Entitled to the Kingdom

What follows is the text from my sermon this past Sunday. 

Entitled to the Kingdom

October 5, 2014

Matthew 21:33-46

Please pray with me.  May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts together be pleasing to you, Oh God.  Amen

We are living in the age of entitlement.  Jo Greer's treasure box isn't quite what it used to be.

It still looks like it once belonged to a pirate — still has the wooden lid and metal hinges — and it still has a sticker or a piece of gum inside, depending on the day.

But what was once a coveted birthday honor in Greer's preschool classroom is now somewhat of a dud. These days, when the birthday boy or girl gets to open the box and claim the treasure inside, the response is increasingly indignant: "I don't want any of that," the 4-year-olds say. "Is that all you have?"

"The gratitude is vanishing," Greer says.

This change in behavior is a symptom of a greater phenomenon that psychologists, family experts, sociologists and scholars say is gripping the world. Now, more than ever, entitlement — the idea that "I should get everything I want when I want it, even if I haven't worked for it" — is rearing its ugly head.

But the problem isn't just in preschool classrooms; it's in homes, high schools, offices and even the highest levels of government. It impacts the way children treat their parents and siblings, interferes with education and can contribute to a lifetime of unhappiness, financial instability and disdain for work, experts say.

I think many in our society have developed a toxic sense of entitlement and an undeserving expectation for instant gratification.  We live in a world where we can watch TV on our computers, send emails from our phones and turn on our car’s heater with an app, we can’t handle waiting more than five minutes for our food at the burger joint or stand in line for any amount of time without complaining or getting visibly annoyed at the hardworking employees.

In our gospel today we hear of similar feelings of entitlement.  We find tenants hired to tend the vineyard, only to turn on their owner when his slaves came to collect the profits.

                Listen again to the beginning our gospel, Jesus is speaking, ³³ “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. ³⁴ When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. ³⁵ But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. ³⁶ Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. 

                Who is Jesus really talking about here?  If we look more carefully, we will come to understand that the landowner is God, the tenants are the religious leaders, and the servants are the prophets and the garden is the Promised Land.  With that understanding we begin to see a clearer picture of Jesus’ message to his listeners.  We begin to understand that Jesus is not only talking to his followers, he is talking about them.  And to the Pharisees and Scribes, he referred to them as the tenants.

                They were the entitled ones, pious and above criticism, feeling “better than the rest”, they believed their position of leadership and authority gave them special privilege and their thoughts and ideas were the only correct ones.  They did not like anyone who got in their way of, “having it all”. 

The vineyard is the Promised Land, the kingdom of God.  We remember from what we have heard in recent weeks that the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven are not the same.  We live here and now in the Kingdom of God.  Here, in the Kingdom of God, there is much work to be done.

When we go on to hear, again from our Gospel that the servants who came to collect the harvest, they were beaten and killed.  Much like many of the prophets who came before Jesus—were persecuted, beaten and killed.  The Pharisees, like the tenants, were afraid something was being taken away from them.  In the case of the tenants, it was the harvest to which they were not entitled.  In the case of the Pharisees it was religious authority and power, to which they were not entitled.

A friend told me that when he was younger he hated going to weddings.
It seemed that all his aunts and the grandmotherly types used to come up to him, poke him in the ribs and cackle, telling him, 'You’re next!” They stopped after he started doing the same thing to them at funerals.  That has nothing to do with my message, I just had a break in thought while I was preparing this message and ran across this anecdote and it tickled me.  Okay, so back on track.

In our gospel, we also hear about the servants who were sent to collect the harvest.  They are like the many prophets who were sent to proclaim the coming of one who would be greater, one who would come to set us all free, the one who would fulfill the covenant God had made with his people.  Most prophets were persecuted, beaten and even put to death out of fear that they who were prophesying would take power and authority away from the religious leaders.  These leaders felt their ‘entitlements’ slipping away.  When in fact these ‘entitlements’, had not been earned, but the leaders felt they were deserved.

                Listen now to another portion of our Gospel, Jesus speaking 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 get his inheritance.’ ³⁹ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 

And of course, here we know Jesus is talking about himself, as the one sent.  Like the son in the parable, he would stir up the religious leaders.  They would become frightened and afraid he was going to take their power from them and they would eventually put him to death.  

Continuing from our gospel…Jesus asks, ⁴⁰ Now when 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 lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”

Now the focus should not explicitly be on the failure of the Jewish leaders, but upon the responsibility of the newly anointed “others.”  If we are now the tenants of the vineyard, we have no less responsibility to bear fruit, and the judgment we are quick to level on others can just as easily be directed at us.

When we remember to ask ourselves, how would we do? We realize we may not be any better equipped to work in the vineyards, God’s Kingdom, than those whom we are criticizing.  Like those who feel overly entitled we feel we do not need to work in the Kingdom.  We have accepted Christ, we are good people, we attend church, and so, the Kingdom, the love of God and the blessings of the Son are ours.  However, God does ask us to work by sharing the message of Jesus with others and to work bringing them to a relationship with Him.  Not for personal reward, but to grow the Kingdom.

Then mid-way through the Gospel, Jesus goes on to explain how the tenant’s rejection is a rejection of God.  ⁴² Jesus said 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’?

 We know now the stone to which he referred was Himself. 

                And Jesus’ message to his followers then, and to us today is: ⁴³ Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom^] 44 The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”

                This is a challenge and a warning from Jesus to those who oppose him.  To the Jewish people, he is encouraging them to be productive and to accept the Gentiles as workers in the kingdom, as well.  To all of us, he is saying, “to reject him is to be excluded from the Kingdom.”

Cinderella’s castle at Disneyland was packed with kids and parents. Suddenly - all the children rushed to one side. It’s a good thing it was a castle and not a boat, or it would have tipped over. The pristine princess had entered the room. Cinderella. A gorgeous young girl with each hair in place, flawless skin and a beaming smile. She stood waist-deep in a garden of kids, each wanting to touch and be touched.

The other side of the castle was now vacant, except for a boy maybe seven or eight years old. His age was hard to determine because of the disfigurement of his body. Dwarfed in height, face deformed, he stood watching quietly and wistfully, holding the hand of an older brother. Do you know what he wanted? He wanted to be with the children. He longed to be in the middle of the kids reaching for Cinderella, calling her name. But can’t you feel his fear, fear of yet another rejection? Fear of being taunted again, mocked again? Don’t you wish Cinderella would go to him?

She did! She noticed the little boy and immediately began walking in his direction. Politely but firmly inching through the crowd of children, she finally broke free. She walked quickly across the floor, knelt at eye level with the stunned little boy and placed a kiss on his face.

Max Lucado tells this story in his book, The Gift For All People.  He concludes "The story reminds me of another royal figure. The names are different, but isn’t the story almost the same? Rather than a princess of Disney, these essays are about the Prince of Peace. Rather than a boy in a castle, our story is about you and me. In both cases a gift was given. In both cases love was shared. In both cases the lovely one performed a gesture beyond words."

But Jesus did more than Cinderella. Oh, so much more. Cinderella gave only a kiss. When she stood to leave, she took her beauty with her. The boy was still deformed. What if Cinderella had done what Jesus did? What if she’d assumed his state? What if she had somehow given him her beauty and taken on his disfigurement?

That’s what Jesus did. 'He took our suffering on him and felt our pain for us ... He was wounded for the wrong we did; he was crushed for the evil we did. The punishment, which made us well, was given to him, and we are healed because of his wounds' (Isaiah 53:4-5).

Make no mistake:

Jesus gave more than a kiss - he gave his beauty.

He paid more than a visit - he paid for our mistakes.

He took more than a minute - he took away our sin.

                Christ did it, he came into the world to fulfill the prophecy, to serve as the foundation under which we are to build our church and our faith, to suffer the most horrifying of deaths so we now may be justified with God.  The gifts he gave were not for us alone, they were not for the Jews or the Gentiles alone.  They were for the salvation of the Kingdom of God.  We are all called to serve in God’s Kingdom.

                The question is not one of how to enjoy the gifts of the cross, but rather, how we can spread this great gift to all who we encounter.  We should not take pride in our own faith but in our ability to bring others to faith through our service to the Kingdom.

Amen