SIXTEENTH SUNDAY after PENTECOST

October 2, 2011

Text: Matthew 21:33-46

Pastor Dale G. Bauer

When I was elected president of the Junior Luther League—it would be equivalent of MHY, mid- high youth—I got two things: a brand new burgundy-colored corduroy sport coat and a chance to be a delegate to the Ohio Synod Luther League Convention on the campus of Wittenberg College. It was heady stuff for me. When I got to the campus, I got a red ribbon with my registration packet that had these words written vertically in gold: Use It or Lose it. I didn’t have a clue what it meant. The message in it, I learned during the convention, was that faith was a gift; and if I didn’t exercise it, I would lose it.

That’s most certainly true. I’ve heard that if you don’t use your memory as you get older, you begin to lose it. It is certainly true of my major form of exercising, bicycling. If I go on vacation, when I get back and start training and riding again, I can tell immediately that I’ve lost muscle tone: I literally feel it. I’ve heard more times than I can remember that diet and exercise keep my heart younger and stronger,
increasing its ability to oxygenate my brain and organs.

“Use it or Lose It” may be the message Jesus sends in the parable of the Wicked Tenants. It’s the story of a vineyard leased to tenants who fail to keep their end of the bargain, beating up the owner’s agents who are to collect fair proceeds of the harvest. And, in their greed, killing the owner’s son, hoping to inherit the vineyard. They get whacked and the vineyard is given to those who will handle it more
productively.

This parable has been horribly misused. Hitler’s Nazi theologians used it to justify the Holocaust. For them, God owns the vineyard; the vineyard is Israel, the Jews. The Jews kill the son, Jesus, and so their just deserts are being broken to pieces. So it’s okay to kill Jews, putting them to a miserable death. Some have interpreted it to show that God has taken the kingdom from the Jews and handed it to the
Church, not withstanding the Apostle Paul’s claim that God gave to the Jews the glory, the covenants, the law, and the promises. This meant, in medieval Europe, that on Good Friday Jews could be rounded up and beaten up and even killed.

This raw story is aimed at the leaders of Israel, the chief priests and the Pharisees. It was a warning that if they did not exercise faith in love and compassion, faith would wane and they would be separated from God. Use it or lose it.

Faith. We use it or we lose it. There are four fundamental fallacies of faith. Those leaders of Israel fell into the trap. Leaders of the Church
fall into the trap. You and I fall into that same trap. The four fundamental fallacies?

I got it. Jesus challenges the priests and Pharisees. They knew they had the covenant; they had the Law and the Temple at Jerusalem. All gifts from God. But they hid behind these things and accused Jesus of blasphemy when he shared God’s love to heal, sit at the table with
sinners, and forgive. It is the arrogance of having a corner on God’s love. Someone once said that religion is what we do for Jesus. He didn’t intend to found a religion, but we need a religion. And it is important. But if it becomes a barrier, a way of keeping some outside of God’s love, it is a problem.

It is a trap for you and for me. God’s grace generates faith in us. But if we hold on to it too tightly, we strangle it. We keep it to ourselves.

God’s on my side. It was Abraham Lincoln who said in his second inaugural address: Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. The Priests and the Pharisees believed God was on their side, that he lived at the temple in Jerusalem and listened to them. So they were shocked and angered that Jesus would tell a story that put them not only in a poor light, but in opposition to God, acting like those tenants.

Another way of thinking of it is not to put God on our side but putting ourselves on God’s side. What kind of behavior andthinking come out of a gracious and loving God?

The trap for us is to believe, like nations, that God is on our side. That only leads to polarization andlienation. Perhaps God is not around to
justify what we do but question what we do.

Gettin A Round Tuit. We are all busy. We all have more to do than we have time to do it. So did the Priests and the Pharisees. They were so busy being righteous that they forgot to get round tuit. They not only lived under the Law, but so did the prophets. Isaiah ends his prophecy with God calling all of the nations together, Jews and Gentiles. Other prophets had a sense of God loving and calling all people. It’s just that the Priest and Pharisees didn’t get round tuit.

It is a trap for us. We believe God’s Word needs to get out to everyone, family and friends. We just don’t get round tuit. We understand that our church can only be strong and stand with God when we commit our time and treasure to it. We just don’t get round tuit. We understand that if we fail to exercise our faith through prayer, time with God, and service, it won’t weather the hard times in our lives. We just don’t get round tuit.

Me. Myself. And I. We believe this faith thing can be done by ourselves. That our relationship with God is fundamentally a thing between Him and me. I believe that is why we talk about a personal relationship with Christ. And we all need to look Jesus in the eye and call him Lord. But this faith thing has a communal character to it. The single best reason for the Church and religion is that it allows us to worship, it is steward of the Word of God, and it is a place that holds us accountable. The Priests and Pharisees had turned the vineyard from a communal gift from God to an individualistic greed.

The trap for us is rugged individualism. I was raised to trust only myself, watch after myself, and hold my feelings to myself alone. It is a lonely place to be. It is a place where we do it all ourselves and fail to enjoy the richness of doing it with others. Jesus shared himself with crowds and with those twelve. The bankruptcy in the trend, “I’m spiritual but not religious,” is that it cuts us off from the power of the Spirit in a community.

Use or Lose It.

Amen.