Pentecost 20A 2005
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:7-14
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46
I threw a party once and nobody came. Really. I was in my first parish and thought it would
be nice to have a party for the younger adults. So I bought food, cleaned the house, set out
the dishes, iced the tea and
waited. And waited. And waited.
I tried not to take it personally but…it did hurt. I don’t like being rejected. Who does?
That “nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I’ll go eat
worms” feeling is an uncomfortable one.
It starts in elementary years,
picks up steam in those middle school years and although we get better
at hiding our feelings we still heart as adults when we face rejection.
Sorry, you don’t qualify for the loan. Sorry, you’re not right for this job. Sorry, I have other plans for the
evening. Ouch.
So what do we do when we are rejected? We go away and feel bad for a while and then go after
something or someone else.
Okay, I’ve met some people who are persistent in the face of
rejection but we usually call that stalking.
We have laws about that.
But
there are times when it pays to be persistent, in trying to get an education for
example. I really admire people who go
back to finish a degree started years earlier. In trying to get health care, some folks have successfully fought the
system to get the best possible care for their loved one, what was that movie, “Lorenzo’s Oil”? Or in trying to make
community changes. The Living
Words book club just read a book by Mary Swander
which had a little within it about a run-down neighborhood cleaning itself up.
Persistence can be good.
But there is persistence and then there is stupidity. Back to stalking!
Anyway,
in today’s Gospel text we have that disturbing story about the
land owner who is an absentee landlord.
Rent’s due, the
grapes have been harvested, so it is
time to collect them. The landowner
sends his slaves to get the grapes.
They get beat, killed, stoned.
Well, the landowner tries again, sends other slaves
and they get abused also.
What would you do?
Call your lawyer,
press charges, and if
that doesn’t work we do a John Wayne/Rambo/ Zena and pull out the big guns.
But no, the landlord sends his son. His son? What is he thinking? Chances are pretty high that no one will
listen to the kid. Two groups of slaves
have been beaten, now you send one son?
Who in their right mind would do that?
But off he goes and we are appalled
by the results although not surprised.
The son is killed. We saw that
coming, yet it still gets us.
What do we do with this?
This violence we are faced with.
The tenants are exploited, happened, happens all the time. For only desperation
calls for a reaction like this.
Then if we kill the son we might get the vineyard to ourselves so we can
feed our families.
But the landowner is also wronged, did he deserve this? Did he deserve to have his slaves and his
son beaten and killed?
And then there is the slave. Powerless to say no, especially that second
group who saw what happened to the first.
And then there is the son.
Whoa….just doing what his father told him to.
The landowner should have stopped this early on, nipped it
in the bud. Brought in the big guns or
even come himself after that first group came home
bloody and bruised.
Jesus asks “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what
will he do to those tenants?”
They (the religious leaders) said, “He will put those wretches to a miserable
death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at
the harvest time.”
But is that what God does?
Comes in the golden Humvee with the flashing
lightening bolts and
blows up the vineyard?
Does God say, “You blew it, you’re done.
Give it up. Zap?”
No. If I were God…if
you were God….that might happen. Don’t
mess with me or you’re fried.
But lucky for us, God is God. And God is persistent. In a good way: Sending the prophets who were
killed, sending John the Baptist who was beheaded. Sending at last Jesus, the son, who was killed?
Yet God doesn’t fight violence with violence. Instead, God turns rejection into
salvation. God takes the Jesus, the
one who rejected unto death, and raises him up and makes him the cornerstone of
the kingdom.
You know cornerstones, the big engraved stone in the corner
of a building telling when the building was built? Cornerstones used to be the most
architecturally important piece of a buildings foundation. Take the cornerstone out and….crash.
So you would think you would want a nice stone, pretty,
polished, solid. Not a piece of rock
that has been rejected by others, a rock that is scarred and chipped.
But there you have.
God takes the rejected son and turns him into the rock of our
faith.
What’s more, The
A people that produces fruit, good stewards of the gifts God has
given. People who realize who made them, who is blessing
them, who accepts them even when others
may reject them.
People who listen, really listen to the Word of God. They realize when the Word cuts close to home, when the Word
challenges, when the Word pushes in new
ways.
People who listen, really listen
and then try to live in a new way: as responsible landowners or loyal
tenants. People who
live persistently faithful lives.
Rejection hurts. It
really does. We know that. The temptation is to lash out and make
others feel our pain. But here comes
God, quietly, persistently, peacefully breaking the cycle of violence by
reacting to rejection with love.
Making a cornerstone out of the stone the builders have rejected; making
a community out of people who have been chipped and scarred; making a kingdom
out of the meek and lowly.
God doesn’t give up on us, even if it seems like the rest of
the world has. For God is persistent
beyond all human reason; combating even rejection, even death, with love.
Our job? Our calling? We are to live out our lives knowing God
accepts us, love us, and comes at us again and again with open arms. And then we share that concern, that love with the rejected of the world in as many creative
and mercy filled ways as we can come up with.
By Crop-walking, advocating for children, giving to world
hunger, listening to our neighbor,
fighting for affordable housing,
sending school supplies to Afghanistan and back packs to Texas, praying for all sorts of people in need, helping a friend, feeding an enemy, writing letters to legislators, giving money to charity….persistently….
Amen.