Crazy with Love

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
October 5, 2014

22 Proper A

As a teenager, I came to the Episcopal Church and stayed because my local Episcopal Church both proclaimed and lived the love of God.  Not only did the very small parish include all sorts and conditions of people, all of whom were loved, but the church also used one half of their very small budget to reach out into the community.  The building itself was truly one of the ugliest church buildings I have ever seen.  The building had been a pool hall in a former life and not a lot had changed.  But in that pool hall turned church, the love of God was proclaimed, week in an week out, then the people went out into the world to live as people who knew they were loved.

In the Episcopal Church we understand that we do God's work in the world out of gratitude for God's love rather than out of fear of God's wrath.  Our principle act of worship is the Eucharist, which is the Greek word for Thanksgiving.  We do not fear for our eternal life, which is a gift we receive in baptism and nothing we can earn, but work to make this world look a bit more like heaven.  And we do that work, not because we fear that God will smite us if we are lazy but because we are called to seek and serve Christ in all people in grateful response to the love of God shown to us in Jesus.

The proof of God's love for us comes not out of our imaginations, or out of any psychology that wants us to feel good about ourselves, or out of our desire to avoid talk about judgement.  The proof of God's love for us comes straight from Scripture.  This morning, Jesus tells us a parable that is essentially a love song, which reminds us of a passage from the prophet Isaiah. When Jesus said "There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it and built a watchtower," we are reminded of similar words from the prophet Isaiah "Let me sing for my beloved a love song concerning his vineyard.  My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.  He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and planted it with choice vines, and he hewed out a wine vat in it."

At first, Jesus' parable does not appear to be telling us anything Isaiah has not already said.  But in the passage from Isaiah, God's lovesong turns very ugly, very quickly.  God's vineyard fails to yield anything but wild grapes, and so God is going to destroy the vineyard and make it a waste.  God expected justice from God's people, but saw bloodshed, and God expected righteousness, but heard a cry.  Isaiah warns the people that they have strayed far from being the people God called them to be, and the consequences will be disastrous.

When those gathered around Jesus heard him say "There was a landowner who planted a vineyard" they thought they knew what was coming.  Disaster.  After all, Jesus was talking to the chief priests and elders of the people, with whom he was not exactly seeing eye to eye, but who did know their Bible.  Instead, what they get is a story about a landowner who is so in love with the tenants that the landowner is down right irrational.  Listen to what the landowner does.  When the harvest comes, the landowner sends slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants beat, stone, and kill the slaves.  A rational person would call the police.  But the landowner sends more slaves, thinking that the second set will be treated better.  The landowner must be crazy with love to think that makes any kind of sense at all.  And, indeed, the tenants treat the second group of slaves just as badly as they did the first group.  No big surprise there.  At this point, the landowner needs to hire an attorney.  But in an action that completely defies common sense, the landowner sends his son, thinking the tenants will respect the son.  Seriously? And what happens? The tenants say "This is the heir.  Come let us kill him and get his inheritance."  Now, no one is thinking straight.  The landowner, willing to go to any lengths to win over the tenants, sends his son. The tenants think that the prize for murder is the inheritance.

At the end of the parable, after the tenants have killed the Son,  Jesus asks "Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to the tenants?"  The chief priests and elders display the first bit of logic in the passage and their knowledge Scripture when they answer "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at harvest time."  However,  Jesus says to them "Have you never read in the scriptures: "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes?"  When the landowner comes, it will not be to destroy, but to create.  Where the tenants have created death and destruction, the landowner will build something new.

Does God love us so much, then, that we can do whatever we like?  Clearly not, as we hear in the reading of the 10 commandments from the book of Exodus this morning.  God gives the people the 10 commandments so they, and we, will know the kind of behavior that is expected of them, and us.  But the 10 commandments are much more than a list of laws.  Listen to what God says first: "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery."  God begins by telling the people, and us, who God is.  God is the One who brought the people out of bondage in Egypt.  God's identity for the people cannot be separated from what God did for the people.   Then God goes on to tell the people who they are by telling them how they are to live.  Their identity as people of God cannot be separated from their actions either.  The 10 commandments are about identity more than rules.  This way of life sets God's people apart from other people and reminds the people continually that they are the people of the God who led them out of bondage.  They live out the commandments because they are God's people, not to appease God or get God to do something for them.

When Jesus says "the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom" Jesus is saying that our lives are to bear the fruits of the kingdom-not because we are afraid of God, but because we are grateful for all that God has done for us.  We are not to live like the tenants in the vineyard who thought that, somehow, the fruit of the vineyard was theirs to do with as they liked.  The fruit of the vineyard belongs to God, and that fruit, the prophet Isaiah tells us, is justice and righteousness.  When Jesus was crucified, when the Son of the vineyard owner was killed, God's answer was not to kill and destroy God's people.  God's answer was resurrection and new life.  God calls us to lives our lives in response to that love, producing the fruit of the kingdom, not out of fear, but out of gratitude.  By our lives of gratitude, we will know that we belong to God, who loves us with crazy, irrational love.

                                                                    Amen.