Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scriptures: Luke 20:9-18, Deuteronomy 8:17-20
Except for a couple of college years and a few widely-spaced vacation weeks, I have never been a renter. But I have been a landlord. During two separate periods of our lives, Kris and I have owned small homes that we have made available to others. One was in the wilderness of Lake County. The other, a tiny bungalow in Redford Township.
Our experiences were mixed. We made a little money. We suffered a little grief. We learned a bit about the housing business. We learned a lot about the people business. We dealt with some wonderful folk. And we dealt with a scoundrel or two. We ended up holding more than one limp check. And we listened to more than one lame excuse. We dealt with one man who carried a gun (don’t ask me why). We dealt with another who, unbeknownst to his wife, moved his girlfriend into our house. But we let go of both houses, not because we soured on renting, but because it was time to expand our capital elsewhere.
One of the things that made renting easier was that we had a limited personal investment in both houses. In fact, the Redford house was purchased solely as an investment. We never slept a night under its roof. If pressed, I doubt I could re-create its floor plan. The hardest thing I had to learn about owning a rental house was not to become emotionally involved with it. “Don’t think of it as any place you would ever live.” That’s the advice that was given me by experts. “Buy a solid house, keep it in good repair, and offer it at a fair price. But don’t improve it to your personal tastes. After all, it’s a business.”
So that’s how we treated it. At that emotional distance, renting was easy. When we got out of the Redford property to build our home up north, we continued in the practice of short-term rentals. We even put the Elk Rapids house in the hands of a management company for the entire first year. Each succeeding summer we made several prime weeks available to renters via ads in the newspaper. We have long since ceased that practice, limiting our rentals to friends and persons made known to us through church or family.
Did we have a bad experience? Only once. And that can happen to anybody. But it was enough to make us realize how much of our hearts were in that property. The money was nice. But it couldn’t cover the escalating costs of our peace of mind. 6642 East Harbor Drive was no longer just any house. It was our house. To this day, we love having people in it. We also love sharing it. But we would rather share it with people who know us and who see the house as an extension of the relationship they have with us. That doesn’t mean that nothing will ever happen to the house. People are human. Accidents are inevitable. Life goes on. Those of you who know us, know that Kris and I are not even remotely into possession-worship. But we just feel better having this particular possession in the hands of people who (as renters or guests) are happy to be momentarily sharing a piece of our lives.
All of this occurred to me following my one previous sermonic foray into this powerful story from the 20th chapter of Luke. I found it odd, on that occasion, that I preached an entire sermon on a tenant/landlord issue and never saw the connection with my own experience. That’s one reason for returning to this text. Another is the realization that this is one incredible parable.
I don’t need to labor overly long on the story. Neither do I need to dwell on the image of the Christ figure introduced at the end of the narrative. Every preacher does that. Instead of focusing on the killing of the owner’s son (which was surely the ultimate insult, prompting the great line about “the rejected stone eventually becoming the cornerstone”), I want to direct my focus to the relationship between the absentee owner and the tenants themselves.
It is clearly the owner’s vineyard. He planted it. He nurtured it. He built protective walls around it. He designed a wine press in the middle of it. There is just enough descriptive material to tell us that this vineyard is a promising operation. This is not a few rows of sour grapes in hard clay. Neither is it a slum apartment with a non-working toilet. The vineyard represents a place that was planned, productive and potentially prosperous. Then it was leased to tenants while the owner went away.
As I regularly point out in Bible study, the owner “goes away” in any number of biblical stories. The “absentee landlord” is a common theme. But “going away” is not meant to suggest indifference. The owner still cares. Rather, the purpose of “going away” is to give those who are left-in-charge, sufficient space in which to operate. The owner never crowds the tenants, the implication being that “going away” is more for their benefit than his. If you doubt that interpretation, consider the words of Jesus to his disciples on the eve of his dying, to wit: “It is for your benefit that I go away.”
Even from a distance, however, the owner remains emotionally invested. He is invested in the property. But even more, he is invested in the people to whom he has entrusted the property. He expects they will share that investment. This is more than just a business deal to him. This is a relationship….a relationship that means something. His mistake is in assuming they feel similarly. That’s why their thrice-repeated failure to honor his request for a portion of the harvest is such an insult. I doubt that he needs the wine or a portion of the income derived from its sale. But he can’t believe their callous indifference to his claim. Three times he makes an overture. Three times his overtures are refused. After they have thoroughly thrashed and maligned his envoys, he decides to send his son. Notice (however) the words that accompany the dispatching of his own flesh and blood. “Perhaps they will respect him,” the owner says. That’s what this is all about. Respect! Not rent! Rent is incidental. Respect is everything.
The son, of course, is killed. The tenants assume control. Authority changes hands. And it appears there is nothing the owner can do. All of which brings us to what Joe Harding calls life’s toughest question: “Who owns the vineyard?” To whom does it really belong? It is the question of sovereignty. It is hard to answer any other question until you answer that one.
Who owns the vineyard? Who owns all the stuff you take for granted in your life? Here is the Bible’s answer. “Beware, lest you say in your heart ‘my power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he that gives you the power to get wealth.” Look for yourself. You’ll find the reference in Deuteronomy 8:17.
Or try Psalm 50, where God says: “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills.”
Or consider I Corinthians 6:19: “(even) you are not your own. You are bought with a price.”
Who owns the vineyard? The Bible is ringingly clear on the answer. It is also clear that sin rests in the failure to answer the question correctly. Sin is not, at its elemental level, such things as skipping class, missing church, cheating on the spouse or hoisting a few too many Budweisers at the Memorial Day picnic. Sin is taking the vineyard for ourselves and living as if there is no other owner. Like most sin, this one doesn’t spring into flower all at once. It blooms slowly….imperceptibly….but with a quietly unfolding sense of arrogance. Let me illustrate.
Many of you know who Bill Russell is. He is now to be found in the suit-and-tie side of professional basketball. But his mark in that sport was made as a player. Twice an all-American at the University of San Francisco, Bill Russell anchored a team that won 55 straight games and back-to-back NCAA championships. He went on to play the pivot on Boston Celtics teams that won 11 championships in 13 years. Five times he was voted the league’s most valuable player. As a pivotman, nobody was more intimidating. As a human being, few have been more outspoken. There is a difficult edge to this man. But there is also an insightful softness. Both come out in his autobiography entitled Second Wind: Memoirs of an Opinionated Man. Permit me one extended story.
I often got in trouble over my mother’s banana pudding. She would whip up a big round bowl in the afternoon, leaving it to cool while she and Mr. Charlie (my father) went visiting. “Don’t you eat none of that banana pudding,” she would say. “It’s for supper.”
Alone, I’d walk back and forth by the table, looking at it, wondering how it tasted. I knew (of course) how it tasted in general. But I wanted to know how this particular batch had turned out. Finally, I’d say to myself: “Well, she made this pudding for me because she knows I love it so much. So I’ll just have one little serving.” Which would be gone in a flash, and I would taste it all the way down to my stomach. When the last mouthful was finished, I’d run outside to play, knowing that it was the only way to control myself.
But after a while I’d come back into the house and the pudding would still be there. So I’d eat another little bit. This helping, I decided, was my parents’ fault instead of mine….for leaving me alone. Pretty soon I’d have eaten about half the pudding. This would bring me to the critical moment when I’d think long and hard and finally say to myself: “Hey, I’m going to get a whipping anyway, so I might as well eat the rest.”
What I had eaten would then begin to feel as heavy as a cannonball in my stomach. I’d find myself growing sluggish, just when I needed to be sharp to plan my strategy. Usually my strategy was to lock myself in the house and not let my folks in when they came home. “Come on, son,” they’d yell. “We know you’re in there. Open up. You’ve been in that pudding again, ain’t you, boy?”
What a picture! The little kid who has eaten the banana pudding now locks his parents out of their own home. Who owns the house? That can be a hard question to answer when you’ve got banana pudding all over your face.
Let’s be honest. You can lock the owner out. You can commandeer the vineyard. You can put your thumbs under your breast pockets and proclaim yourself to be a self-made individual. You can probably have your pudding and eat it, too. But eventually you end up alone in the house….without God, mama or Mr. Charlie. And that can be a lonely way to live.
The very first commandment (of the ten big ones of Moses) declares: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” That prohibition was written in a day when every mountain, every bush and every tree was alive with deity. Were the same commandment to be framed today (said Henry Sloane Coffin), it would probably read: “Thou shalt have at least one God.”
My friends, I commend to you the God who owns the house. Why not swallow your pride, forget about protocol, take your sleeve, wipe the pudding off your face, unlock the door, and let that God in.
It’s less lonely that way.
And it kinda keeps things straight.
Like what’s what….and Who’s Who.
