we deny them or kill them. But it might be wise to look for what God may be sending us through them.
For example, I might look again at that adolescent computer techie – the guy I think is stealing visitors from my web page – and learn from him just how his forwarding program works.
Or we might look again at the diocesan fair share that seems to take so much away from us. What might that diocesan messenger be bringing us if we don't toss it out? And then I remember that this year, along with some other churches, we received a significant grant for ministry. And that when Good Samaritan's wall collapsed we had an immediate financial need, we received very quickly a low-interest loan.
Are there also "messengers" showing up in your life, looking as if they've come to take something away? Look again. While not everyone that shows up at our door is a messenger from God, God does tend to send us messengers in the most unexpected disguises.
Be on the lookout for God's messengers because, as today's gospel reading reminds us, if we don't we risk losing it all.
We are only tenants, caretakers rather than owners of all that we have; even of our own lives we are only caretakers, because our lives rightly belong to God. And it seems that God does send around messengers to check on us. So have your "fair share" ready.
Just what might that fair share be? Isaiah tells us what God expects as the fruit of God's vineyard: God's expected fair share is justice and righteousness. That is how we give thanks for all we have received – treating others with fairness and love.
And if we give thanks to the owner of all by offering our "fair share" of justice and righteousness, chances are pretty good that we ourselves will be blessed.
This story about the vineyard is, after all, a love song.