Grace Be our Guide

Proper 22A-26

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Jesus said, ‘Listen.’ (Matthew 21:33a).  An investor bought a three flat. Renovated everything right down the studs. Installed new plumbing, electric, and windows, an upscale kitchen and bathrooms. Then they leased it and moved to Florida. When the rent came due the tenants beat up the messengers. They killed the property manager and stoned her assistant. Finally, they even killed the landlord’s son. Jesus stops the story to let that sink in. He asks, what should happen next?

 It doesn’t take much imagination. We know what’s coming for those really bad no good, horrible tenants. The Temple leaders said, ‘the landlord will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the three-flat to other tenants who will pay the rent on time!’ (vs. 41). Problem solved. Right?

Jesus is mad. He’s angry at a very particular group of people: Those who govern, those who hold authority over others, those responsible for caring for God’s ‘vineyard.’ God expected it to yield grapes—fruit to feed the nations. But it yielded inedible wild grapes. He expected justice; but saw bloodshed; righteousness but heard a cry! (Isaiah 5:2 & 7). In answering Jesus’ question, the Temple leaders pronounced judgement on themselves. The point was clear. The faithful people of Israel and their leaders were just like those violent, wicked, greedy tenants.

This parable is not about a three flat, but we are convicted just the same. Is not the world and everything in it like a well-appointed garden which God entrusted to us? God spared no effort in making a beautiful world—fruitful, and abundant. Through 13.8 billion years God carefully cultivated communities within communities of communities. Perfectly balanced, thriving, and resilient ecosystems with every kind of plant, creature, and organism, in symbiotic relationships, a beautiful harmony of contrasts that gave birth to us, to everything else, and continues to sustain our life. God expects justice but sees bloodshed.  God expects righteousness but hears the cry of the hungry and homeless”

French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet were among the first Europeans to enter the Chicago region. They marveled at the fertility of the land and the abundance of wildlife. They said, ‘We have seen nothing like it before.’ ‘For a distance of 270 miles, we did not pass a quarter of an hour without seeing wild game.’  Yet, early maps labeled the open prairie stretching from Illinois to Colorado a ‘wasteland.’ It was useless because it could not be developed—until John Deere invented the first commercially successful self-scouring steel plow in 1837 in Grand Detour, Illinois (just Northeast of Dixon). Today, only about 1% – 4% of North America’s tallgrass prairie remains.

In his 1960 travelogue, “Travels with Charley: In Search of America,” author John Steinbeck described the scene upon his return to Seattle after many years. He writes, “I could not have told where I was. Everywhere frantic growth, a carcinomatous growth. Bulldozers rolled up the green forests and heaped the resulting trash for burning. The torn white lumber from concrete forms was piled beside gray walls. I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction?”

Emma Cieslik and Yanan Rahim Melo write in this month’s Sojourners Magazine,“Western civilization has always been a harmful Christian lie.” Beginning in the fourth century when Emperor Constantine made Christianity an instrument of Roman imperial cohesion to unite an empire under his authority. A ‘West is best’ mentality nurtured the profound arrogance and sense of superiority needed to treat all non-European people as inferior, exploitable, and expendable.  Western civilization built on blood and bones continues to unite authoritarians around the globe today, in places like Russia, Hungary, and the United States. International white, Christian nationalisms are on the rise. They proclaim a twisted version of the gospel that is anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-democratic, anti-Muslim, antisemitic, anti-scientific, exploitative of the natural world and unapologetic about the use of force to spread their vision of Western civilization. The vineyard has indeed yielded wild grapes. (Emma Cieslik and Yanan Rahim Melo, “Western Civilization has Always Been a Harmful Christian Lie,” Sojourners, 9/18/26)

We enjoy a life span that is twice that of our ancestors. We enjoy material wealth beyond that dreamed of even by kings of old. Yet despite the enormous growth of GNP (Gross Domestic Product), we have barely grown in GWP (General Wisdom Perceptiveness).

What’s a loving God supposed to do?  Evict us? Replace us? Kill us? No. God does not make the same choices that we would. Christ the cornerstone which the builders rejected stands ready to show us the way to a new heaven and a new earth. Crushed like grapes we are being transformed into new wine. (Matthew 21:44) New wine must be stored in new wineskins, an ecological civilization that does not overshoot the limits of what the planet can sustain and still provide the material foundation for universal human dignity and justice. Jesus opens this pathway through Word and Sacraments, prayer and meditation.

Neuroscientist Lisa Miller is a professor of clinical psychology and researcher studying the link between brain science and spirituality at Columbia University. In her recent book, The Awakened Brain, she identifies three spiritual capacities that she believes are hardwired into every human being and that we can cultivate throughout our lives: the first is the capacity to perceive that we are loved, the second is the capacity to receive guidance, and the third is the capacity to perceive that we are not alone.

Miller points to what she calls “a quest orientation.”  A quest orientation involves the connection between a lot of different locations in the brain. There’s a “lively dialogue between thought, perception, orientation, and reflection” she says. As we quest — whether in daily life, on a pilgrimage, or through a deep inward searching into the self — we learn to perceive doubt as a positive aspect of life; we become increasingly open to change; we become open to seeing things with fresh eyes and expanding our perspectives. (Amy Frykholm, “Luminous Mystery,” Journey with Jesus, 9/27/26)

We will not overcome the legacy of Western Civilization on our own. We cannot reach the new heaven Christ dreams of by making a to-do list. Everything must change, starting with our relationship to the earth and to one another. Miller encourages us to look at the parable of the landowner and the tenants of the vineyard as a commentary on our lack of willingness to receive guidance, visible and invisible. Seen this way, we observe the stubbornness in the tenants as a stubbornness in ourselves. “We are all living on an earth that we do not own; we are all wary of help that appears to come from outside; we all want to hoard what was never ours in the first place…What if the tenants had seen these messengers not as threats, but as forms of hidden help? …The bad news is that we have a tendency not to listen. The good news is that God keeps sending ever-more beloved messengers to our aid.” (Frykholm)

“Our capacity to receive guidance requires practice in humility, intention, and a willingness to receive. Guidance helps us to live creatively and resourcefully — we are open to the possibility that life might reveal itself to us. Life almost always has more meaning than we can perceive at any one moment — more mystery, more joy, more sorrow, more luminosity, and more glory.” (Frykholm)

Together we sing, “Let your swelling strains of love resound through earth and space, [O Lord]. Let fingers, feet, and hearts unite in anthems of your grace; Till light crescendos to the dawn when darkness flees away, and all our songs lead us to you and to the endless day!” (text by David Warner, 2026).