Lectionary Link
16 Pentecost, ap22, October 2, 2011
The parable that we’ve read from the Gospel
today poses this question: Whose life is
it, anyway?
And perhaps we answer, “It’s my life and I’m
going to do what I want.”
I am going to do what I want as long as I
don’t get resistance or opposition from someone or something greater than I am.
The parable hints at an impression of how
people often regard God. God is often
regarded as an “absentee landlord” of this world. Yes, God may be the creator of the world or
at least I know that the world was here before I came into it, and I expect
that it will survive after I leave it, so I know that I did not cause the world
to happen. Someone/something greater
than me caused things to be the way they were.
But God seems to be an absentee landlord of
the world in that God does not seem to wield a coercive presence. God does not seem to be an intervening God
who immediately punishes every misdeed as soon as it happens. And since God does not seem to be an
intervening
presence in the
world, it is easy to get used to treating God as the absentee landlord. So, what if I don’t pay my rent this
month! What’s the Landlord going to do
about it?
And if we can get used to regarding God as
the absentee landlord of the world, then we can adopt the most famous legal
principle of folk law: Possession is
nine tenth of the law. If my life and
the things of my life are in my “apparent” possession then I can claim them as
my own.
And this is the state of affairs that
characterizes what we call the state of sin.
Sin is the state of living in alienation from God; living as though the
landlord of the world is perpetually absence and uninvolved in the world. And the result of this alienation from God is
that we live in alienation with the people and things of our lives.
So is God the absentee landlord of the
universe? And if not, why is it so easy
to regard God as absent? The short
answer is this: God is not a dictator
God. A dictator is a coercive presence
in his realm. God is not a coercive
presence in this world. God is a
persuasive Lure in this world, because unlike a dictator, God respects the
freedom of choice.
When God created the world, God included
something of godliness to be discovered within the created order. The discovery of godliness in the created
order has happened when people of faith and spirit have come upon the
obviousness of God in this world and declared it in various ways. Through the witness of Mosaic Law, the
obviousness of God was declared in the laws.
Moses came to the place of a right relationship with God and then
received, as it were, an ownership manual for the inhabitants of the
earth. We’ve read from the 10
commandments given to us in the Hebrew Scriptures. They are a part of understanding God’s
presence in this world as a revealed law.
They are insights for living and the very first commandment essentially
says, “Live your life knowing that God owns the world and our lives.” Do not have any other gods except the one
God. All of the other laws follow as
insights for living from knowing that God is the creator, owner and indeed the
landlord of the universe.
If God is the landlord of the universe what
happens when we don’t acknowledge this fact?
We lose touch with the true nature of life. We reject what is good and we can even become
expressive of the worst possibilities in human behavior.
The parable gives an indication of the ways
in which God as the loving landlord of the universe has sent messengers to
correct the rebellion of the tenants.
The rather startling suggestion of the early
church is this: Even if God were to send
the divine son to convince us about the reality of God’s ownership of the
world, many still living under alienation from God would still kill the divine
Son.
And isn’t that the point of the Gospel? God was found in human form in the person of
Jesus. And Jesus invited us to correct
our relationship with God, not because God is a power-hungry dictator, but
because it was and is obvious that humanity does not always know or choose to
live in winning ways. The Son of the
Landlord was killed, not because he was sent to collect over due rent, but to
help restore a broken relationship.
One of the things to note about this parable
is the answer that the listeners of Jesus gave to him. Jesus asked them, “What will the landlord do
to those who usurped his land and killed his son?” And they answered, “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 what did Jesus himself say when he was dying upon the cross? He said, “Father, forgive them for they do
not know what they are doing.”
Ignorance lies within all of the great
problems of life today. And the chief
source of ignorance is forgetting or not knowing or caring that God is the
owner of the universe. Ignorance is the
cause of the great stewardship problem in our world today. The stewardship problem in our world stems
from forgetting that God is the creator and owner of the universe. If God is the owner of the universe, we are
to live and work for God.
God sent his Son to free us from our
ignorance regarding to whom our life belongs.
And Jesus, God’s Son said to love God with all of our hearts and to love
our neighbor as our self. This expresses
the perfection of stewardship.
Now God may seem at times to be an absentee
landlord, and we know that in cities absentee landlords can contribute to the
decline of neighborhoods.
But God is different from most human
landlords, because God cannot really be benefited by anything that we give to
God. God returns all of the rent to the tenants. God returns everything as future investment
in the world, for the people to come.
And that is the amazing discovery about stewardship, God doesn’t need
our money or our time; but our parish
and many needy people in our world do need our money and our time and our
talent.
Somehow we don’t seem to ever properly care
for each other until we learn to care for God properly who is over all but
gives and shares it all.
What God wants to hear from us today is the
prayer of stewardship. In this prayer,
we simply say, “All things belong to you, O God. Now give us wisdom to know how to use what
you have shared with us.”
Stewardship is knowing that all things belong
to God, but also knowing that God has returned it all to us so that we might
make this world better. Let us embrace
our roles as stewards of God’s good gifts to us today. Amen.
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