Only This Gift Can Break The Cycle

October 8, 2017 – The 18^th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 22A

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew21:33-46

© 2017 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here.

 

Has anyone ever lent you something for so long that you forgot it wasn’t yours? What happens when the lender calls and asks for it back? Perhaps you’re so surprised that you try to mask your panic and confusion with a little white lie: “Sure, I know where that is. I can’t believe how long it’s been. I should have given that back to you ages ago.” But, in your mind, you’re racing from one corner of the house to another, wondering where in the world it could be. What happens a week later when you still can’t find it? You could come clean, confess that you haven’t seen it in months, and offer to buy your friend a new one…or you could tell another, not-so-white lie. You could tell her that you’re almost certain that you gave it back months ago—that you drove by when she wasn’t home, left it on her front porch, and may have even send her a text. “Did you get my text?” you ask in a most believable tone.

If you take advice from today’s parable, however, it seems that there’s a third option. Instead of offering to replace it or pretending you already have, you could simply threaten the person who lent it to you. You could push her down on the ground and stand over her and say, “You’ll be sorry if you ever ask about that again.” That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? It’s the kind of thing you see in a nightmare or a mobster movie. When the owner of the vineyard sends his slaves to collect his share of the produce, the tenants in the vineyard beat and kill those servants, attempting to send a message that they’re not going to give the vineyard back. They plan to keep it for themselves. What sort of crazy logic is that? What kind of insane person would do such a thing?

We would. Over and over again. We do it all the time. We may not treat our friends or neighbors like that because of what they might say about us on Facebook, but that’s exactly how we treat the one who has given us everything we have. We horde the things that God has given us, pretend that they were ours to begin with, and keep the fruits of our labors for ourselves. All of our skills, abilities, resources, and opportunities belong to God, yet we begin almost every encounter by asking what’s in it for us. All of the love, affection, loyalty, and trust that we enjoy come from God, yet we would rather hold on to them than give them away. Our greatest gift, the freedom to choose whom we will honor with our lives, is handed to us by God, and we choose to turn inward and seek self-satisfaction instead of devoting ourselves to our creator.

How do we know that this is the case? Just look at the signs all around us. There is more than enough food in the world to feed every hungry person, yet there are children right here in Decatur, Alabama, who go to bed hungry every night. There is more than enough wealth in the world to go around for everyone to have a decent life, but that wealth remains concentrated in the hands of those who use the resources and opportunities with which God has blessed them for themselves instead of others. Instead of living in a world in which the dignity of every human being is equally respected, our children look up to celebrities who treat women as second-class citizens and praise them for their sexuality instead of their full humanity. When a murderous madman guns down fifty-eight people and injures almost five hundred more before taking his own life, we collectively feign outrage but then quickly demonstrate that we care more about politics than putting an end to such violence. We have everything we need to make the world the way that God dreams that it could be—the wealth, the opportunity, and the freedom—but we’ve been borrowing all of those things for so long that we’ve forgotten that they don’t belong to us.

That’s what happens when the owner plants a vineyard, puts a fence around it, digs a winepress, builds a watchtower, and then goes away to a distant country for a long, long, long time. We’re the ones who did all of the work. We’re the ones who have borne the scorching heat all this time. The fruit of the garden is the result of our own efforts, not his. Why should we have to give up what we have worked for? Who cares if prophets and preachers have come to remind us that we owe something to the one who planted the vineyard? He’s been gone so long that in our minds we can no longer distinguish between what belongs to him and what belongs to us. It might sound like insanity to think that when the owner sends his son to come and collect what is due that we can kill him and keep it for ourselves, but that’s exactly what we do because we’ve convinced ourselves that it isn’t really his anymore.

But you know what’s even crazier than that? That, after we repeatedly reject the word of the prophets and claim the vineyard for ourselves, God would send his son to us anyway. Doesn’t God know better than that? Doesn’t our track record speak for itself? Doesn’t God know exactly what we will do to his son when he sends him to us? Of course he does. And, even if it doesn’t make sense to us, that’s exactly why he sent him in the first place—because only the gift of God’s own son can break through our self-centered cycle of greed, violence, and misuse.

By freely giving us his son, God gives us the chance to see just how wildly open God’s gracious hands are to us. We know, of course, that the death of God’s son is not the end of the story. We know that, after we killed him on the cross, God raised his son from the dead on the third day. In the light of the resurrection, we are invited to look upon the illogical gift of God’s son and see how irrational we ourselves have become. The gift of the son lifts the veil from our eyes and shows us that everything is gift. When we recognize that everything we have is given to us by God and not the product of our own anxious toil, we discover the freedom to devote ourselves not to our next pay check, not to our 401(k), not to our political party, not to our own security, but to the one who gives us all of those things in the first place. In the sacrifice of the son, therefore, we discover what it means to trust that God will always provide for us.

Will we come to our senses? Will we look upon the cross of Christ and see that the same God who is willing to give us his own son is also willing to give us our daily bread? Will we look upon his sacrifice and see that everything we have is pure gift? Will that free us up to care less about ourselves and more about God? Will we finally know the peace that comes from bearing fruit for God’s kingdom? Our best hope—our only hope—is not found in ourselves but in the one who gives us all good things. Look upon God’s son, God’s gift to the world, and see that you have nothing to fear. God will always provide. Knowing that, choose to bear fruit for the kingdom because you can see that you don’t have to keep it for yourself.