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"Paying the Rent"
Consider carefully your place, my place, our place, the
church’s place in the parable of the wicked tenants spoken
by Jesus in our Gospel lesson.
A few weeks ago in a staff Bible study Pastor Abel made the
comment that he was hesitant to use the word “religion” in
reference to Christianity – to say, “the Christian religion.”
His thought was that the very word religion implies a man-made
system of rules and teachings established to help us explain
or define our understanding of God. His observation was that,
that sort of thinking sets Christianity up as just one of a
number of options that people can choose from to suit their
own ideas about God.
In that sense it would be right to say Christianity is not a
religion. It is not a man-made system of rules and teachings
about God. No, Christianity is much, much more than that.
Christianity is the living, breathing presence of God in
your everyday life.
It is not that systems of rules and teachings are wrong or
bad. They are in fact necessary in a world gone mad to bring
us some sense of order, to give us direction and keep us
headed down the right road. The problem is our uncanny
ability to fall in love with the system, to make the rules
and teachings the object of our worship instead of a real
encounter with God.
Consider carefully your place, my place, our place, the
church’s place in the parable of the wicked tenants spoken
by Jesus in our Gospel lesson.
How many of you have ever been a renter? There is no
relationship in the world quite like the love-hate
relationship between a landlord and a tenant.
When I was a student at the seminary Lois and I rented a
house that was ideal - the rent was affordable, the location
was perfect. We lived there for two years without a problem
and as the time approached for me to go on my vicarage –
the year long internship that’s part of our training –
we asked our landlord if he would let us sublet his house
to another seminary student for the year we were gone so
that we could have a place to live when we got back. It
was two years of guaranteed rent with good tenants who were
responsible and took good care of his property. He was
delighted.
On January 2, 1986 the landlord knocked on our door about
9:00 at night and said, “Be out by the end of the month. I
have decided to rent the house to my cousin.” I was furious.
We started our search for a place to live. It is hard to find
a six-month lease – we knew we’d be leaving in the summer for
vicarage. It was cold and snowy. Oh, yeah, and Lois was six
months pregnant with Jonathan, our oldest son.
We found a place – a government subsidized housing project –
an apartment that had been vacant for three months while
they tried to clear up a massive cockroach infestation. We
moved in. Within two weeks Lois was in the hospital with
a life-threatening crisis in her pregnancy. They were able
to keep her from going into labor for about 10 days before
she had to have an emergency c-section. Jonathan was born
six weeks prematurely. Ask me how I felt about the landlord
who evicted us?
Of course that love-hate relationship between landlords
and tenants cuts both ways. I’ve listened to the stories
of property owners whose tenants are always late with their
rent, complain endlessly about one thing after another and
give no thought whatsoever to damaging, even destroying the
owners property.
We could, I’m pretty sure, spend the rest of the morning
swapping stories from both sides the landlord-tenant experience.
But now, consider carefully your place, my place, our place,
the church’s place in the parable of the wicked tenants spoken
by Jesus in our Gospel lesson.
Imagine if you can, the perfect landlord. He doesn’t just want
your money. He actually wants you to have a safe, well-kept,
comfortable place to live. His goal is your happiness. He
responds quickly to your calls. He is constantly upgrading,
improving, remodeling to make things right for you. No expense
is too great. He wants you to live in his house, forever.
Now turn the page and consider the other side of the relationship.
Imagine, again, if you can, the most inconsiderate and unthankful
tenant possible. At first they appreciate the landlord’s care
and concern, but then they begin to expect it, after all they
are paying the rent. Why shouldn’t he be at their beck and
call 24-hours a day? They begin to demand things and to act
as if they own the place. Never satisfied, never content,
they begin to withhold the rent. They will force the landlord
to meet their demands and expectations.
The parallel is obvious isn’t it? The people Jesus was talking
to certainly understood what he was getting at. They cried out,
“May this never be!” And the teachers of the law and priests
looked for a way to arrest Jesus immediately, because they knew
he had spoken this parable against them.
God is the landlord. Israel is the tenant. Read the Old Testament
sometime. God chose Israel, not because of some special quality
or character. In fact the story of the whole Bible is a story
of God picking the most unlikely and the least successful so
that when great things happened everybody would know it was
God who had made it happen.
Have you ever watched a demolition derby? Cars going every
which way, ramming into each other, trying to damage and
disable all the other cars because the last one still
running wins. Now imagine taking the winning car from a
demolition derby and setting it along side a brand new
model of your dream machine. You get to pick. You can
have either one, the derby winner or the brand new,
shiny, fresh off the truck, never been driven model. Not
a hard choice is it? You’d have be a fool to take the
wreck.
The story of Christianity is the story of God’s foolish
love. He picks the wreck. Did you hear the Old Testament
reading? He brought Israel up out of slavery in Egypt. He
led them through the waters of the Red Sea. He crushed
Pharaoh and his armies. Broken, battered, and utterly
worthless, He made Israel new again. He gave her a place,
a land to call home. He made them great and gave them
power and wealth. And in return God asked Israel to pay
the rent – to trust solely in Him, to have no other gods,
to keep His name holy, and worship Him so that the whole
world might see His mercy and goodness and come to Him
for their salvation.
But Israel became the wicked tenant. He sent her the prophets
to call her back: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea,
Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai,
Zechariah, Malachi and finally John the Baptist. And then He
sent His own beloved Son. Jeremiah was stoned to death. Tradition
says that Isaiah was shoved into a hollow log and sawn in two
by one of Israel’s kings. John the Baptist was beheaded. And
Jesus was crucified.
Jesus asks a sobering question, “What will the owner of the
vineyard do then?" He answers his own question and it is a
terrifying answer, “He will come and kill those tenants and
give the vineyard to others.”
The chief priests and the scribes, the Pharisees and the
leaders of Israel, fell so in love with the system of rules
and teachings they had developed and they missed the very
real presence of God in the person of Jesus Christ and the
moment of their salvation. Jesus quoted Psalm 118: “The
stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.” And
then he applies it to them, “Everyone who falls on that
stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls
will be crushed.”
The New Testament claims that the vineyard – the loving
presence of God with His people – has been given to the
church. To those who have believed that Jesus is true God,
begotten of the Father from all eternity and also true man,
born of the Virgin Mary. God has chosen another wreck –
you and me.
The rent is the same. He gives us everything: our wealth,
our possessions, our family, our jobs, our very life and
asks in return that we put our faith and our trust solely
in Him, that we have no other gods, keep His name holy
and worship Him in all that we do so that the world can
see His mercy and goodness and come to live with Him
forever.
In the Old Testament lesson Isaiah told Israel, “Forget
the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am
doing a new thing!” Folks the “new thing” God had in
mind all along for Israel and for us is Jesus. He rescues
us from the demolition derby life where people are running
around and crashing into each other to inflict as much
damage as they can foolishly believing that whoever is
still running at the end will win. God takes us out of
that insanity. He takes us to the cross.
Christianity is an amazing story. God used what human beings
do naturally, namely reject Him, in order to accomplish our
salvation. He uses the sinful, rebellious nature of mankind
that rejects him in favor our own systems of rules and teachings
to accomplish our salvation. How unbelievable is that?! Rejected
by all mankind at the cross, God chooses to reject Jesus there
too so that all the sin of Israel - from Adam and Eve right up
to and including your sin and mine this morning - slammed into
Jesus at the cross and He died.
Consider carefully your place, my place, our place, the church’s
place in the parable of the wicked tenants spoken by Jesus in our
Gospel lesson.
The rent is due. Do you know what it is? Listen, “The sacrifices
of God are a broken and contrite heart. A broken and contrite
heart, O God, you will not despise.”
By Jesus’ death we are receiving forgiveness and forgiveness and
forgiveness. When we forget about him, when we start to act like
life and everything in it is ours to do with as we please, when
we become wicked tenants who begrudge God for not giving us more,
he sends his messenger to tell us this parable so that we might
fall on the stone, which is Jesus’ suffering and death, and be
broken to pieces, because a broken and contrite heart He will
not despise. We don’t usually kill our pastors or teachers or
parents or friends who bring us God’s message but we have our
ways of shutting them out and ignoring them.
So He sends another messenger with the water of our Baptism to
remind us daily that we were dead in our trespasses and sins
and only by the work of the Holy Spirit were we given new life
and made members of God’s own family. We don’t usually kill the
messenger but we have our little ways of punishing our pastors,
or teachers, or parents or friends who bring us God’s message.
We smile and pretend to listen and then do whatever we want.
So He sends another messenger with the bread and wine of the
Lord’s Supper to remind us of the great price that was paid
for our place in God’s house, to reassure us that it is never
too late this side of the grave to confess our sins and receive
the healing forgiveness of the cross. We don’t usually kill the
messenger but we sure know how to get even, to get defensive,
to use our words to wound and our looks to kill.
The question of the parable comes to us. What will God do with
us if we refuse to listen to His Word, if we refuse to remember
the power of our Baptism, if we refuse to see our great and
continuous need for Christ’s body and blood, given and shed
for the forgiveness of sins and distributed in, with and under
the bread and wine of Holy Communion?
I have an idea. Let’s not find out! His Word can be ignored,
left on the table, shut out of the heart even by those who
come to church every Sunday. The water of Baptism is rejectable.
What was done for you there by the Holy Spirit can be left in
a drawer and forgotten. The power to live a new life of faith
can be left unused. The meal of Christ’s body and blood can
be rejected.
You know how? Just treat it all – worship, baptism, prayer,
the Lord’s Supper - like a religious duty, a system of rules
and teachings, some mindless act that church people do instead
of what it really is – namely the living, breathing presence
of God in your life.
It’s time to pay the rent. It costs you nothing. It costs
Jesus everything. Genuinely and sincerely confess your subtle
and your outright rejection of God in your everyday life. Admit
that of late you’ve had no interest in the Bible, no real desire
to talk to Him in prayer. You’ve let your relationship to Him
become a mindless act of religious duty. But remember this: A
broken and contrite heart God will not despise.
Be his people. Receive your life again this morning as the
gift that it is, given by God purely out of His fatherly
divine goodness and mercy. You are forgiven for Jesus’
sake. Christianity is not a religion. It is the living,
breathing presence of God in your heart and mind that
proclaims His mercy and goodness through every last
detail of your day-to-day existence for all the world
to see and believe.
It is a new week in the vineyard. Paul sums it up nicely
in our Epistle. Forgetting what is behind (because it is
all forgiven) and straining toward what is ahead, press
on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has
called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Amen.
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