Sermon Title: "We Are the World"
Date: October 5, 2008
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Matthew 21:33-46

While the sacrament of communion is already completed, on World Communion Sundays I usually try to have some focus in my sermon on a topic concerning the world.  The Psalm for this day, Psalm 19 begins:  “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.”  That reminded me that among my remaining sermon requests was this one:

Sermon request:  “How must God feel that we, his children, have abused this wonderful planet He/She has given us?”

I thought of going on to Al Gore’s website and filling you in on the dangers of global warming, but you may already have some knowledge about that.  I’ve read of polar bears in the Arctic Ocean swimming a hundred miles or more from ice floes that have broken off from the mainland because the ocean temperature is warming.

I thought of researching just where in the Pacific Ocean that huge vortex of swirling trash is located, but any time there is a rainstorm, we see the resultant piles of trash that have washed down the Los Angeles River right here on the beaches of Long Beach.  Even on a sunny day, you can walk along the downtown marina and see plenty of Styrofoam cups bobbing in the water.

Our older daughter Emily was born on April 22, which is Earth Day.  It seems to fit her, for she’s always been environmentally oriented, and has raised our awareness as well.  It was at summer camp in 1990, when she was 13, that she decided to become a vegetarian.  Imagine beginning our vacation trip the next week and telling each of the friends we were staying with that Emily was a vegetarian.  She prefers to wear recycled clothes, though she welcomes the purses her mother buys at today’s Third World Handarts sale.  She doesn’t wear any shoes made with leather.  I’m sure she would endorse our church abandoning Styrofoam coffee cups years ago in favor of washable ceramic mugs.  Besides, they keep coffee warmer, and I know Emily likes coffee—organic coffee, that is!

It’s also coincidental that a newspaper insert just this past week was on the theme “Think Environment Week.”  If, indeed, with the Psalmist, “the firmament proclaims [God’s] handiwork,” we need to be reminded of the responsibility we have as God’s stewards here on planet Earth to proclaim and care for that same handiwork.

I am going to take the preacher’s privilege of expanding the meaning behind today’s Gospel lesson from Matthew to question what we have done with God’s creation, in addition to what was done to God’s Son.

In the lesson, where we again find Jesus using the vineyard as a metaphor, his primary audience was scribes, chief priests, elders.  At the end, he adds the Pharisees as well.  These are the ones putting him to the test.  The tenants failed to tend the vineyard, and the chief priests and Pharisees got the point, for Jesus was talking both to and about them.  Prophet after prophet was ignored.  Then, when the owner sent his own son, he too was rejected and finally killed by the tenants.

Biblical scholars are generally agreed that we are not to make the mistake so many have made throughout church history.  The intent of this story is not to accuse or bash Judaism or its leaders.  Matthew had a larger purpose.  Holding up the mirror of disobedience and rebellion, the church then and now must ask this painful question about those who did not tend or treat well that which was entrusted to them:  “Lord, is it I?”

The tenants were given a plot of land to tend, not unlike the “garden” in Genesis.  The owner here had already done a lot of the grunt work. “There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower.” (31:33)  And so he left his vineyard in the hands of the tenants.  Not their hands, but our hands.  But like the Pharisees we have made two mistakes:  1) We thought the land belonged to us.  2) We forgot we were stewards of someone else’s property.  How dare the owner send servant after servant and finally the man’s own son.  After all, the tenants had worked very hard on this land.

Haven’t we all done the same thing?  Leaving the garden in our hands we’ve made this world into a jungle:  war; terror; ecological disaster; families in disarray; confusion; fear and pessimism everywhere; values twisted and the old words given new and strange definitions.

We lived in upstate New York when the whole Love Canal crisis had a horrific effect on the Buffalo area.  I remember driving through Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1979 just after the Three Mile Island nuclear plant meltdown, while Peggy was pregnant with Amy.  I wondered if we were exposing our unborn child to something in the air.  Just saying the word Chernobyl conjures up images of sickness and death from overexposure to radiation.

We protest, of course:  we are not they.  It isn’t our fault.  We blame it on someone else.  In Genesis the man blames the woman.  The woman blames the snake.  Did you ever wonder who the snake blamed?  We blame it on the tenants before us.  We blame it on the government or the failings of the religious institution.  Some of the darkest chapters in the life of the Christian church over the centuries are the times we accused the Jews of crucifying Jesus, using chapter and verse from this parable. 

When the church collected the stories for the Gospels they left this parable in.  Why?  It was a word to the church then and now.  It was a warning to all religious groups.  Be careful lest you forget you are only the tenants of that entrusted to you, whether it be your religious traditions or God’s green Earth.  Be careful lest you do not listen to the servants or the prophets God sends.  Be careful when the owner sends his Son that you do not ignore him or crucify him yet again.

A couple of weeks ago, in a pastoral prayer, I elicited chuckles from a few of you when I used the imagery of what God must see when looking down upon this planet.  Most of us have seen pictures taken from space, looking at this serene sphere floating against the backdrop of a limitless black universe.  But when God, the landowner, looks closer, what must God think of what we’ve done with this creation?  Fantastic things, yes, but also a great deal that disregards or destroys the nurture and care of this planet on which the entire population of Earth is dependent for food and water resources.

Jesus said we all have been given this plot of land.  It was in good shape when God gave it to us.  Now our task is the same as those who came before us.  It is to leave the garden better than we found it.  If this is true, it will take all of us to make this garden lush and green and productive.  Hopefully we reach out and join hands and hearts to our brothers and sisters and even strangers and enemies.  Isn’t this the kind of world we want to leave for those who follow us?  We are the world, after all.

(Inspiration received from Roger Lovette’s sermon

on this text, entitled, “We Are They”.)