Sunday 5th October 2014.
Sermon. Are We Good Tenants?
Matthew 21: 33-end
There is a programme on channel 5 or 5 Star, or something similar, called “World’s Most Dangerous Jobs”. Some of the things people do are truly terrifying, all the way from deep-sea diving, to hanging off large buildings, to looking after deadly animals. I think the number one slot was driving trucks across frozen lakes in Siberia or something. All thinks I wouldn’t want to do.
Now it goes without saying that “religious minister” didn’t feature in the programme. My job is not dangerous, certainly not in this country. In fact most people think I only work one day a week. But today’s gospel says something about the inherent danger of being not only a religious leader, but of being religious in general. It all has something to do with pride.
What do I mean by this?
The story we hear today is another part of an on-going dispute between Jesus and the High Priest, the Scribes and the Pharisees. It started when Jesus was teaching the people in the Temple and the religious leaders demanded to know by what authority He was doing this.
In response to their demands, Jesus tells some parables. The first was about two sons, both of whom are asked by their father to go and work in the vineyard. The first refuses, but later changes his mind and goes to work. The second promises to go, but doesn’t. Jesus points out that the first son is like people who are socially unacceptable, but who repent and turn to the Lord, while the second son is like the religious leaders, who say the right thing, but don’t act on it.
Today we hear the second parable. In it we hear of a landowner, who leases his vineyard to some tenants. When the time comes to collect his share of the produce, the tenants beat and murder his servants, so he eventually sends his son, thinking that the tenants will listen to him. But they kill him, and in so doing they will incur the anger of the landowner.
The meaning of the parable was obvious to the religious leaders. The vineyard is the promised land, and they are the tenants. The landowner is God, and the servants are the prophets. And now God has sent His Son in the person of Jesus, and yet Jesus knows that they will beat Him, and kill Him. The message of the parable angers the religious leaders because they don’t see themselves as bad tenants. On the contrary, they see themselves as the righteous ones, the ones whom God favours. Their pride in their own self-importance has blinded them to the reality of how God works in the world. Jesus makes it clear that their position as religious leaders will not save them – in fact, their position as religious leaders makes them even more vulnerable, because it produces in them a sense of pride and self-importance, when what is really needed is humility and a recognition that we all fall short of the glory of God.
So what does this mean for us?
Well, first of all we see how easy it is for religious leaders to think too much of themselves. But it’s not just religious leaders that can fall foul of pride.
If we think of the vineyard as being the world, and the tenants as the human race, how much do we misuse the natural world around us.It was revealed in the news recently that more than half the world’s wildlife has been destroyed in the last 40 years. More than half! It’s almost too terrible to imagine. And yet so often we think that the world belongs to us, that its natural resources are there for our convenience. And so we destroy and pillage, forgetting that the world belongs to God, and will require an explanation from us for what we have done to God’s creation. Whatever happens, I don’t think we’re getting the deposit back.
But we can also think of the vineyard as the Church, and the tenants are us, the ones who attend and look after the church. Are we good tenants, producing good fruit for the Lord’s harvest, or are we bad tenants, like the religious leaders of Jesus’s day, thinking that it belongs to us and for our desires and needs?
So easily religious people can fall into pride passing judgement on others and assuming that these buildings are here for our convenience. And yet, the same as the vineyard, the church does not belong to us for us to do with as we please. It belongs to God, it belongs to the wider community; it belongs to the Christians who are yet to be born. We are merely tenants, tending the church until the next tenants take over from us, and so until the harvest of the Last Day.
We may not beat or kill those that God sends to us, but do we ignore them or drive them out of the church? We must free ourselves from any sense of our own self- righteousness and turn away from pride. That way we will be good tenants, producing a rich crop of fruit.
Amen.
Rev’d Phil Morton.