Let it begin with me

I wanted to start off this week on a serious note. But it didn’t work out that way! Because, first I want to talk with you about good news, and bad news. As in, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.” Ever hear that kind of joke? But did you know that they have some specifically for pastors?

Like: Pastor, the good news is Mrs. Jones is wild about your sermons. The bad news is she’s also wild about Keeping up with the Kardashians, Survivor Hoboken, and reruns of Three’s Company!
Or: Pastor, the good news is church attendance rose dramatically in the last three weeks. The bad news is you were on vacation.
Or: The good news is it’s your birthday, Pastor. The bad news is the youth group decided to surprise you with an unplanned visit at 3 in the morning. And the worse news is: they have flamingos!

Good news and bad news.

Sometimes the scriptures that we hear read aloud in worship are good news—so full of hope, so infused with grace, so saturated with the gospel that you can almost taste salvation in the air. Sometimes the scriptures that we hear read aloud in worship are full of God’s care and concern—indicative of a god who has nothing but steadfast love for his people. In fact, most times, the scriptures we hear at worship reveal a broken, yet salvageable relationship between God and humanity that God cherishes and covenants with us restore to whole and right. Most times.

Today, not so much.

Today we have the tales of two vineyards—one sung by Isaiah, the other told by Jesus to the crowds and religious authorities in the Jerusalem temple. These are not happy stories. They’re not the kind you would read to your kids at bedtime. There are no knights in shiny armor. Instead there is a vengeful God. There are no lives lived “happily ever after.” Instead there is death and destruction. One cannot imagine these stories eliciting anything but gloomy-doomy faces amongst the people gathered to listen to them. It’s the “bad news,” the bad news that, in these vineyards, there are consequences for misguided actions—dire consequences.

In the Old Testament story, the vineyard itself bears the brunt of God’s wrath. [The vineyard being an allegory for the people of Israel.] God spared nothing in providing for the well-being and continued good fortune of the vineyard (good news), but instead of fine, cultivated grapes, the vines produced musky, old, wild grapes. (Bad news.)

So, the hedge that keeps out the animals is torn down, the wall that protected it is leveled, the vines are no longer cared for, the plot is overrun by useless weeds and thorns, the wild grapes are devoured by wild animals or smashed underfoot, and even the clouds won’t rain on the vineyard anymore. (You know you’re down and out when it won’t even rain on you.) Basically this divine meltdown portends the devastation of Israel and Judah, their total and complete abandonment. (Even worse news)

In Jesus reworking of this prophetic passage, he describes a landowner who, although he is non-resident, has still provided everything necessary for the successful cultivation of grapes and the production of fine wine. Tenants are selected, an agreement is reached as to the harvest, and they are well set. (Good news.)
But the harvest comes, and the tenants choose to renege on their agreement with the landowner. They abuse or kill the collectors he sends—not once, but twice. (Bad news.) And then they audaciously carry out a plot to take the vineyard for themselves by murdering the landowner’s son. (Worse news.)

Now. We could get all allegorical on these two stories, and assign each and every character a real life counterpart—for example, the vineyard in Isaiah could be Israel, God is the vintner, and in Jesus’ story, the collectors were the prophets, and the landowner’s son is Jesus. We could even get creative and determine modern day allegories for them. The tenants are those who have not worshiped God rightly, the new tenants are those who are pure in worship and doctrine.

But this approach totally misses the point of these two vineyard stories. Isaiah sang this sad love song to Israel and Judah. Not to entertain them, but to hold a mirror up to them, that they might see just who he’s singing about. The story’s details are meant to draw them into a scenario in which they recognize that Isaiah is singing about them!.

With the gospel reading as well, the point is in not the details and portrayals. It’s in the listeners’ sudden realization that Jesus is accusing them! The chief priests and the elders of the temple figure out that Jesus has made them a character in his vineyard parable. Not a flattering characterization, either.

That’s a difficult realization to come to. The people of Israel ignored (or killed) the prophets for the most part, rather than accept the notion that everything weren’t just hunky-dory between God and them. And it took three stinging parables and a fig tree for Jesus to get the point across to the temple crew. Even then, they didn’t clean up their act, ironically they moved towards fulfilling the story. They want to arrest him. To kill him.

Now, if we believe that the bible is the living word of God that speaks to us still today (and we do), and that it is multivalent in interpretation (and it is), then what we could extract from these two tales is the same sense of revelation that struck the Israelites in Isaiah’s time, and the temple authorities in Jesus’. That being, to sum it up with a song lyric—It’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer! Me! Mea culpa. I have sinned—I am a sinner.

And it is so hard to admit our culpability. It’s so much easier and more pleasant to think that such passages are polemical and don’t include “us” as characters—except maybe as those bearing good grapes, or the new (and improved!) tenants. Like the disciples at the last Supper, we ask incredulously, “Is it I, Lord?” Secretly thinking, “I just know it’s someone else.”

One Sunday the pastor of St. John’s by the Delicatessen determined that he needed to preach on sin. His flock had been straying a bit, especially the old bachelor farmers. They’d been spending too much time at the local pub. Couple that with the usual gossip and backbiting that goes on in any group, and the pastor’d seen and heard enough. Today he would convict them all. (He could steer them back to the gospel and its sweet forgiveness next week.)
He ascended to his pulpit, drew himself up, and had at it—decrying everything from taking extra packets of sweet’n’low at the local diner, to tattling on your little brother, to taking the Lord’s name in vain. He even worked up a sweat, laying into them for their own good. And he thought that he had made an impact.
Until, at service’s end when he stood at the door and shook hands with the folks. Never had he had so many responses to one of his sermons. Usually he got a, “Great sermon,” from the head usher, and Mr. Greene invariably weighed in with a, “Nice job Reverend.” But today, just about every person shaking his hand did so with comment on the sermon. Unfortunately they were all the same. “You sure gave it to those sinners today, Pastor. They’ll never show their faces here!”

Donald Miller is the author of what has been called the best look at Christian spirituality from a non-Christian perspective, Blue Like Jazz. Miller speaks to this type of “hard look in the mirror” when he relates his experience protesting in NYC at an World Bank event President Bush was attending. After the president was whisked off without being seen, much less engaging with the protesters, Miller suddenly has a moment of intense clarity about the futility of the blame game and a basic tenet of the Christian faith.

"When we were done [protesting], I started wondering if we had accomplished anything. I started wondering whether we could actually change the world. I mean, of course we could -we could change our buying habits, elect socially conscious representatives and that sort of thing, but honestly don't believe we will be solving the greater human conflict with our efforts. The problem is not a certain type of legislation or even a certain politician; the problem is the same that it had always been.

I am the problem.

I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.

More than my question about the efficacy of social action were my questions about my own motives. Do I want social justice for the oppressed, or do I want to be known as a socially active person? I spend 95 percent of my time thinking about myself anyway. I don't have to watch the evening news to see that the world is bad, I only have to look at myself. I am not browbeating myself here; I am only saying that true change, true life-giving, God-honoring change would have to start with the individual. I was the very problem I had been protesting. I wanted to make a sign that read "I AM THE PROBLEM!""

You are the problem, that’s the bad news.

But here’s the good news. You are also the solution. Gathered together as one great holy people spanning the globe and time itself, we’ll hear the words “given for you,” and shed “for you.” God comes to us individually with love and forgiveness, enabling us to live again for others.

And here’s the really, really good news. Renewed and strengthened by the body and
blood of our Savior Jesus Christ, we are transformed. Our past ceases to be a sinful burden and instead becomes a trove of wisdom and experience—even as we come to realize that the things we once valued above all, are now not important, and can easily be sloughed off. And in this transformation, which by the way comes from the Holy Spirit, in this transformation, we are empowered. In the same way it hits me that “I am the problem,” I know now—I know—that I can make a difference. I can change the world!

You might think this is a pipedream, a fantasy, an exercise in naïveté. But let’s take global warming for instance. We all know we should reduce our individual carbon footprints as much as we can. But I think that deep down we consider it futile—that it is really the factories and power plants belching acrid smoke into the upper atmosphere who are to blame. That unless these behemoths green up, the cause is dead.
And yet, according to the Wall Street Journal, 64% of green house emissions are caused by individuals. So mea culpa—I’m going to switch lightbulbs, tune up the furnace and do whatever I can—because it has been revealed to me that I am the problem.

Where else am I the problem? (Don’t answer that!) It may be in Darfur. It may be in feeding the world. And it might even be something so close to home as this fellowship. Where are you a problem? Where am I a problem?

That, I trust will be shown to me, And if today’s readings are any indication (and they are!), it will be shown to me in surprising ways—like in a story in a major newspaper, like out of the mouths of children, like in the bible (even those books that are so hard to find—Nahum), like in the supermarket checkout line, like via e-mail! Like in a song. You know the one I’m thinking of—Let It Begin with Me.

Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me. Let there be whatever—religious tolerance, an end to racism, a sanctuary full of people on a Sunday morning, mission and ministry for others in the name of God, let there be people of many Christian denominations gathered at the Lord’s table despite their different interpretations of that admittedly foundational event. Let there be all of these things. But let them begin with me being convicted and admitting my guilt, with me knowing that I am the problem, then with God transforming my sinful life into a weak-strong vessel, and with God inviting me into a relationship of co-creation. Let it begin with me. Together, we are the solution to the problem. Amen?
AMEN!