"Murder or Chocolate: You Decide!"

Sermon by The Rev. Seth Olson

October 8, 2023

Last week, my wife Kim told me that we had lost a library book our son Teddy had checked out. After looking through the stacks of board books, paperbacks, and hardcovered stories on our boy’s shelves, we determined that either A) the book is in an alternative universe, B) our dog Chloe secretly ate it, C) we have legitimately lost the copy, or D) we turned in the story, but somehow it never got checked in properly. Now, I kind of hope it’s A) and not just because I’m intrigued by the concept of a parallel multiverse, but I honestly lean towards answer D) that we turned the book in along with a couple dozen others, but it got lost.

In truth we have paid heavier library fines within the last calendar year than we will in purchasing this particular book, so it is not a huge deal to ante up a little cash to support our amazing city. However, there are times when I take for granted the things that have been loaned to me. Yes, I can go on the library website to see which books, videogames, audio books, boardgames, tablets, etc. I have checked out, but it’s easy for my mind to slip into a place where I start to believe some more important things belong to me when they were never mine in the first place, which sounds a little like what we just heard from Matthew.

It would be wild for me in the case of the library book we cannot find, Lego City: Work This Farm, to take the lead from today’s parable. It would be crazy for me to receive a notice from the Jefferson County Library Cooperative and to choose violence. It would be insane if when told by a library worker I needed to return what was not mine, if I then reacted by killing that employee, or setting ablaze the highly flammable tinder that is a stack of fantasy fiction.

The logic outlined by Jesus in this parable and exemplified by the tenant farmers seems to allow for me to walk into the Homewood Library and threaten the kind workers at the circulation desk with murder if they ever asked about an overdue item. Not just this, but I should take control of the branch as my own personal bookshop to be defended with aggression. All of this sounds so absurd exiting my mouth in a sermon—it’s in the Gospel, but it is not good news, is it? It sounds more like the content of a violent fantasy novel or a scene from The Godfather than good news. And yet, here it is in Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ story.

These words were proclaimed by Jesus to Temple leaders who were quizzing him about his authority. And, this encounter transpired during the last week of Jesus’ earthly ministry in the lead up to the Passover. Thus, this story occurred in an overwhelming intense setting. But, what was Jesus truly saying? The owner of a vineyard sent in his chosen workers, then his son to collect the property-owner’s part of what tenant farmers and the land had produced, but the leaseholders bloodied and murdered those servants and his son. Why? To send the message that they were not going to give back what they had been given! This is not compassionate, loving, or sane. Who would do such a thing?

We would! We do it every single day, and not just when we forget which books are the library’s. Sure, we don’t let others see this sort of behavior. We don’t treat our friends and neighbors like this because of social pressures, social ridicule, and social media, but make no mistake—this story of the wicked tenants is not only about the Temple leaders of long ago—it’s about us too.

We have been given so much! Time, talent, and treasure; gifts, abilities, and skills; the earth, this country, and the Church too. What do we do with all these things given to us? Often, we hide them away with the blinds shut. As one of my favorite priests, the Rev. Evan Garner, once preached on this text:

We horde the things that God has given us, pretend they were ours to begin with, and keep the fruits of our labors for ourselves. All of our skills, abilities, resources, and opportunities belong to God, yet we begin almost every encounter by asking what’s in it for us. All of the love, affection, loyalty, and trust that we enjoy come from God, yet we would rather hold on to them than give them away. Our greatest gift, the freedom to choose whom we will honor with our lives, is handed to us by God, and we choose to turn inward and seek self-satisfaction instead of devoting ourselves to our creator.

We start thinking all of this is ours—our church, our families, our lives. We put in some hard work—we really do. It is not easy in the vineyard. The sun beats down. The ground hardens. The sweat pours. The weeds have thorns. The body aches. So, the fruit that is born—we believe, it’s ours! We produced it. Even if those holy ones of every age cry out reminding us that no one is an island and none of us made ourselves.

We think we were left alone in this vineyard a long, long time ago. Even when prophets point towards the legitimate landowner, we get lured in by our own siren call to keep the wealth, to get what is ours, and to keep earnin’ baby! We believe it’s all ours—if not in our minds, then with our actions. Despite this, God decided to do something wild. God became incarnate to be with us. Even observing this very human tendency to see the world around us as belonging to us, God chose to send His Son into this mess.

Yes, as absurd as this parable is, what is even crazier is that God would see the selfish tendency, especially among religious folks, to horde power and to attribute God’s gifts as their own—God would view this and still become incarnate. Even knowing how absurd we are—God still was pleased to dwell with us.

In the Incarnation of God through Jesus of Nazareth we discover this hard-to-understand truth. God yearns to be with us—even in our selfishness, even in our self-centeredness. And in doing this God does not condone our lunacy, but nonetheless God makes holy the mundane. The secular becomes sacred. In Jesus’ incarnation we are reminded of the original incarnation—that is creation. In Creation, God made everything. In Incarnation, God redeemed everything. In the age of the Spirit (from Pentecost onward), God is in the process of sanctifying everything. And yet, we strive—sometimes intentionally to forget this—that God has given, has redeemed, and is sanctifying everything!

When Jesus came, he pointed to what had always been true. Everything is God’s. All of Creation belongs to God. The whole vineyard is God’s! All time and space too. Sure, we happen to be in stewardship season, but it is always true—everything belongs to God. Time, talent, and treasure… your life, your family, and your money. Some churches talk about tithing, that’s nice and all, but that ain’t it. God doesn’t want 10 percent of anything—God wants it all. This is scary, right?

One of my favorite bands, Spoon, released a song earlier this year entitled, “I Can’t Give Everything Away.” It’s right on the tip of our cultural tongue. We become creatures of comfort and convenience, and it’s hard to let go. In the glossy sheen of social media posts, we see the lifestyle of others beaming, we see the ads for the next thing to make life easier or better, and we strive to keep up with the Joneses. Underpinning this pursuit of besting one’s neighbors is the belief that right now, life is not enough. 

We buy into scarcity—that there won’t be enough, that we aren’t enough, and that something, someone, or some position will somehow make us enough. This ain’t it baby. St. Augustine wrote the following way back around the year 400, but it still rings true: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Now, you might be wondering, “Okay, Seth, this sounds nice and all. I want to be able to rest in God, but how?” Well, first recognize that the vineyard isn’t ours. The vineyard of our life, our family, our church, our world… we are caretakers of them all, stewards of the gifts given to us, but everything belongs to Our Creator. Next, see the world not through the lens of scarcity displayed in our overly consumeristic culture, but through the lens of God’s abundance. That preacher I love said it this way, “We have everything we need to make this world the way that God dreams it could be—the wealth, the opportunity, and the freedom—but we’ve been borrowing all of those things for so long that we’ve forgotten that they don’t belong to us.” They never did. What we have been given is not ours and it certainly will not be ours when we are called home, so we can start now in practicing the art of giving it all away right now!

What I am saying might make you feel uncomfortable or even mad, but if you have been viewing stewardship as a fundraising tactic that we use to keep the lights on, then I am sorry—we in the Church have not been clear enough, which brings me to my final point about how our hearts will rest in God. Stewardship is a spiritual practice meant to remind us of the ultimate truth—everything is God’s and you and I are not God. We begin in God we end in God, but this middle bit is up to us. Are we going to pretend that this is our vineyard or are we going to give back the produce that belongs to the one who created it all?

There’s an absurd cartoon (see the top of this post) that helps to make the point that we have a choice in how we respond to God coming into our lives. It’s funny if a bit of gut punch—maybe like this whole sermon. An alien has landed on earth and is talking with an earthling about Jesus. The alien says, “Oh, he comes back every two weeks or so. We gave him this big box of chocolates when he first arrived. Why? What’d you guys do?” To which the earthling replied, “Uhh…”.

It's all God’s. Are we going to respond to that truth with murder or are we going to respond with chocolate?