Ownership

It’s mine. I own it. You can’t have it. We like to own our own stuff: our land, our home, our car, our stuff. We want it to be ours.

Adalyn likes to grab stuff wherever we go places. One day she saw a birthday cake and presents sitting off to the side in a trampoline park and started to unwrap a present. In her mind if she gets it in her hands, then it can be hers. I’m always having to tell her “Put that back. That’s not ours.”

Today we hear Jesus tell a parable about tenants caring for a vineyard that isn’t theirs. The owner of takes great care in creating this vineyard. Every detail is intentional: the planting, the building of a fence to protect it, the digging of a wine press, and even the construction of a watchtower. Then the owner leases this new vineyard to the tenants and seemingly goes out of the country.

Meanwhile, the tenants are working the land. The tenants are caring for the grapes and pressing them into wine. Vineyards take a long time to cultivate, sometimes taking a few years before t he grapes are ready.Finally, the harvest has arrived. The owner sends some men to collect everything.

But then something terrible happens. The tenants become violent, seizing and stoning and even killing those sent to collect the grapes. So the owner sends another group of folks into the vineyard (more this time) to collect. Much to the owner’s dismay, the violence of the tenants continues. Now at this point, it would be time for some heavy measures, to send in the law. But instead the owner sends in his son who is unarmed into the vineyard. The owner thinks that because it is his son, surely they will respect him. When the tenants see the son, instead of engendering respect for the owner, they see an opportunity to kill him and seize the inheritance, owning the land for themselves. And so the tenants take the owner’s son and kill him.

Oh how we want it to be ours, but is ownership ever enough? It’s like the quote from Grapes of Wrath that says “If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich.”

This is a pretty extreme parable. Who is Jesus talking to here, and when? Well this isn’t long after Palm Sunday when Jesus made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. Then he continued to upset religious officials when he entered the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers calling it a den of thieves. So when he returned to the temple a few days later and began teaching again, the chief priests and pharisees wanted to know just who he thought he was and what authority did he have?

As usual, Jesus responds by telling a story, and one that they would have been familiar with. The parable of the wicked tenants in Matthew is reminiscent of the song of the unfruitful vineyard in Isaiah 5:1-7. In Isaiah, the vineyard represents the people of Israel and instead of regular grapes it produces wild ones, not fit for wine.

So in one story wild grapes are produced. In another the tenants are violent. Jesus asks the religious leaders “What will happen now? What will the owner of the vineyard do to these tenants?” What will be the result of their violence?

The chief priests and pharisees don’t hesitate. An eye for an eye. The law of lex talionis aka the law of retaliation. Surely the tenants deserve a miserable death. Take the vineyard away from them and get new tenants.

Interestingly enough, Jesus doesn’t respond. Instead he quotes Psalm 118:22 and Isaiah 28:16 in saying “Have you never read in the scriptures (of course they have): the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone…the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”

All of a sudden the conversation has shifted. All of a sudden a story about a vineyard and violent tenants has turned into a word of judgment on the religious leaders.

Jesus reveals to them that he has become for them the stumbling block. And just as the people of Israel once rejected the prophets long ago, so they now have rejected the Son of God, failing to recognize his authority. Jesus reveals that the judgment they declared at the end of the parable on the life of the tenants is ultimately the judgment they place upon themselves.

How do these chief priests and Pharisees respond? They became angry and wanted to arrest Jesus (notice the cycle of violence).

Maybe the religious officials had begun to feel that they were in charge, that they owned the temple or the kingdom. That it was under their control. They set the parameters for who got access and who didn’t. They allowed ridiculous fees to be charged for temple offerings. But in the end, it wasn’t yielding any fruit. Jesus is saying “the kingdom of God will be taken from you and be given to those who bear fruit.” What kind of fruit are we to bear in God’s kingdom? Fruits of justice and fruits of mercy. Fruits of kindness and love. Fruits of gentleness, goodness, and peace.

When we make it ours, when we make it so that only a few can enter the temple or come to know God, we are no better than the money changers turning the house of prayer into a den of thieves. If we ever feel we own the kingdom, then chances are we don’t deserve it to begin with.

Jesus had asked “what will the owner do to him? What would you do to prove your ownership? Is the answer always violence? Shane Clairborne asks in his book Executing Grace “should we kill those who kill to show that it's wrong to kill?” While we may understand the sword, Jesus gives us the cross. Shane says “it isn’t that the law has no meaning. It’s that grace has the last word” The justice of the kingdom of God is grace, not greed. It is an unarmed baby sent into a world that would ultimately shout “crucify him.”

Barbara Brown Taylor says “The tenants killed the son too, but he would not stay dead and to this day he is still haunting the vineyard, reminding us we are God’s guests… welcome so long as we remember whose it is…Hear the Good News, Jesus calls us to labor in fields we did not plow, to harvest fruit we did not plant, to jingle keys to a kingdom we do not own.”

For the kingdom of God isn’t about what we own; it is about who we follow. It isn’t meant to be hoarded, but to be shared. It isn’t about being in control, but living in surrender.

For Yours is the kingdom. Yours is the power. And yours is the glory. Now and forever. Amen.