Are We Listening?

October 2, 2005 (Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 22)

by The Rev. Carol Sanford, Curate

• Isaiah 5:1-7
• Psalm 80 or 80:7-14
• Philippians 3:14-21
• Matthew 21:33-43

Are you getting tired of listening to the news lately? I am. With all the attention-grabbing events, like the hurricanes, the indictment of a big name in government, and even a few Hollywood scandals, I tend to tune into NPR a little more often. Most of the news seems bad, but it’s not always easy to know if we’re getting the whole story, or if what we hear matches the real situation.

Is FEMA filled with incompetence or is it bad press? Is DeLay guilty of dire misconduct, or of poor judgment? What about Brad and Jennifer and Angelina? Is this all that’s going on in the world?

At a communications seminar I attended, I learned that our ears are culturally attuned to the negative. When presented with equal amounts of good and bad information, most of us retain more of the bad than the good. So, we need to pay attention to the source of our information, but also to how we listen to it.

There has been some bad news lately. We gather, in this place, to hear some good news for a change. But wait: What news have we heard here so far today? Let’s see, we have devastated vineyards, trampled grapes, and a gospel, our very definition of good news, that concludes by saying that the kingdom of God will be taken away and given to someone else.

This is not sounding like great news to me! It would seem that the only way to turn this into even reasonable news is to have it be about someone else. You know, “them;” the ones over there; the ones we disagree with, the ones who’ve got it all wrong. They are going to lose the kingdom. We, on the other hand, are securely in.

This is one traditional approach to understanding the parable of the wicked tenants. I use it myself. I have a problem with this approach, though, because I have a problem understanding God as depriving anyone of God’s kingdom. Is there perhaps some other way to hear this message than to envision a cranky God who removes the blessing from those who get it wrong?

Grady and I knew a wonderful man from California who died a few years ago. Most people just called him ‘Dr. Paul.’ Dr. Paul was no saint in his early life, but by the time we met him, he had become much admired for his kindness and wisdom, and for his quirky way of telling great truth. One of the things that Dr Paul used to say was that when we get to the gates of heaven, we won’t be asked if we’ve been good or bad. Instead, God will say, “Did you have a good time?”

Dr. Paul spent many years helping others and had virtually lived his way into profound theological truth. I believe that what Dr. Paul and St. Paul and our parable today have tried to communicate to us is that God gives us everything we need for full and rich and wonderful lives in the kingdom. God wants our peace and joy and freedom.

Scripture tells us that God creates and nurtures us and our world like a most tender gardener. God prepares the kingdom for us and us for the kingdom. So why does the vineyard in Isaiah end up bearing wild, inedible fruit, and in the Psalm it is ravaged by beasts? Why is the vineyard in Matthew the scene of such horrible violence? Does this mean that the kingdom has somehow been withdrawn? Is this what is happening to us in the world today: here, in this city, this country, this vineyard?

As the votive lights at the back of the nave remind us, people in our midst are dying. There have been three new homicides in our city (that we know of) in the last twenty-four hours. People are dying from guns and drug violence, from so-called domestic abuse and even random killing. We pray every day for the war dead and those lost or left adrift from the hurricanes. Surely we can identify with the plea of the psalmist to God: “Restore us! Tend your vineyard.”

But wait: Is it God who isn’t doing the tending? Or is it “them,” the ones over there? Or could it be us?

Is the kingdom of God being taken away?

Author Roberta Bondi suggests that, “ [W]e must expect the very structures of reality to reflect God’s love.” In other words, the world works when it functions according to love. It is created that way. We are created that way. It is what the kingdom of God is all about.

If we don’t live in God’s justice, love and peace, the kingdom can’t be ours, because things simply aren’t set up that way. The good news is that our living into the kingdom does not depend on what is happening around us. We don’t have to be loved by others in order to love them, because we are first loved by God. We don’t have to be treated justly in order to practice justice, because justice flows out from God.

God does not leave us orphans in a devastated vineyard. The good news is all around us. Our job is to listen for it in our Scripture and our world and in ourselves and in each other, and to live out the good news, no matter how much bad news surrounds us; to live within the kingdom as if it were already fully present, which, for us, in Christ, it already is.

By the way, if you find all of this both confusing and comforting, then there is good reason why you are sitting in an Episcopal Church! We do not shy away from the awkwardness of paradox.

Back to the news: The vineyard around us is looking pretty grim.

But wait:

Listen to the life of this parish. It is filled with healthy cries of outrage and sorrow at injustice and disaster. The walls echo with words of compassion and care, heartfelt prayers, glorious music, and no small measure of laughter and fun. It sounds like the kingdom to me.

Next Sunday is commitment Sunday. Let us remember that our life together is based in the kingdom of God, a kingdom that has no lack and has no end. We can indeed lose our health or our property or the immediate presence of a loved one. What we cannot lose is the love of God; we can only lose our awareness of it.

Where do we spend our money and where do we spend our hearts?

According to what advertising, the news and our own fears would have us believe, we’d better shore up the walls of the vineyard and make sure that no one, not even the one who planted it in the first place, gets in to take away the fruit. But the kingdom of God doesn’t work that way. We only keep the fruit by sharing it.

I think our friend Dr. Paul was right. I think God’s primary concern is not whether we are good or bad. I think God wants us to know the joy of God’s kingdom. God has given us every good thing. God has given us an abundant earth and a strong cathedral parish and each other. God had given us God’s own self.

God has gone to extraordinary lengths to communicate to us the good news of God’s love. When we really, really hear it, we cannot help but respond.

Are we listening?