Who's in Charge Here?

In tomorrow's Gospel reading, Jesus tells a parable about a landowner who builds and leases a vineyard to tenants, who then refuse to give the owner his just payment. They beat and stone the servants who come to collect the debt and finally kill the landowner's son. In writing on this passage for Day One, The Rev. Dr. B. Wiley Stephens notes that

G. K. Chesterson wrote, "A man walking, comes to the edge of the cliff, and keeps walking, he will not break the law of gravity, he will prove it." All that the tenants did to try to take charge did not change the simple fact of who was in charge. The ownership of the land did not change. The legal right the landlord had to a portion of the crop did not change. What was broken was the relationship between those who were tenants and the landlord.

The first part of this parable speaks of trust. God has not gone to a far country but he does not micro manage our days. He blesses us with oppor- tunities and then places his trust in us to be good stewards. Just as the owner of the vineyard had taken all the steps necessary for success, so God has blessed us. The question is what kind of stewards will we be?

The risk with all segments of our lives is that we will become possessive. We think of the church, for example, as our church and fail to see that it is the very body of Christ. We can be guilty of seeking to speak to the various challenges of the world not as Christ would lead us but in ways that are convenient or self-serving for ourselves. Thus our measure is no longer the Gospel but popular opinion. Or when we need to reach out to the needs of others, we place self first. We begin to see stewardship as a burden instead of a joyful response to all that God has done.

It is not in just the area of the church that we become possessive. In our relationships with our families, we can easily place self before the others. We can begin to take for granted the love that others have for us. Love is never a matter of meeting halfway; it is always a matter of going the extra mile. And when love is truly the motivator, the extra mile is never a burden. There is always a need to be worthy of trust if a relationship is going to be strong.

In our professional life we cease to seek ways to benefit our clients or customers or patients or students or parishioners and view the bottom line of profit as more important than service. Judge Elbert Tuttle in a commencement address in 1957 at Emory University said, "It turns out that there is no right price for service, for what is a share of a person worth? If he does not contain the quality of integrity he is worthless. If he does, he is priceless. The value is either nothing or it is infinite. So we do not try to set prices on yourselves. Do not debase yourselves by equating your souls to what they will bring in the market. Never confuse the performance which is great, with compensation, be it money, power, or fame, which is trivial."

The full text of his reflection is online here: Who's in charge here?.