I just want to take a moment and recognize the heaviness of this time. We’ve been in quarantine for 7 months, our president is in the hospital, our country is divided. Then we have the Gospel reading today, which happens during Holy Week. It’s an indictment of the stewards that God has entrusted the earth to, and we find ourselves lacking. This is a heavy scripture for a heavy time. In the midst of all that, we give thanks. We give thanks for the gift of the earth, the gift of our faith, the gift of our animals. Caring for them, may we learn to care for each other and all that God has made.
We adopted our rescue cat Diakon in June.
He is 5 years old, very soft, and pretty grouchy. He will allow petting only on his terms. We don’t know his history, except that we
rescued him from the Humane Society and they rescued him from someone who couldn’t
care for him anymore. He’s very
comfortable with us—sleeping about 30 hours a day. I am betting many of you also have rescued
pets.
Today’s Gospel reading is of a rescued vineyard. Whether it is animals or plants or resources
or money, God is the source of it all and we are the stewards for good or
ill. God is the source of it all. God created the heavens and the earth, the
plants, the animals, the insects, the light, the water, humans, and the
sabbath. Each part builds upon the last
and works together in a complicated web of flourishing life. To all these living creatures and plants, God
gives the first commandment, “Be fruitful and multiply.” God means for Creation to flourish and grow,
to feed off each other and be abundant. This
is a significant investment of millions of years, creating and balancing all
the moving parts of our planet plus all the effects of the sun and moon and
other planets and meteorites and on and on.
In the Gospel, Creation looks like this: The planting of the vineyard,
the building of the fence and the tower, providing the wine-press. This is a significant investment of time and
money and care. There is a lot of
planning of all that will be needed to grow grapes to make wine, to produce
fruit. But God is not a
micromanager. God takes a step back, and
especially because God has trusted stewards who are interested in being
co-creators with God.
My son is about to turn 9 years old.
He is very excited that in a year, he can be left home alone. We recently read the chapter in Farmer Boy
when their parents leave them home alone for a week. They have chores to do, and they have rules
to follow, but I’m pretty sure all they eat is ice cream and watermelon. When their parents get home, the children
carefully show them they didn’t quite eat all the sugar, because in the bottom
of the sugar barrel is about one cup.
I’m pretty sure Sterling is picturing the same kind of delight when he
gets to stay home alone. In his case it
would be video games, snacks, movies, loud music, and staying up late! You and I are not so different. We, stewards, like to be in charge and do
things our own way and have some fun. We
like to pretend we own everything that we have, that we created it and know
what’s best for it.
A lot of times we are responsible and careful but we will never have the
long-term view that God has to see the ripple effects of our actions. Whether it is on purpose or by accident we
mess up the responsibilities we have to God’s good creation. We are not God, only stewards. There comes a time when we can’t take care of
an animal we are responsible for, or maybe it escapes. We pollute.
We buy products that are cheap and don’t pay a living wage to the
workers who produce it. We clear the
land and reduce habitats for God’s creatures.
We poorly manage our forests so that when a wildfire erupts it causes
more damage. We burn fossil fuels at rates that alter the climate and cause
more fierce hurricanes, fires, and droughts and take more lives both human and
animal.
Today we bless the animals. We
bring our pets forward. These are
members of our family. Like our
pet-project, they are our favorites, the ones we’ve chosen to be close to
us. We treat them better than we would
most other people in the human race.
Many others of God’s creatures we discount. God has created them, called them good,
commanded them to be fruitful and multiply.
In our arrogance we have been unraveling what God has created as one species
after another becomes extinct. This is the opposite of blessing. For God, each of these is a pet, valued,
seen, loved, cherished. God remembers
the day each was created, the little twists and turns each one took on the
evolutionary path. God knows how each is
related to every other, how each relates to its habitat, the ability of each to
find a mate, the nights each one has been in hunger. God knows every feather, every scale, every
piece of plastic choked on, every breath of smoke breathed, every mile flown
looking for a suitable place to be fruitful and multiply. I shudder when I consider the amount of
suffering in this world. Where animals
cannot find what they need to thrive, humans can’t either. We all suffer because of poor stewardship,
poor management of the gifts God has given us to manage. We have been arrogant. We took over God’s vineyard and we made it
all about us and because of that we are losing our chance to be here and do
something wonderful to work toward God’s vision of abundance for all of God’s
Creation.
And yet there is still good news.
The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Although we reject Jesus’ Kingship and throw
rocks at him as we continue sinning and thinking it is all about us, although
our stones killed him, still there is new life.
There are other Stewards who will be handed the chance to manage what
God is letting us borrow. Maybe they,
too, will screw it up and start thinking it is all about them, but then the
baton will be passed again to a new slate of stewards until God’s vision comes
to fruition.
This reading feels very heavy,
in a time when we have experienced wildfire devastation and smoke in our part
of the world. When I see the mess we’ve
made, I only feel like crumpling in a ball and giving up. But when I really see the harm I have caused,
I feel my own longing to change, my own longing for a new heaven and a new
earth that God promises. When I catch a
glimpse of God’s plans, that’s when I know that Jesus is coming to be a
cornerstone of a new vision and that God will bring it to fruition in and
through broken sinners like you and me.
The mess we’ve made won’t have the last word—death and destruction will
not have the last word. Even when we
kill the son, that is not the end of the story.
There is a vision of flourishing
of life for God’s glory. It is one where
people take our proper place as good stewards and part of creation, not the
only ones that matter. It is the putting
aside what lies behind, as Paul wrote, and striving forward for what comes
ahead, first the cross, they dying to the old, the sacrificing of our old
selfish priorities and our old vision of us at the center, and then rising to
new life, to a new way of living that is loving what God loves, the poor and
neglected.
God paints that picture for us
this morning of not just an excursion to the wine-country, but of a vineyard in
which we all work and thrive, one where God has set it up to provide merriment
and joy. The rocks have been removed
from the soil and used to make the watchtower.
The winepress is ready for the harvest party. All grows healthy and plentiful. The fruit hangs heavy from the branches and
is sweet to eat.
Maybe you have this vision, too,
of the wolf resting with the lamb, the child playing over the nest of the
poisonous snake without being bitten, of the risk of close proximity no longer
limiting our interactions, no more fear of infecting our vulnerable neighbor or
family member.
Maybe you share the vision of
revelation where every mouth will be fed, every tear dried, no more crying or
mourning or pain, nothing separating us from the love of God.
I have been listening to God and
I see that vision every day. All the
fences between people, torn down, food being shared, empty lots being planted
with gardens, habitats being restored, litter cleaned up, responsibility for
children and elders shared, nutritious food available to all, access to
healing, to clean water, to education.
It’s laughable, I know, so far from where we are now, but when I pray
for God’s dream vineyard to come to pass this is what I see. If I can do one thing each day to work toward
this dream, God gives me the strength and hope to go on.
The animals God gives us as pets
give us a vision of what could be.
People living in harmony with creation, putting the needs of God’s
creatures before our own, influenced by our pet’s ability to live in the
moment, inspired by their selflessness.
They are proof that God’s Kingdom is coming, that we can have compassion
and self-sacrificing love that will take us to a new reality, that instead of
throwing stones, we will stack stones on one another, one day at a time, until
God builds the Kingdom of God through us.
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