A sermon delivered on March 9, 2004, in Christ Chapel by Judith Lund, Class of 2004, from the Diocese of Arkansas

Isaiah 5:1-7            Mark 12:1-12

As a dedicated traveler,

          I've had the good fortune to see a great deal of God's world,

                   yet there is always more that beckons.

On my current wish list are New Zealand, Vancouver & Victoria,

          Oaxaca, more of Spain, and a cathedral tour of England.

Yet I had never had a yen to visit the Land of the Bible. 

But I recognized back in 1997 that, as a seminarian,

such a journey would be a natural.

So in December of that year I joined a group of Holy Land pilgrims –

students, faculty, and friends – from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN,

led by a professor of history there, Carl Volz.

That year Dr. Volz was making his 22^nd trip to Israel and Palestine.

and he led us from Dan to Beersheba,

traversing a small land only 350 miles in length

 and 70 miles in width.

Through the picture windows in our comfortable tour bus

we noted how the green mountains and hills of Upper Galilee in the north

drop down to the brown desert in the south.

In the west, azure waters of the Mediterranean,

          all the way from Spain and North Africa,

                   lap the shore at ancient Caesarea.

The Jordan River on the east flows south

into the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth,

1300 feet below sea level.

At 2400 feet above sea level, the jewel of Jerusalem

in the center of the country stands only miles distant

from lands still seeded by hand

and roamed by nomadic shepherds.

The peace of such pastoral scenes is contradicted

by tanks and other weaponry lying where they fell or were abandoned

during the 1967 war. 

Spray painted to retard rusting,

they rest at odd angles in the desert sand

as monuments to past violence.

On the other hand, cherished by three major world religions,

this land is chock full of holy sites,

most of them marked by a shrine of some sort.

The busiest church I've ever seen is there –

the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem,

          where traffic flow is well controlled

                   to expedite movement of the crowds

                             who come to see where Jesus was crucified.

The most peaceful church I've ever seen is there –

the small, intimate Chapel of the Beatitudes

on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee,

          with lovely frescoes on the upper half of the walls

                   of its circular sanctuary.

The most beautiful church I've ever seen is there in Jerusalem, Gallicantu. 

Knowing some Spanish, you may hear the relationship

to the word "gallo," meaning rooster. 

With that clue you can surmise  –

that Gallicantu, meaning "the rooster crowed,"

memorializes Peter's denial of Christ.

Dr. Volz used a rating system of 1-to-5 for each place we visited,

5 being almost-certainly-the-place-mentioned in the Bible and

1 being almost-for-sure- ------- NOT.

Many places received a 1, fewer a 3, almost none a 5.

In fact, if memory serves,

the only place earning a 5 on the Volz Value Scale was the temple staircase. 

Pensively I tarried on those stone steps in the late afternoon sun of winter,

transfixed to be standing in Jesus' footprints.

This memory helps me visualize

the sprawling, bustling plaza of today's gospel setting.

The famous scene of Jesus cleansing the temple court in Jerusalem

has been related in Chapter 11 of Mark.

After that exhausting episode,

Jesus and his disciples returned to Bethany,

a village a couple of miles away, for the night.

The next morning Chapter 12 has them back in Jerusalem. 

By this time the religious authorities – chief priests, scribes, and elders –

have had 24 hours to think about his daring and defiant disruption

of the buying and selling of wares for temple sacrifices.

"By what authority are you doing these things?" they demand. 

Just who do you think you are?

Jesus' typically rabbinic tack of answering a question with a question

frustrates them further.

Going on without allowing them to catch their breath,

Jesus tells them the Parable of the Wicked Tenants

or the Murderous Vine Dressers.

This fourth and last of the parables in Mark

differs in style from others Jesus told. 

The usual parable has one main point,

and details flesh out the scene.

This one is more of an allegory,

where each feature has a discernible and essential meaning.

So is it a parable, an allegory,

a parabolic allegory, or an allegoric parable?

If the form is unclear, the meaning is not,

not to us and not to the priests, the scribes, and the elders.

Clearly the vineyard stands for Israel.

In Israelite poetry, the vineyard is a standard metaphor for "lover."

The passage we heard from Isaiah 5 is a folk song or love song,

familiar to the clerical contingent:

My beloved had a vineyard on a very fruitful hill,

and he fenced it

and gathered out the stones thereof

and planted it with the choicest vine,

and built a tower in the midst of it,

and made a wine press therein.

The parable's fence may represent Jewish Law;

          the tower suggests the city of Jerusalem and the temple.

In the vineyard of Israel,

the rent-collectors are the prophets of the ages.

The owner of the vineyard is God, whose son is Jesus himself.

Most threatening, the authorities understand

that Jesus means them when he speaks

of the violent, wicked, murderous tenants,

who have already tortured or killed

each agent sent to collect the rent.

As if the unusually patient owner

wouldn't have a prior claim on the vineyard,

the tenants, Jesus says, make a final irrational plan

to murder the owner's son and claim the property for themselves –

at the very moment that the hearers of Jesus' story

are planning to murder him.

The painful illustration concludes with words from Psalm 118,

also well known to the clerics:

"the stone the builders rejected

has become the chief cornerstone." 

As Jesus spoke in the midst of the temple construction site,

 massive stones were being hauled in through the gates. 

Some were rejected.

Those approved by the temple builders

were hoisted up to great heights

in the pinnacles and parapets

by men who doubtless sang stone chanteys as they worked.

Behind the story is the backdrop of life in Palestine. 

Estates in Galilee often belonged to foreigners. 

Tenants were expected to return 25-50% of the produce to the owners,

AND to cover their own expenses.

The possibility of sharecropper revolts against absentee landlords was real.

Violence against the collection agents would not be surprising. 

Violence leads to more violence.

"What then will the owner of the vineyard do?"

Jesus asks at the end of the parable. 

Without pause, he provides the answer: 

"He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others."

Though I certainly don't sympathize with the wicked and murderous tenants,

I'm not so sure I like Jesus' answer to his own question.

Because as many offenses as I may commit,

I count on the infinite patience of God,

on the God of unlimited second chances,

on an inexhaustible storehouse of divine mercy.

Short on patience for others, I bank on God's grace for myself.

          Individuals do; communities do; nations do.

As do nations in the Middle East.

The comfortable tour buses with picture windows don't go

where Israelis bulldoze Palestinian homes and lands

belonging to families whose ancestors

have lived there for hundreds of years.

If razing one home or neighborhood doesn't drive them away,

maybe a 100 or a 1,000 will do so.

Is God infinitely patient?

Palestinians send suicide bombers to terrify Israelis. 

If one doesn't do it, how about a dozen? or a score?  or more? 

To keep up the supply of volunteers,

how about paying handsome rewards to poor families

who agree to let their young sons and daughters

sacrifice themselves in this gruesome way?

How many second chances does God grant?

The vineyard of Israel seeks protection

by building a wall between it and the Palestinians,

snaking it through the landscape

to incorporate Jewish areas

and cut off its neighbors from work, farms, and relatives. 

If 10 miles of wall aren't enough,

maybe the next 10 will be, or the next. 

Do God's mercies never end?

    Palestinians keep up their attacks. 

They don't have tanks, but they have stones. 

If there is an inexhaustible storehouse of weaponry

in Israel and Palestine, it is stones. 

Stones are everywhere. 

The intifadah resistance has relied on stoning.

A picture window in our comfortable tour bus

cracked suddenly one afternoon

from a stone hurled at it by a young boy

while we waited at a stoplight.

Can we bank on God's grace?

And so violence breeds violence. 

Each side believes the other will cave in

if unrelenting pressure is brought to bear.

 In the last six decades and more,

prophet after prophet from around the world

has tried to arbitrate the differences,

to come up with ideas to resolve the bitter conflict.

Within the land, too, have been prophets of peace,

like the assassinated prime minister Itzhak Rabin,

like Dr. Naim Ateek who spoke from this pulpit a few weeks ago. 

But there is no easy answer to enmity stretching back for centuries,

traced to rivalry between Isaac and Ishmael in Genesis.

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets,

and stones those who are sent to it! 

How often have I desired to gather your children together

as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,

and you were not willing!"

So laments the maternal Jesus in Matthew and in Luke.

"Next year in Jerusalem!"

chant Jews around the world,

hoping for a peaceful reunion

in a peaceful homeland in a peaceful future.

Is God infinitely patient?

How many chances does God grant? 

Can we bank on God's grace?

America has its own slain prophets, its martyrs,

like Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr.,

John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy,

to name only a few. 

Sadly there have been many others. 

America, too, has implacable enemies

who think one or a dozen attacks,

or a score, or more,

will eventually cause its downfall.

Violence begets violence,

and the U.S. war on terrorism could be endless.

In this fallen world, all nations feel the need of defense

          against enemies within and without.

                   Peace at any price is no answer,

                             not for individuals, nor communities, nor nations.

Nonetheless, I wonder,

Is God infinitely patient? 

How many chances does God grant? 

Can we bank on God's grace?

Do God's mercies never come to an end? 

Don't YOU wonder?

Because our Christian testimony speaks over and over of peace.

"Blessed are the peacemakers," says the Prince of Peace.

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you." 

"Peace be with you."

"The Kingdom of God is righteousness and peace. 

Let us then pursue what makes for peace."

"It is to peace that God has called you."

"Be at peace among yourselves." 

"Pursue peace with everyone."

"Grace to you and peace."

Let us do our best to be peacemakers, to be at peace.

          Imagine the green hills of Galilee. 

Envision the Chapel of the Beatitudes. 

Picture the blue Mediterranean. 

Visualize the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu.

Here at the altar, especially now, during Lent,

          pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

"And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,

will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."