Does you life play out as you envision it?  One of the things that Susan and I have discovered is that no matter how calm and organized a day seems in prospect, before it is hardly started it falls apart.  What sort of context can hold our lives together and let the important things be important?

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Does your life play out as you envision it? One of the things that Susan and I have discovered is that no matter how calm and organized a day seems in prospect before it is hardly started it falls apart. Stuff happens. We seem to be going as hard as we can and yet the things that we had planned to do seem to get postponed, set aside, forgotten, or just plain ignored. What sort of context can hold our lives together and let the important things be important?

Context is important. If we are to understand the Gospel lesson for today, we need to understand the context, the setting, in which it occurred. The setting is after Palm Sunday. Jesus had disrupted the commercial activity in the Temple compound. He had driven out those who were selling animals and birds that were used in the sacrifices. He had overturned the tables of those who changed Roman coins for the shekels acceptable as Temple offerings. Now Jesus was teaching in the Temple, telling the people about the Good News. The Chief Priests, the scribes, and the Elders came and asked him “By what authority are you doing these things?” In their eyes he was an itinerant rabbi, and he was on their turf. Who gave him permission to teach in the Temple? Turf is important isn’t it? It’s a question of ownership. This is ours.

Jesus told them a little story. There was a landowner who let out his land to tenants, apparently on a share-crop basis. The understanding was that he would receive a percentage of whatever they harvested. When time came to settle accounts, he sent a servant to get his share.   They beat the man up and sent him away empty-handed. He sent another servant and then yet a third with the same result. Finally, the landowner decided to send his own son thinking that they would respect him and comply with the agreement. They killed the son on the assumption that with him out of the way they would receive the inheritance—not only the produce of the land, but the vineyard itself.

Their reasoning appears to be a little fuzzy. Conceivably if there were no other heirs they could claim the vineyard and land by right of possession, but even that would be a little questionable. “What,” the Lord asked, “would the landowner do about the situation?” The answer is obvious. He would hold the tenants responsible for the death of his son.

The Chief Priests, scribes, and Elders received the message loud and clear. They understood that the story was directed at them. They were the tenants who were opposing the son and planning his death, and it was their positions that would be lost.

When the turf question arose, Jesus was teaching in the Temple. He was telling them the Good News. Luke doesn’t elaborate on the content of the Good News, but I think that we can make a fairly firm assumption that he was telling them that the Kingdom was at hand. It was literally at hand not only in the presence of Jesus, but the events which were rapidly approaching would not only spell out the nature of that kingdom, but would bring the kingdom into existence in a very tangible way.

This was the Week that Changed the World, as Dr. Paul Maier described it. Luke picked up a nuance in the parable that neither Matthew nor Mark reported. Luke tells us that the landowner decided to send his “beloved” son. The Father has referred to Jesus as His beloved Son at his baptism and again on the Mount of Transfiguration. It is Jesus the Son himself who is referred to in the parable who will be put to death by the tenants. And, yes, the religious leadership was prepared to seize him there in the Temple compound, but he was surrounded by his followers.

It wasn’t just the world that was changed by the events of that week. Those events established a context against which our lives are lived out. We are the people for whom the Son was slain and it is through his death and subsequent resurrection that we are the redeemed people of God. Linked by baptism to both death and resurrection, a new possibility of life is created for us. As Yogi Berra reportedly said, “You can see a lot by observing.” You can see people who have been stuck in things that they have discovered don’t work break free to try a new approach, because they have been freed by the Gospel.

A young couple came into my office one day and announced that they were getting a divorce. We talked about it for a while and they had me convinced that they were in fact going to get a divorce. As they were preparing to leave, I said “You have to remember that the divorce is not final until the decree is signed. I mentally set it aside as one more failure in a long line of failures until a number of months later. The young couple showed up in my office again. “We remembered what you told us,” they said. And we decided that getting a divorce was a dumb thing to do. We sat down and unraveled the snarls that we had created in our relationship. It wasn’t easy. It took a lot of forgiveness on both sides. The Gospel provides a context in which we can deal with the real problems of life.

As a pastor, I’ve discovered that the events of Holy Week, of having a Lord who suffered and died on our behalf gives us the courage and perseverance to walk through difficult times and work our way to the other side. It also gives us the courage to handle that last great hurdle that we face in life—the process of dying. To see dying as something that we simply have to get through so that we can get on with life is something that we can only understand through the death and resurrection of our Lord.

Holy Week is ultimately about us. God did it so that we can walk out the door of the church at the end of the service and face the realities of our lives. Like the story of a plane approaching the carrier for a night landing. Two previous attempts were waved off. This was the last chance before the fuel was gone and a 65.3 million dollar aircraft would be dumped into the sea. The rain was beating hard on the windshield of the canopy so that visibility was cut to zilch. The seas were running heavy and the stern of the carrier was dancing a wild rock and roll. Approach speed was about 120 knots. Get too slow and the plane has the glide characteristics of a brick. A slam on to the deck and the tail-hook catches the number three wire. Throttle goes to full power until it is obvious that the plane won’t bolt. A carrier landing is always a controlled crash.   A sigh of relief from the pilot and a muttered “Thanks, God, I can take it from here. That’s fairly descriptive of life. After the scary parts are over we can sigh and say “Thanks, God, but I would appreciate it if you would stay with me in the calmer parts too.”

The answer to the Chief priests question was, “It’s God’s turf.” And living in the context of the Gospel as the redeemed children of God, we can live life day by day.