Who Owns What?
Luke 20: 9-19
October 12, 1997
In the name of the living true God, who entrusts us with the care and nurture of the world, Amen
I want to attempt something today that, to the best of my knowledge, has never before been tried in the annals of preaching. (That opener was written for me by P.T. Barnum.)
Seriously, I want to put in a good word for the scribes and chief priests. Anyone who has ever put in a year or two in Sunday School knows that the scribes and chief priests are the bad guys. To say they have had a bad press is a gross understatement. Every time they are mentioned in the New Testament, we seem to be given an invitation to boo.
Let me suggest, this morning, that the scribes and chief priests were, if anything, more involved, more passionate, and more aware of the religious implications of life than most other people. So instead of knocking the scribes and chief priests, let’s learn from them.
in the Gospel, Jesus tells the story of a person who planted a vineyard and rented it out to tenants. When the landlord tried to collect the rent, the tenants rejected his messengers and tried to take control of the vineyard. The story really ends with the question: “What will the owner finally do to them?” The obvious answer is: Throw them out and get another set of tenants. Luke goes on to say that the scribes and the high priests were furious when they heard the story because they realized it was directed at them.
My guess is that none of us were ever mildly disturbed when we heard the Gospel. I think this is so because we have yet to figure out that the parable is also about us. The scribes and the chief priests at least made the connections. We simply sit back and say to ourselves, “Jesus is really giving the business to some of the heavies of 2000 years ago.”
But suppose Jesus is speaking to us. Suppose he is asking the question: Who owns what? Suppose he is pointing out that the tenants know they are tenants, but they conduct themselves as if they were owners. The tenants, in their heads, know their tenant status but, in their hearts (and therefore in their behavior)act like owners. Suppose Jesus is reminding us that we, too are tenants.
In our heads, we know that we are creatures and God is the creator. We know that we have been given the gift of life and are to be stewards of the earth. In church we repeat over and over again, “All things come of thee, O God, and of thine own have we given thee.” It’s almost like a mantra, and even when we have changed to more modern words, some tell me they automatically use the old words. It’s implanted in our heads, if not our hearts. A friend of mine recently put it this way: “What we want to believe is written in our Prayer Books. What we really believe is written in our checkbooks. The history we rely on is written in the Bible. The history we act on is written in our calendars.” The way we spend our time and money is the real way to determine whether we see ourselves as owners or tenants. Who owns what?
This is the first of two Sundays where we focus on Stewardship. It’s canvass time, and a lot of people think we are simply trying to talk them out of their money. Not so. We’re trying to understand – who owns what? The real issue of an Every Member Canvass is, ultimately, are we owners or tenants?
The scribes and the high priests understood that the tithe, the 10%, was not a charitable gift. It was the rent one paid to God for the use of his world. If one wanted to help the poor, bind up the broken-hearted, heal the wounded, that came after paying the rent. First, the rent, then the charity.
But still, we read that the scribes and high priests were furious. Not because they hadn’t paid the rent, but because Jesus reminds them that they are not the owners of the world around them. They do not even own the church.
Several years ago, I was standing in the airport waiting for my luggage. A young boy pointed me out to his mother.
“There’s Father Douglas. He owns St. Philips.” I was feeling weary, and wanted to turn around and say: “You’ve got it wrong, sonny. St. Philip’s owns me.” (But that’s another sermon.) I often wonder if that isn’t the basic problem at canvass time. We believe we’re the owners of the church, and we’re not always pleased with our investment. And Jesus looks out at us and asks, Who owns what?
Yesterday morning, we baptized the youngest Douglas. As we were going through that wonderful baptism service, I wanted to stop and remind everybody that we were acknowledging that Griffen Sawyer Douglas was God’s child, and not simply the property of his parents.
You see, it isn’t just land and money that confuses us. It’s people also. We often begin to feel we own them. Our children shift from being gifts loaned to us by God to becoming accomplishments that reflect on their parents. The hardest part of a parent/child relationship is to realize we don’t own our children. This, I believe, is what baptism is all about. The recognition of who owns what.
Going back once again to the parable, I think in its original form it ended with the question, ‘What do you think the owner will do?”
You can usually tell if a parable has been added to by the early church. If you need an answer supplied or an explanation of its meaning, it probably has been expanded to fit in with the circumstances of the day. Jesus, in the tradition of the rabbis, usually ended with a question. And the question that ends this parable is, “What will the owner do when the tenants refuse to act like tenants?”
This morning we gather for this banquet, this Holy Communion. We do this because the owner refuses to leave us to our self-absorbed ways. instead, the owner sends his Son, who comes to call us back to the life we were made for, in spite of the way we might ignore or reject the Son. He bids us start anew. In the bread and the wine, He comes to us and says, “You are my Children. You are also my tenants.” Amen.