I have no idea why this parable is in the Bible. Seriously, how could it have made the final cut? I don’t feel anything whatsoever in common with these tenants, so how can we learn something from them. They are the most ungrateful lot imaginable. Let me fill out the context. In their time and place, land was everything. You needed land to have a chance at life. They were not born into families with land, but a good landowner gave them the opportunity to work the land and have life. I call the landowner in this parable “good” for these reasons: He didn’t just place them on barren land and say, “Here, make something of this.” He saw that vineyards were planted. He saw that a wine press was dug. He saw that fences and a watchtower were built. He gave them a wonderful chance at life. And he gave them community. They worked as a group. And the tenants? They were the worst ingrates you can imagine. What could anyone learn from them?
The feelings I have just expressed were my sincere feelings when I read this Gospel recently, mindful that I would be preaching about it. So, I put it aside and decided to work on other things. Then, something happened to me that changed everything. I wouldn’t trouble you with the boring details of my life but for my suspicion that maybe what I relate will be a shared experience. I woke up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. My mind was racing from one anxiety to another. Can you relate? When this happens, nothing enters the brain but questions, and all of them seem to defy any answer. The questions start coming faster and faster and faster, shifting from international, to national, to personal fronts: Can anyone’s plan stop the bloodshed in Iraq? Is it possible that the American Greed which brought about this economic collapse will bring down the economic system of the whole world? Will half the people in this parish wind up unemployed? Will I be in that half? The questions kept rushing until a horrible realization stopped them cold: I was in a state of mind just like those tenants. I had slipped into a mindset that saw no blessings, but only threats.
The realization caused me to shift to thoughts about just how blessed I am. Like the tenants, I have been given a wonderful chance at life. We could all smell the fresh scent of fall’s first rain this past week. And like the tenants, I have been given community. Last night, when my car wouldn’t start and I learned that (no doubt through some demonic intervention) my AAA membership had lapsed, I had a friend I could call. And if he had not answered, I still had the whole church directory in my trunk! I have been given the gift of this community.
If I am suffering from the same disease as the tenants, then I need to take the medicine they were declining to take. What was that? They declined to give the landowner, the master, his due. The one who has given me life and community is none other than God. What does it really man to give God God’s due? You might think it means following the Ten Commandments, since that was our first reading today. But that can’t be right. The Ten Commandments came on to the scene pretty late. There is nothing about them in the Garden of Eden, or even when Abraham is called to the Promised Land. They enter the picture through Moses, as a gift to the Hebrew people when they fall into disarray, a guide for how to keep out of disarray. To find the core of what it means to give God God’s due, we need to look at beginnings. In Genesis, God asks only two things of Adam and Eve. God asks, “One, let me be God; and two, help me take care of creation.” According to the enduring truth preserved in this story, the trouble started when Adam and Eve said to themselves, “We think we would like to handle things ourselves, so we will eat from this tree that gives us all the knowledge we need to get along without God.”
That did not turn out so well. The core of giving God God’s due is letting God be God; it is trusting God in all things, in all the affairs of our lives. This is what God asks and invites.
Fully trusting in God in all matters is more than just a way to stave off anxiety. It taps heavenly possibilities that are beyond what we know to seek or work toward. I heard evidence of this truth just this week, when our Newcomer Group met to discuss experiences of prayer. A member of the group shared this story: He was in the hospital, having had serious surgery for colon cancer. He was miserable and despairing, not knowing whether he would ever again taste life’s sweetness. His wife of many years had died recently, and he was near hopelessness. But he cried out in prayer for God to come to his aid. Do you know what he longed for most? Pizza! Just the chance to taste a favorite food again. Well, his prayer did not cause an instant pizza delivery. But as the days went on, he noticed that someone he had met recently in a grief group was visiting him regularly, and that she seemed to genuinely care for him and empathize with his plight. He got better. They fell in love, and they will soon be married here at Trinity Cathedral. He only knew to long for pizza. But Heaven could imagine something far better, and his trust in God opened his heart to see the life that Heaven offered.
I think things like this are happening all the time! But worry causes our heads to look down, such that we miss offers of life. A prayer of trust helps us to raise our heads and see what God offers.
On the day each of us was conceived, God had a vision about who we could be and what our life might be. Whenever we stray into the briar patch of worry, angels and archangels are working overtime to clear a path out of the weeds and back into life, back toward that vision of what our lives might be. Here is suggested help for all of us in finding our way to that path. Perhaps whenever an anxious thought invades, we might say this pray: “Dear Jesus, you know the life that Heaven imagines for me. Help me find that life. Show me the way.” Or, if under pressure at work or on the highway, we could just use the short version: “Sweet Jesus, show me the way. Show me the way!”