21A Pentecost                               Matthew 21:33-46                               Oct. 5, 2008
Have you noticed that the idea of accountability is not a popular word these days? 
I'm not sure it ever was. 
Accountability suggests that there is a standard that we need to meet. 
Accountability suggests that someone will judge us OK or Not OK.
Accountability makes us nervous, because we fear that we might be found to be not OK.

But life can turn treacherous when we become too casual about accountability. 
A few years ago, the Savings and Loan scandal cost American taxpayers $160 billion dollars.
Nobody could figure out whom to hold accountable. 
Was it bankers? 
Was it politicians? 
Was it economists? 
Nobody seemed to know. 
Mort Zuckerman, writing in U.S. News & World Report, commented:
In Washington, the notion seems to be that if a scandal is big enough, the people will not understand, and if it involves enough politicians in both parties, there is no scandal at all. 
In other words, EVERYBODY will be blamed, so NOBODY will be blamed.  This is intolerable~.  We must find out who stole our future.

And now we are in the middle of another crisis -- a mortgage crisis that has mortgaged our future. 
Who should we hold accountable? 
Nobody seems to know. 
I am assuming that our children or grandchildren will pay the price for somebody's malfeasance, but whose? 
It is my fear that there are so many culprits that nobody is likely to be held accountable. 
It's a shame!  It’s disappointing to say the least!
Accountability means that the guilty pay the price for their actions. 
Without accountability, the innocent pay. 

I bring this up because our gospel reading today is, in part, about accountability. 
Jesus had just incurred the wrath of the religious leaders by overturning the tables of the moneychangers in the temple. 
The priests questioned his authority, and Jesus responded with a series of parables. 
Our Gospel reading today is one of those parables. 

In the parable, a landowner planted a vineyard.
He then proceeded to spend freely to make it a really first-class vineyard. 
He enclosed the vineyard with a fence. 
He dug a wine press so that he would be ready for the first harvest -- a harvest that wouldn't appear for at least four years. 
He built a watchtower so guards could keep an eye out for thieves. 
Then he leased the vineyard to tenants and went away.

Later, the landowner sent servants to see how things were going, but the tenants beat up the servants -- even killed one of them. 

So the landowner sent his son, thinking that the tenants would surely honor his son. 
But the tenants, thinking that they could intimidate the landowner and take over the vineyard, killed the son.

It might be obvious, but this is a thinly veiled parable. 
It is a parable about God covenanting with Israel -- making a great nation of them – leading them into the Promised Land sending prophets to lead them (but they killed the prophets) – and then sending his Son Jesus. 
The priests hadn't killed Jesus yet, but Jesus knew that they soon would.
So Jesus asked the priests:
"Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?"
The priests answered:
"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."

So Jesus responded:
"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."

Hearing that, the priests wanted to arrest Jesus, but they were afraid, because Jesus was popular with the people.

So what does this parable have to do with us? 
Why would we read this first-century parable in our twenty-first century worship? 
Why should we care about a parable about things that happened so long ago?

But this isn't just a parable about things that happened long ago. 
For one thing, this parable explains something. 
It explains why God raised up the church -- the new people of God -- and gave the church the franchise that had for so many centuries belonged to Israel -- the old people of God. 
Jesus told the priests:
 "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."

But we should be careful, lest this parable lead us to despise the Jewish people and grow smug about our own spiritual inheritance. 
That was Israel's problem. 
They despised the rest of the world -- the Gentile world -- and grew smug about their spiritual inheritance. 
One of the lessons of this parable is that nobody owns God. 
We are all tenant farmers, so to speak. 
We are all reliant on God's generosity. 
None of us has cause for spiritual pride.

I said that this parable is, in part, about accountability. 
It is also about spiritual pride. 
Spiritual pride comes in lots of forms. 
Like cancer cells, spiritual pride has the ability to morph and move and pop up in unexpected places.

Churches create is a source of spiritual pride for lots of people. 
And for that reason it would be good to remind ourselves every so often that Jesus loves all people and came to save all people, but we are tempted to think that because we are Lutheran, we're better than the rest. 
It might be tempting to think that we Lutherans are better than say, the Methodists or Episcopalians, and we might even be lured into thinking that we're better than the Catholics or the Baptists. 
Or, we might find ourselves believing that we're better than Pentecostals as well as Muslims and Buddhists.
It is one thing to be proud of one’s congregation and perhaps even one’s denomination, but it is another thing to get sucked into a sort of denominational arrogance at the expense of others.

But Jesus didn't call us to look down our noses at people. 
He called us to love them and hopefully serve side by side with all our brothers and sisters.

One of the things that I have noticed is that spiritual pride has a tendency to pop out in other places as well -- usually in places where we're strong. 
We figure that we're better than people of other nations -- the ones who can't quite get it together. 
We're better than the homeless people who shuffle along our streets. 
We're better than the high school kids who congregate just off school property to smoke cigarettes. 

As Minnesotans we might think we’re smarter than folks who build their homes in places where hurricanes like to hit, or where earthquakes are prone to shake things up.
At the same times folks who live in warmer and more temperate climates might question our intelligence each winter when the mercury hits record lows and snow falls reach record highs.
It is so easy for us to get caught up in excessive pride.
But Jesus didn't call us to gloat. 
He called us to love.

And he called us TO BEAR FRUIT. 
That's one of the major emphases of Jesus' parable today. 

The New Testament was written originally in Greek. 
The Greek word for fruit is karpos. 
Karpos appears four times in this parable (v. 34 twice and vv. 41, 43). 
English-language Bibles sometimes translate karpos as "produce," but a better word is "fruit" -- because in Matthew's Gospel, karpos has to do with the fruits of our lives -- our spiritual fruits. 

The bible scholar, Fred Craddock, says that Jesus wants us to produce three kinds of spiritual fruits (Craddock, 467):
+The first is righteous lives.
+ The second is human caring.
+ The third is courageous witnessing.

Let me flesh that out a little bit.

+ First, Jesus wants us to live righteously -- to live Godly lives. 
Among other things, that means not getting caught up in sexual immorality or drunkenness or other kinds of immoral behavior. 
It means that showing respect for other people -- and all of creation. 

+ Second, Jesus wants us to care about other people -- to help people in need.
-- To love others as God has loved us -- to be generous with others as God has been generous to us. 

+ Third, Jesus wants us to witness courageously -- to invite people to church – as well as passing along our faith in Christ to our children and grandchildren. 
In other words, Jesus means for us to be public Christians.
And for Lutherans this can be a challenge at times as we often times prefer to keep our faith quiet and private.
Many of us would never want to be appear to be rude and force our beliefs on others, as a result the idea of knocking on doors like some others Christians, scares us to no end.
The truth is—our faith is always personal, but it is never to be private.
Our faith, whether it is a little or a lot, will always be close to our hearts, but the Holy Spirit never meant for us to hide our faith under a bushel.
And as difficult as it might be to hear-- restricting our faith in God to private space is and has been the great heresy of the twentieth century American theology across all denominational lines.
By keeping our faith private, keeping it quiet, hiding it under the proverbial bushel is in many ways a rejection of the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus himself.
If that is not bad enough, when our faith goes private it has a way of degenerating into a narrow religion that becomes excessively preoccupied with the individual morality of others and oblivious to the biblical demands for public justice. And that my friends--is not a good thing.
Your faith is by all means personal—but we are not called to be private—to be a follower of Jesus Christ is to be public.
It means we might have to roll up our sleeves and lend a hand.
It might mean that we have to get up and get involved.
The Christian faith is not a spectator sport—and we have not been called to be armchair quarterbacks.
So, whatever shape your public involvement might take—I can assure you that it will assist in the growing of the kingdom of God.
And that is a good thing.

Witnessing courageously also means helping our children to grow up as people of faith and that is one of those things that all churches have had mixed results.
A Methodist theologian and professor made this observation. 
She said:
“We teach our children the things of God one hour a week; seldom do we require homework or accountability for what is learned.
If we taught mathematics or reading in the same way that we teach religion, parents would rise in a furor, demanding change.
But seldom do parents protest that education in Christianity is not rigorous enough; knowing little themselves, they require little of their children.
We parents need to take responsibility for the faith education of our children.
We need to pray with them at the dinner table. 
We need to pray with them at bedtime. 
We need to get books of children's bible stories and read those stories to them. 
We need to insure that they are in Sunday school and youth group. 
We need to be as concerned for their faith education as we are about their secular education.”  

If you ask me, Methodist aren’t the only ones who struggle with this, we could all take it up a notch or two, we could all be held to a great accountability when it comes to passing on the faith to our children and the nurturing of their spiritual fruits.

So what is Jesus looking for when it comes to bearing spiritual fruits?
+ Righteous lives.
 +  Human caring.
 + And courageous witnessing.

That's what God wanted the Israelites to do too -- but they often failed to bear spiritual fruit. 
And so Jesus told the priests and Pharisees:
"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."

That was his judgment on those people. 
Today’s Gospel reading invites and challenges you and me to live in such a way that it doesn't become his judgment on us as well.
Amen

Pastor Stephen P. Blenkush
Zion Lutheran Church
Milaca, MN

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