My House is Your House

Title: My House is Your House by Pastor Lohn Johnson
Text:    Matthew 21: 37 Finally he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.'  38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.'  39 And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.  40 When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?"  41 They said to him, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons."  INTRODUCTION: My dear friends in Christ,  I’ll bet none of you have experienced a parsonage – that’s a house for a pastor and family owned by the church where he serves. It can be a blessing or a curse.  Felicia and I have experienced one.  In my first church in Saskatchewan we had one.  Not a bad house overall but there were some problems.  In the cold Saskatchewan winter we had ice all over the fireplace which couldn’t be used. This is just a hint of how cold it was.  We also had snow blowing in under the door ways, showing how drafty it was.  Members would come in at all hours, to visit or to repair something.  They would give no notice – after all it was their house.  We could not change anything – no painting, no improvements even if we paid for it.  They were the landlords and we were the tenants and we were not allowed to forget it.  It did lead to conflict but for the most part we concentrated on the blessing part of it all.  It’s pretty easy to see how this can lead to problems between a pastor and a congregation. It seems clear that the relationship between a landlord and a tenant is at best a tenuous one: the landlord is understandably concerned about the use or abuse of his property (after all, it is his house); the tenant understandably concerned about the maintenance being cared for and privacy of the place (after all, it is his home). So long as one party is owner and the other merely occupant, the best anyone can hope for is a distant, businesslike relationship. And the worst is conflict, maybe even violence.
I. And it’s striking how often our relationship with God is like that of a haughty tenant and landlord.
	A. And so the setting for St. Matthew’s teaching story of the Wicked Tenants is quite pertinent because: God is landlord of a vineyard and the people of God, tenant farmers. And it’s more like everyday life than we’d probably like to admit.
			1. We can get a handle on the source of this conflict in this modern parable: One afternoon a secretary who worked in a large office building took a well-deserved coffee break. She stopped by the vending machine and bought a bag of cookies, which she slipped into her purse. The she waited in line for a cup of coffee. After she got her coffee, she found a vacant chair at a table in the break room and sat down to enjoy these few brief minutes away from the office. She had brought the latest issue of her favorite magazine with her, and she opened it to the article she had started reading that morning over breakfast. After taking a sip of her coffee, she reached out and took a cookie from the bag. To her astonishment, a man sitting across the table from her also reached into the bag and took a cookie! She was a little bit upset by this, but she didn't say anything. After all, it was only one cookie. A few minutes later, she took another cookie. Once again, her table companion also took a cookie from the bag. Now she was getting a little bent out of shape, especially since there was only one more cookie left in the bag. Apparently the man also noticed that only one cookie was left. He reached into the bag, took it out, broke it in half, offered one half to his break companion, and ate the other half himself. Then he smiled, rose from the table, and walked away. By this time, steam was coming from the woman's ears! She was mad enough to chew nails! How dare this jerk ruin her coffee break by helping himself to half of HER cookies! She hastily folded the magazine and snatched up her purse, which fell open to reveal an unopened bag of cookies. All this time, she had been helping herself to someone else's cookies, and he didn't seem to mind at all! Actually it was the person with whom she shared the table who had every right to be offended. She had taken what had belonged to him without asking or even acknowledging the generosity of her host with a word of thanks.
			2 The same mistake - but with a decidedly different amount of anger and violence - was made by the tenants of the vineyard in the parable Jesus sets before us today.
				a. The tenants didn't own the vineyard they were working in, nor did they own the fruit it produced. As tenants, or sharecroppers, they had only leased the land. They didn't pay any purchase price, they only paid rent. And the rent they agreed to pay was a portion of the harvest. This is the obligation the tenants in this story b.  But like the weary woman on coffee break, the tenants of the vineyard took for their own something that rightfully belonged to someone else.
	B. So it may be with us. All our lives, we've been helping ourselves to God's bag of cookies. Whether we realize it or not, whatever cookies we have are cookies that come from God.
			1. Seldom if ever do we acknowledged the source of the gifts with which we have been blessed.  Often we simply claim them as our own and dare anyone to try to take it away.  2. But we are tenants; and we claim to ourselves the rights and privileges belonging to the owner.  We resent His ownership. We would just as soon have Him out of the way.
II. God knew from the beginning that it would come to this. Knew that given human nature, and the landlord-tenant relationship, conflict and death were inevitable.
		A. The penalty for tenant’s wicked conduct is clear to all: death. But instead of evicting us and killing us off, God does a new thing: God does not give “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”  But He responds to our sins with mercy – with undeserved love.
			1. You see, the old, wicked tenants were correct in a weird sort of way.  The Son, the Heir, had to be killed if His inheritance was to be gained. And this is why Jesus died willingly, so that all His inheritance would be given to miserable sinners like us.
				a. So the Heir, Jesus, was killed. He was taken outside of the vineyard, just like in the parable.  He was nailed to a cross.  On that cross He was punished for our sin of being wicked tenants – for our taking God’s cookies ungratefully.  b. No matter how wickedly you have acted toward God, He responds in mercy toward you.  The death of His Son guarantees this for you.  Now what He did is given out to all through Word and Sacrament. His inheritance--forgiveness, life, and salvation--is all yours—a gift from God to you because of Jesus.   c. Why would God give this wonderful gift to disobedient people like you and me?  Well, there is no one else to give it to.  There is no one on earth who is not a wretched tenant.  There is no one who obeys God.  But God desires above all things to give Christ to sinners like you and me.  This He has done, and this He will always do.  He sent His Son to those wretched tenants in the parable.  He sends His Son to wretched sinners like us.  He makes Jesus’ death our death, the old, jealous, murderous tenant is killed.
			2. And, when God raises His son to new life, he therein and thereby raises us up to new life and a new relationship also.
				a. Not only has our relationship with God been fundamentally altered, but also our very identities are altered: we are no longer sharecroppers, but heirs; no longer tenants, but children dwelling in the family home. Our adoptive father has said to us, my house is your house. b. There is a touching story about... ...how a teddy bear sat high on a shelf in a department store that majored in rapid turnover of stock. But there he sat. He was a pretty, brown teddy bear, but he had a problem. He had on a cute pair of bib overalls, but the button that held one strap over the shoulder was missing. The strap drooped by his side, and the bib hung over his chest. And as he sat there he got more and more dusty. No one seemed very interested in a teddy bear like that. Then it happened. A little girl walked into the store and spotted the dusty teddy bear with the drooping bib. The clerk suggested that perhaps she would rather have one that was perfect, but the little shopper was insistent. She wanted the dusty one on the top shelf. When the clerk finally got the teddy bear down and handed him to the little girl, she threw her arms around him and exclaimed, "I love you, but I think you will feel better if I dust you off and sew a button on you." That is Christ's word to all of us who find ourselves sitting on shelves, covered with dust, with a few buttons missing. But He does more than dust us off, sew the buttons back on and help us get on with our lives, He make us new.  More He makes us sons and daughters.
		B. But there are many of God’s children who still act like tenants and who still treat their Father like a landlord. From time to time, we do it ourselves.
			1. That is an unhappy, and distant relationship.
				a.  We twist things around to where our whole way of looking at Christ and his church is "what they can do for me." We're angry if this or that isn't done for us the way we want it done. Shouldn't we rather concentrate on the privilege that is ours to be a member of His church, to have an opportunity to serve in this place? b. Our lives have been set in a gracious vineyard, and that's a privilege. We ought to look at our community and our church in the frame of mind that says, "How can I properly respond to this great privilege given me?" Rather than ask how well we might be entertained, we ought to be concerned about how well we are serving the Christ of the church because we are privileged to be in his vineyard. c. And when He sends His Son through the preaching of His Word, the water, bread and wine—all too often we respond like those tenants and cast Him out of our hearts, for there is no room there—For we think just as the tenants thought…we want to own the vineyard…we want to own what God has given…we want God out of the way, so that we can act as our own “god” in life.
			2 For Christ’s sake and by the grace of our loving Father, it need not be so. We are continuously reminded we have a loving Father who treats us with mercy, who takes us from being tenants to being heirs.  And there’s room in this adoptive family for millions more..
CONCLUSION:  The landlord-tenant relationship is tenuous at best. But the father-child relationship is tender and precious. By the grace of our Father God and for the sake of Christ his Son, we are tenants no more, but children. No longer sharecroppers, but heirs.  And we are heirs who look to serving gratefully in his vineyard now and we look toward living in his remade vineyard for eternity The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.   Amen