Lent V

March 25, 2007

The Rev. David R. Hackett

Rabbi Harold Kushner in his book, When All You Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough:  the search for life that matters, told a story about an 85 year old woman from the hill country of Kentucky who was asked in an interview to look back on her life and reflect on what she had learned.  Her answer was laced with wistfulness, “If I had to do it all over…”

She said, “If I had my life to live over, I would dare to make more mistakes the next time.  I would relax.  I’d be sillier.  I would take fewer things seriously…I would eat more ice cream and less beans.  I would have more actual troubles but fewer imaginary ones.  You see, I’m one of those people who live seriously and sanely hour after hour, day after day.  I’ve been one of those persons who never went any place without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute.  If I had it to do again, I’d travel lighter.”   How does that sound to you?  It sounds about right to me.  After 85 years she had come to see things in proper perspective.

Perspective: one of the most important words in the English language; to see things in right relationship.  We often lack perspective in many aspects of our lives.  For example, our careers assume a huge importance in our lives, sometimes crowding out our families, our friends, important relationships.  Remember this,  I never heard anyone on his or her deathbed say, “I wish I’d spent more time at the office.”

We certainly lack a sense of perspective when it comes to our religious lives.  Think about this beloved Episcopal Church of ours.  We spend an awful lot of our time concentrating on things that are but transitory.  We become distracted with issues that loom large for the moment, but are insignificant in a larger perspective.  Those of us of a certain age remember well the turmoil we experienced as a church when we introduced a new prayer book.  Today new Episcopalians want to know what we’re talking about when we reference “the new Prayer Book”…it’s now 28 years old!  Or take the issue of the ordination of women.  How our perspective has changed as we experience the outstanding ministries of ordained women in our church.  Isn’t it wonderful that today we pray for “Katherine, our Presiding Bishop!”  We have this tendency to expend tremendous energy in debating things such as liturgy, ordination, human sexuality, and then find we are incapable of addressing the really key issues such as justice and peace.

One of the dangers facing any congregation during this transition time is to turn inward instead of outward.  A temptation facing St. John’s is that we will focus more on the process of selecting a new rector than the process of being God’s people called to make a difference in the world.  I trust the outstanding outreach ministries of this parish will keep us from doing that, but it is always a temptation.

We in the church are very good at majoring in minors!

It seems to me that God is always trying to get us to see things in proper perspective.  In the Collect of the Day we prayed that God would grant us grace to love what God commands and desire what God promises; that, “among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found.”  No majoring in minors there!  The prophet Isaiah hears God saying, “I’m about to do a new thing, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”  The people of Israel will declare God’s praise.  The psalmist echoes the new thing, “Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy, those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.”  St. Paul certainly kept things in proper perspective, “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

In today’s Gospel Jesus tells a story of a very special place, a beautiful and well-cared for vineyard.  It is a story of God’s great love for us and how we have responded to that love.  Time and time again the tenants rejected the owner’s representatives, ultimately murdering the owner’s son.  Jesus ends his parable by saying the owner of the vineyard will give it to others.  Luke says, “The scribes and chief priests realized that Jesus had told this parable against them.”  They got a new perspective.  When they realized that Jesus was saying God is quite capable of choosing others to tend the vineyard, even gentiles, they began, right then, to plot to get rid of this troublemaker.

But let’s not leave the story back in time.  This is not just something that happened 2000 years ago when Jesus told this against those who were rejecting him.  It is also a warning to us, who by virtue of our baptism, are grafted onto the vine of Judaism.  It is a warning to us, the Church, the New Israel.

Perhaps we forget that we are part of the divine plan for the redemption of the world.  If we’re honest, most of the time we don’t think of the church in those terms.  Often in our consumer mentality, we may simply think of the church in terms of what it can do for me: provide sanctuary, a place of peace, an escape from the world, provide a beautiful liturgical setting.  But we who are called into the Community of Faith are called to be nothing less than God’s instrument of salvation.  That is the perspective of the church which we need to have before us.  We are to be God’s instrument of salvation.

The journey to which we have been joined began with God choosing Israel.  We are inseparably linked to Judaism as well as to the “son and heir”.  We are the inheritors of the vineyard.  All of the digging, the clearing, the planting, and the watching-over, through the centuries is ours.  God could not have done more than he has done for us.

This story in Luke is complicated, on every level.  The scribes and chief priests saw themselves in this parable, so they decided to get rid of Jesus.  If you don’t like the message, kill the messenger.  So what is our response?  Can we find ourselves I the story?  Not just as the good guys or the bad guys, in which case we are either guilty or innocent.  But can we find that we are part of the complexity in this story which is ultimately God’s Good News?

Loren Eisely, the famous anthropologists, in his book, The Immense Journey, looks at the human hand and marvels at the long journey through which it has come, a journey, as he puts it, “through fin and scaly reptile foot, and furry paw.”  We need to see from the perspective of the anthropologist’s sense of wonder.  He understands the long way we have come.  We need to understand the long way we have come, not biologically, but spiritually.

As God’s people we are in continuity with the whole of God’s past activity.  We are a part of all that has come before us:  all of the persistent and loving cultivation by God of his people; from the calling of Abraham, through the prophets, through Jesus and the apostles, down to this very moment here and now, this morning at St. John’s.

We are the inheritors of the vineyard.  And, we have a mission, “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”  You and I are the new tenants of the vineyard.  We are called to be productive, bringing forth good grapes.  The good produce, the fruit of our discipleship, the marks of our lives as Christians, are found in our Baptismal Covenant.  Will we continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?  Will we persevere in resisting evil and whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?  Will we proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ?  Will we seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves?  Will we strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being?

If we will not, God will raise up others to whom to give the kingdom.  This was the hard lesson Jesus was teaching to those who heard the parable that day so long ago.  Know this:  the journey of God’s kingdom cannot be stopped.  No amount of wild grapes or wicked tenants can destroy it.  The question is whether or not we will continue on the journey to which we’ve been called.  The everlasting kingdom will always belong to someone.

This parable asks us to pass judgment on ourselves.  It calls us to put things into proper perspective, to take stock of our priorities.  Are we majoring in minors?   Amen.