ISAIAH 43:16-21
PSALM 126
PHILIPPIANS 3:8-14
LUKE 20:9-19
Sermon – March 25, 2007
Jesus uses a lot of agricultural images in his
preaching, including today’s parable of the vineyard and its tenants. He was preaching in terms his audience knew
well, for in ancient times the majority
of the population was either engaged in agriculture or lived in very close and
obvious proximity to those who did.
Even when I was in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1973 I found it hard to
sleep past the arrival of the farm animals bringing produce to the open air
markets at first light, in July.
So when Jesus spoke of vineyards, his hearers
knew what he was talking about, because they had worked in them, seen them, or
eaten or drunk from their produce. Not
even the youngest children in the First Century thought that grapes come
originally from Stop& Shop. And
Jesus’ hearers also were familiar with being tenants working for absolute
landlords, a common phenomenon in a society with many poor and working-class
people, a tiny middle class, and a few wealthy landowners.
Today, however, we may live in the Garden
State, but people could live a lifetime here and never go to a farm except for
on a field trip from school, many people think the term “Garden State” refers
to flower beds, not to blueberries, tomatoes and corn, and a lot of
non-residents think calling New Jersey “the Garden State” is a real joke. So, let me have the chutzpah to “translate” Jesus’ imagery to our 21st
Century American context.
[I hold up a large, framed photo of the Earth
from space.] This is the vineyard, and
here
[flash a mirror around the congregation, including myself] are some of its
tenants.
For “In the beginning, God created the heavens
and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) and God says, “The whole world is mine and all
that is in it” (Psalm 50:126). That
makes us – yes tenants.
Billions of dollars are spent in advertising to
persuade us to “buy” things so that we can “own” them. Well, last time I looked, a bank owned my
house, and maybe yours, too. Even things
we have which couldn’t be forcibly sold if we went bankrupt aren’t really
“ours” outright, if God indeed owns all
that is in the world, including, of course, our bodies, which are not ours to
live in forever, but only for a time.
“Forever” is owned by God, and only God has the key to “forever.”
So, no matter how hard we work and, yes, no
matter how much money we may make, we are tenants of “this fragile earth, our
island home.” Bill Gates is a
tenant. Warren Buffet is a tenant. So is everyone else.
As tenants, we are answerable to the owner of the Earth: God.
The tenants in Jesus’ parable thought they
could “diss” the owner indefinitely.
They beat up, insulted or wounded his slaves (the prophets of the Old
Testament). Finally, when the owner of
the vineyard sent “his beloved son” the response of the tenants was, “’This is
the heir; let us kill him so that the inheritance may be ours.’ So they threw him out of the vineyard and
killed him.” This obviously refers to
what happened to Jesus.
The tenants wanted to become the heirs of the
Owner by killing the Son. They wanted,
like Adam and Eve, to become “like God.”
But that is not possible, and the tenants in the story are destroyed by
the owner, who gives the vineyard – which is the owner’s – to others.
In the usual interpretation of this parable,
the “tenants” are held to be the official religious authorities of the Jewish
people – not, please note, all the Jewish people, of course – for
it was the majority of the Sanhedrin which would conspire to arrest Jesus and
turn him over to Pontius Pilate and petition the Roman Empire’s representative
to execute Christ, which he did. And
the “new tenants” of the vineyard would be those who believed in Jesus, “the
beloved Son of God”, as the Jewish Messiah and as the Light of the World.
But let’s think about a larger context – back
to the whole planet as God’s vineyard, and the whole of humanity – Homo sapiens as God’s tenants. God made human beings stewards of God’s
world, at the pinnacle of Creation, and as such gave us certain powers and great responsibility (see the
Creation stories in Genesis).
It is this framework of thinking theologically
that I brought to watching Al Gore’s movie about global warming called “An
Inconvenient Truth.” Gore stands as a
secular counterpart of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, telling people
things they really need to hear but don’t want to hear, and doing it for long
enough to see his dire prophecies start to come true. Even more than Jeremiah, Gore in the movie spends more time than
is necessary telling us how hard it is to tell people things they don’t want to
hear. But let’s concentrate on his
message.
Basically, the human race is treating our
planet as a chemistry experiment to which no one knows the outcome. Everyone, however,
will have to deal with the consequences of it.
Among serious scientists, there is no
controversy over whether or not global warming is happening, and there is a
broad consensus that human activity, through the release of massive amounts of
CO2 into the atmosphere,
is contributing dramatically to it. The
numbers are simply too dramatic. The CO2
in the atmosphere is now at a higher level than it has been in at least
650,000 years – the time recorded by ice cores in Antarctica. And all
of the record-breaking numbers have come in the last 40 years.
The 10 hottest years globally in the last 140
years were all within the last 14
years.
Rhode Island-size chunks of ice are breaking
off from the Antarctic ice sheets and heading for the open ocean to melt. Glaciers are shrinking all over the
world. And this is not just a problem
for tourist vendors or for skiers. I
quote from the movie: “40
% of the people in the world get their drinking water from rivers and springs
which come more than half from the melt water coming off the glaciers of the
Himalayas.” We’re talking about China,
India and their neighbors.
When I spent a year in England in 1969-70, air
conditioning units were scarcer than cold beer. In 2003, Europe had a historic mid-summer heat wave in which over
35,000 people died.
Global warming disrupts climate mightily,
bringing more rain – usually in dramatic storms – some places and drought in
others. Tropical diseases (like
malaria) expand their ranges. We
currently are experiencing a species extinction rate 1,000 times greater than
the natural rate of attrition, perhaps the greatest since the end of the
Cretaceous era, when the dinosaurs became extinct. We don’t need the help
of a giant meteorite, we’re doing it ourselves, thank you.
And with warmer climate comes warmer oceans
which produce more and stronger storms.
The all-time record for typhoons hitting Japan – 10 – was set in
2004. The all-time record for tornadoes
in the U.S. – 1,717 – was set in 2004.
And hurricanes: can anyone forget the 2005 hurricane season? It looks as if New Orleans will never
recover.
Suppose the next major hurricane makes landfall
on top of Miami? Or Houston? Or further north…say, New York?
When somebody pulls a fire alarm, the
intelligent thing is to evacuate the building and call the Fire Department, not
to try to psychoanalyze the person who pulled the alarm or to debate whether or
not the smoke in the room really exists.
But this (hold up photo of earth) is a building
we cannot evacuate. Even the people at
NASA who are wasting our tax dollars on planning a manned mission to Mars are
intending it to be a round trip. And
who is the “Fire Department” in this analogy?
We are.
Some people only think about the next year’s
profits, or saving this year’s jobs making Hummers, or next year’s election
campaign. The Christian faith calls us to think bigger and longer term. The environment is a moral and theological issue with very, very practical
consequences. As usual, I welcome a
dialogue with other views besides mine, and we can have a forum if there’s
interest.
If some person’s theology – or lack thereof –
causes that person to think of our planet as a Kleenex tissue to be used and
discarded, that has consequences for all
of us. If we have a theology that causes us to think of our planet as a
sacred trust we have been put in charge of, on probation, by God, that should have consequences for our
behavior, too.
So let me offer some possible things we can each do to show our love for God and for our neighbors – all across the
globe and of every species – by being
good stewards of our environment, especially to slow and ultimately stop global
warming and environmental degradation.
Yes, we. The behavior of a
country or a civilization is composed of millions of small actions by
individuals, households and communities within that country and
civilization. Each of us can do
something, something as simple as, say, buy some of these long-lasting light
bulbs (pick up), which use less energy.
We can look carefully at the
energy efficiency of the appliances
we buy. We can look at the fuel
efficiency of the cars we buy. Two weeks ago, I bought a Toyota Prius, a
hybrid car, which is a wonderful car and gets incredible gas mileage – which
means not only am I helping the earth but I’m putting less money in the pockets
of the Saudis. I was happy to get my
“green car” in green, in fact. It’s in
the back lot in my latest official parking space, the one Greg Shuss hasn’t
sold yet.
There are now a number of
hybrids on the market, and also conventional vehicles which get good
mileage. Another change Elda and I have
made recently is filling out the form from Public Service Electric & Gas to
buy all our electricity at our home from Green Mountain Energy Company, which
is 100% renewable energy (hold up bill).
It costs exactly 1.3 cents more per kilowatt hour than conventional
energy - $7.92 for us last month. We
think it’s worth it.
And, of course, all of us as Americans live in a free country where
we can freely write letters to the Editor and
petition our municipal, county, state and national governments. Try doing that in China and you may get met
by a tank; remember Tiananmen Square?
And some countries are worse.
Zimbabweans would be better off being governed by Tony Soprano than by
their current government. America is
the land of the free; it’s the home of the brave, too.
Want more ideas? Check out www.climatecrisis.net. Let us be good stewards of this vineyard,
this earth, this sacred trust God has given us. Let us make it an act of
worship of our Creator every time we put out our recycling, every time we
adjust our thermostats and insulate and weather-strip to conserve.
Energy conservation is an act of
love for God and for our neighbors. It
is definitely something we can warm up to.
For we are God’s tenants on “this fragile earth, our island home.” Thank God, Jesus Christ died for our sins
and offers us new life. Let us now make
our entire lives thank- you letters to God.
(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard
St. Barnabas Episcopal Church
Monmouth Junction, NJ