Quite some time ago, as
president of your own company, you hired some beloved and trusted friends to
work for you. They needed the work; the job was within their abilities; the pay
was good; and, the job description was clear. However, once hired, they thought
they had a free ride with no accountability. When the job was nearing
completion, you sent your assistant to check the progress. He was treated
rudely by your employed friends, so you sent your executive vice-president
daughter to find out what was going on. She was insulted, abused, and given no
progress report. You were getting the impression that the job was either behind
schedule or of poor quality. How would you react to all of this? At the very
least, you would consider firing these employees and hiring replacements.
Also, imagine your
feelings! Not only did it seem that the job progress and quality were
being covered up, but your beloved and trusted employee-friends were offensive
to your assistant and afterwards abusive to your daughter. You wonder what went
wrong. At the outset, the whole arrangement seemed so right for everyone
involved. And, then you face the hurtfulness of a breach, the unexpected
resistance to accountability, and a search for new employees who will continue
the job.
At first, it might seem an
overreaction to claim that today's reading from the Gospel and my somewhat
analogous story incorporate the worst sin in the Bible. Yankees that we are, if
we were asked to identify the most serious sin in the Old and New Testaments,
we would probably look for something "fleshly" perhaps with help from the Book
of Leviticus or from St. Paul's lists. However, nothing fleshly from these
sources qualify as "the worst."
May I be so bold as to tell you
confidentially what the worst sin in the Bible is? It is BETRAYAL. At
the core of every transgression is betrayal. In the Genesis folklore we learn
of Adam and Eve's betrayal of the Creator, the God who invited them to be
guests in the Garden; but Adam and Eve violated their stewardship and were
expelled. Delilah betrayed Samson. Judas betrayed Jesus. Isn't it the case that
traitors are usually despised, because they have done the worst that can be
done to anyone, regardless of the form their betrayal takes? An affair
uncovered; a personal confidentiality needlessly broken; a nation's secrets
compromised; a company's production plans sold to a competitor; greedy owners
victimizing their investors; the trusted tenants in the vineyard - all forms of
betrayal.
Moreover, it is the betrayal
itself that hurts more deeply than the sexual infidelity of the affair; it is
the betrayal that leaves us stunned, not just the information wrongly revealed
to an unentitled person or to a competing business or to another nation. It is
the betrayal that angers the investor, as well as the financial loss.
For generations, it has been
respectable in many intellectual circles to assume that God is unmoved by human
choices, that the Creator is beyond all our experiences. Nothing could be
further from the truth! Not some kind of an 'it," the majestic, powerful and
sovereign "Someone" named Yahweh, our God, is One who has purposes, who
creates, who inspires, and who resolved to be vulnerable to many of our
choices.
We are the ones who can hurt
God the most, because you and I are part of that historic people to whom God
has unveiled in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ those sacred purposes; we
are God's new and inspired creation. You and are the tenants in today's
vineyard. Regrettably, so much of the history of his people has been painful to
God. From Adam and Eve's betrayal to the present moment, God's tenants have
often been traitors to his purposes. A basic problem is that we forget whose
vineyard this world is; we overlook our tenant status. We put out of our
minds that we are accountable to the true Owner. We assume an entitlement to
use the vineyard for our own self-serving purposes alone. Christians, as well
as others, have abused the environment and exploited fellow human beings,
spiritually, economically, and politically. A dangerous world derailed from
God's purposes is resulting.
To imagine God's reaction to
human folly, we may recall our own feelings when we have been betrayed. For
example, parents might empathize with God by recollecting those moments when a
son or daughter has betrayed a trust. Perhaps he or she, ignoring promises
made, stayed out all night with your car. Might we have said, or at least felt,
"Look at what you've done; I let you take the car, and you let me down." Many
young people are then indignant and resentful that they are accountable to
their parents, that there are consequences to their betrayals, large and small.
[We have come to expect such outraged responses during adolescence.] But, what
then? Write it off as a 'phase" the son or daughter is going through? Pretend
it didn't happen? Act is ii there are no hurts? Of course not; they are
accountable, and there are consequences. In extreme cases, when "tough love" is
called for, young adults might have to be told to leave home; that they have no
inalienable right to remain is a harsh reality. This scenario is analogous to
the Creator's reactions to our broken trusts, God's reactions of aching grief.
As well, our continuing adolescent responses - the surprise at being held
accountable and that consequences follow our decisions - are sadly typical of
us at any age.
For 1990, this morning's Gospel
reading is about God as landowner and about you and me as accountable tenants
in God's creation. We occasionally choose unwisely and wrongfully to ignore
God's purposes as embodied in Christ; we thereby become less human and more
destructive. As the Church, we occasionally fail to bear witness faithfully to
Christ; by inaction and silly preoccupations, we betray the New Covenant
established in his holy Name. To be sure, we are repeatedly forgiven when we
truly confess. Nonetheless, God's tough love is such that others could be
chosen as more faithful disciples than ourselves (perhaps some loyal people of
Islam?). In Jesus' words, "I tell you the kingdom of God will be taken from
you, and given to a nation that yields the proper fruit."
The Gospel parable does not
list our specific responsibilities as 1990 tenants; that is for us to discern
individually and as the Church. Nevertheless, I am sure that you and I are
God's guests, the Creator's tenants, on this planet, that we are accountable,
that consequences follow our decisions, and that at some point, the Creator,
betrayed just once too often, could raise up a new, more faithful people as his
primary witnesses and beneficiaries. Often the Gospel comforts us: today its
words prophetically challenge us.