Lent V                                           Seminarian Whitney Zimmerman

Psalm 126; Isaiah 43:16-21 ;           March 25, 2007

Philippians 3:8-14 ; Luke 20:9-19     Solemn Mass

  

Our selves are a mysterious cocktail of our natural gifts and abilities and the habituation of the environment in which we are nurtured. We are taught, most effectively by example, what is expected of us. Given our family backgrounds, our education, our neighborhoods, some options for life seem obvious and attainable, while others are against the grain, dreamable perhaps, but practically rare. Whether from city or suburb, white or people of color, we inherit particular habits of being and we make choices and create our worldviews out of them.

 

Perhaps these habits are of lifestyle. A child of wealth is taught to prefer the company of the wealthy, or a person of one race is taught to be suspicious of another race. There are other habits, ways of being which we have picked up along the way. They shape our ideologies, our understanding of relationship to the others, to God. They may be framed by our politics, religious affiliation or social interactions and are so formative that they act as a lens through which we experience everything. These habits of being are the filters through which we encounter the world, while also acting as the boundary by which we resist encountering certain aspects of the world.

The balance of nature and nurture is used to explain the behaviors of individuals as well as peoples. Isn't it? We say of one woman, well you know she's from Fairfield County or that guy, he is a Jew or Arab, black or white. With enough practice and success, preserving our worldviews take priority above all else.

 

Looking at the disastrous behavior of the tenants of the vineyard in Luke's gospel, we have to recognize that they didn't set out to beat and murder those who came to collect the rent. Their principle priority was to protect what they thought of as their own. They had labored hard pruning, fertilizing, and caring for the vines. They had families to feed and bills to pay, reputations to protect. Their lives were built upon the promises of the fruits of the vineyard. When the rent collectors came the tenant's first priority was to look out for what was theirs'… what they had worked for. They had worked so hard they had forgotten that the vines were never theirs. The vineyard belongs to the landowner. The crimes that ensued were born out of the tenants having put their own continued survival above all else in importance.

 

For many of us, as we read of the landowner's subsequent anger and wrathful punishment, we understand it as an expression of a relationship of crime and punishment. It is easy to overlook the very human habits of the tenants that led them to offend the Landowner. Perhaps we quickly judge them, as we often do of offenders of any laws moving straight to vilifying them as common criminals…stupid laborers who did not pay attention to the terms of the contract they had agreed to in the first place.

They got what they deserved, atleast by the terms of the contract they had agreed to. Destruction was all part of the punishment. They should have known that before beating and killing the rent collectors. We are reminded often in the scriptures of the promises of destruction of those who have fallen out of favor with the will of God.

 

This way of thinking makes perfect sense in the litigious society we find ourselves. It seems that in all we do, we are bound by contractual agreements. With all that we own: our homes our cars, in the ways we conduct ourselves in the workplace, in our church, in society, we are governed by laws and we are well aware of the punishments that come with violation these laws. Surely we bring this understanding of contractual relationships and justifiable punishment to our reading of Luke this morning. After all the violence of the tenants. verse 15 says “What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them?” The answer given is “He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.'” Some would argue that this is a tough but fair punishment and the offenders, the tenants got what they deserved.

 

You see, we are a people of lines. We draw lines all over the place. Our property is clearly divided, our money is closely protected even ideas have ownership. Dividing lines keep us straight. they are barriers, both physical and psychological. They keep order and, as long as they exist, they communicate to ourselves and to everyone else that there is a divide, there is a beginning and an end: order and structure. This is mine and that is yours.

 

Some lines are visible, like the imposing security fences built around property… while other lines are invisible, like the color lines of my small southern town that tell white people to stay on their side of town and black people to stay on theirs'. Such imaginary lines are so clearly marked in the minds of the town residents that entire generations go without breaching them. They avoid crossing them by following particular routes to the store, worshiping at a particular church and only living in certain neighborhoods. Entirely separate cultures develop behind such barriers: with particular patterns of speech, of commerce of relationship. Over time, it becomes impossible to penetrate these boundaries because the people on either side are so distant from eachother. The power of perceived barriers is much greater than any fence that could be build.

The purposes of our lines are territorial and they are ideological, they are racial, and they are theological. Think of the ancient tribal lines being exploited in the Middle East . Though the 18-foot concrete wall in Israel has only recently been build, it is a physical expression of a deep cultural barrier born of differences in ideology, theology, race and economics. Physical barriers are ways of expressing inter-personal barriers.

 

Why am I talking about lines? I am asking you, in these final days of Lent, to consider the barriers that you have inherited and the ones you have created for yourselves. By the very nature of our Christian faith, we are being called in this season to examine ourselves and the ways we have patterned our lives, lest we unwittingly cling to them when the time comes for us to let them go.

 

Paul, in his letter to the Philippians reminds us to forget what lies behind, to let go of our former ways, our former habits and strain forward to what lies ahead.

In our Lenten prayers and practices, we have grown weary with penance. We have asked and continue to ask of God to break down our habits of sin that are barriers within ourselves, the barriers that keep us from experiencing the deep and abiding life allowed by God in ourselves and in those around us: both near and far.

 

These habits of sin we all know. The habitual barriers created by quick judgment, of prejudice against others, of the unwillingness to forgive. Lent is the time of reforming lives which have been unnaturally shaped by the same destructive habits of the vineyard tenants. Working so hard at survival in life, so hard, that we come to the terrible belief that the fruits born of the hard vines of life are rightly ours to keep. Building walls around these vines, fighting even the son of the landowner lest he take one of the fruits of the trees we watered, we weeded, we pruned and we worried over at times of drought and plague. This son of which the scripture is speaking, is, of course, Christ. And this vineyard is the garden within which we find ourselves. Life in God's creation.

 

Isaiah 43 says “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.

I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I, [God], give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, I give drink to my…people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.”

 

Christ's coming in Luke's parable is not a test to the tenants. It's not a final warning to the people that this is your last chance. It is the coming of a new era when all barriers fall away. The former hours and days of vigilant watching and worrying to protect the vineyard is over. The hording of fruit and worry over the lack of my share, of your share, whether it will be enough, whether we will ever have enough, is over. The harvest has come and the Son is arriving. This is a time for celebration and renewal. A time for blessed rest in intimate community with the giver of all things. Lord knows we have tried to protect ourselves from the change that Christ's coming would bring. We have fortified our walls and shaped generations with our barriers and yet the son will still come. We have doubted God and his promises for redemption and yet the son will still come. We have sinned without repentance and continue to sin even after repenting and yet the Son will still come. We have scorned the prophets and those amongst us who have been born to show us that life is more than habit, it is greater than our barriers and limitations and yet, even then, the son will still come. There isn't a wall high enough or a wilderness wide enough to keep the Son from coming.

 

Shake your head, tell me its inevitable. Tell me its human nature to build barriers, to resist change, to live in habits of avoidance and exclusion. Tell it out loud. Admit to God the limitations of our imaginations as to the transformative power of God's grace in Christ, his son.

 

Open your heart and lay bare all the things which you value, the fruits of your labors in the tending of the vineyard that is your life which have served you well, bringing you here today. Lay them bare to yourself and you will see, in all of them, the presence of God's grace. Grace that comes without condition or punishment. Make no mistake, that is grace that is not given out of a contractual relationship but of pure and boundless love from God, thru God, in God. That is the nature of our true relationship with the Divine. His gracious son is gift, we need only accept it.

 

There is one last reality that is an essential boundary of our faith. In the Eucharistic celebration, the one thing that is absolutely necessary to celebrate the Eucharist besides the bread and the wine is the corporeal, a small linen piece of cloth upon which the elements are laid. It is necessary because it marks the space that is literally holy, not of this world but of the world to come. Sort of like a mini divine embassy on the altar. Ostensibly, the Eucharist could be celebrated anywhere in the world, even in the midst of a trash heap, as long as it is done in the pure and holy space created by a corporeal. This is a small space indeed, but it is here, and in our midst, and by consuming the bread and the wine we are given a taste of the expansive and boundless kingdom of God 's holiness.