Living With Weeds

Dr. William A. Ritter

First United Methodist Church

Birmingham, Michigan

Scripture: Matthew 13:24-30

One of the benefits of having a “brown thumb” is that nobody asks me to work in the garden. They don’t want to risk it. After all, there’s no telling what I might do if left unattended. My lack of knowledge makes me a liability where gardening is concerned. I don’t know weeds from annuals. I don’t know weeds from perennials. I don’t even know weeds from vegetables. When Kris says, “Why don’t you go out and do some weeding?”, I respond: “Of course. But you’ll have to stand right beside me.” More often than not, she says: “Never mind. I’ll do it myself.”

Not that I am totally ignorant. I can identify some weeds. And there are several varieties I positively hate. Crabgrass would top the list. I can’t stand the stuff. Dandelions, too….although I loved them as a kid. I remember picking them and taking them to my teacher. Once or twice, I even took them to a girl in my class. Now, when I see dandelions, all I can think about is what they are doing to my lawn. And then there are those weeds with sharp, thorn-like prickers. You can’t pull them. You have to dig them. I can’t find anything good to say about them.

But I recently gained a new appreciation for weeds. Kris and I were at the Community House for the annual antique show. We wandered from room to room, looking at all the furniture and jewelry. Suddenly we were in a basement room looking at art. I was thumbing through a bin of “horticultural engravings.” They were extremely old….and beautifully rendered. They were also incredibly expensive. I didn’t find one priced less than $500. And most were well above that. “What do you call these?” I asked my wife. “Botanicals,” she answered. “They’re weeds,” I said. “So what’s your point?” she countered.

But back to our story. A landowner sows good seed in his field. His enemy sows bad seed. Which can happen, I suppose. I heard tell of a fraternity prank that involved “bad seed.” On “Fraternity Row” at a southern university, there was a great rivalry between two of the houses. At one fraternity house, a new lawn was being prepared. Topsoil had been brought in. Seed had been laid down. But late one night, members of the rival fraternity threw kudzu seeds in the cultivated plot. Which may not mean much to you who have lived your life in the North. But a Southerner would understand the implications of such an act.

Kudzu was brought to this country in 1876 to decorate the Japanese pavilion at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. As an exotic import, it became popular as a shade plant, and was seen as a God-given solution to the soil-erosion problem, following the Great Depression. Between 1935 and 1942, government nurseries produced 84 million kudzu seedlings, planting them wherever they would grow. By 1943, there was a Kudzu Club of America with 20,000 members and an annual “Kudzu Queen.”

So what’s the problem? I’ll tell you the problem. Kudzu is a vine with phenomenal growth. Twelve inches in 24 hours is not unusual. And 50 feet in a single growing season is well within the norm. People in the South have a saying: “If you’re gonna plant kudzu, drop it and run.” Which explains why some have called it “the vine that ate the South.” It can cover anything and choke everything. It can twine itself around fruit trees until it kills the entire orchard. It can strip the gears of farm machinery. And railroad engineers have even accused it of causing trains to slip off the tracks. Which is why the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) eventually demoted kudzu to “weed status”….with the definition of a weed being “any plant that does more harm than good.”

The weeds in Matthew’s little parable are “darnel.” If you grew up reading the King James Version of the Bible, you call them “tares.” If you spend your days immersed in botany books, you call them “lolium termulentum.” Just so you’ll know. They are members of the wheat family. They look like wheat. They hide out in wheat. But they are poisonous in the end, capable of causing blindness….even death….if too many of their little black seeds end up in the bread dough.

But back to our story. This is a judgment parable. Matthew is big on judgment parables. Matthew is big on judgment language. Whenever you read words like “weeping….wailing….gnashing of teeth….outer darkness….consuming fire”….you can pretty much figure you are reading from the book of Matthew. But, in this parable, it is clear that judgment is God’s business. Meaning that it is not our business. We are not the sower in the story. We are not the judge in the story. We are not even the seeds in the story.

Who are we in the story? We are the would-be “helpful servants”….that’s who we are. And you will remember that the helpful servants approach the owner of the field, having noted the weeds growing in the wheat, and suggest that they go out and do a little culling. Instead, they are told to keep their hands off. “Let the weeds grow along with the wheat,” the owner says. Then he adds: “I’ll take care of things at the harvest.”

So who are the “helpful servants?” I think the “helpful servants” are the church….meaning us. We are the ones who want to sift, sort and separate. We are the ones who want to thin the house. Turn us loose with our shovels and machetes….not to mention our wonderful bottles of Round-Up….and there’s no telling what (or who) we will chop down, pull up, or spray into oblivion.

Picture me as the “helpful servant.” Picture me going through your yard with my handy clippers and trowel. Better yet, picture me going through Christ’s church.

            Weed.                             Wheat.

            Weed.                             Wheat.

            Weed, Weed, Weed.       Wheat, Wheat, Wheat.

            All weeds in this pew.   All wheat in that pew.

Which I could do. Except that I wouldn’t know where to start. But that doesn’t stop my colleagues. I have colleagues who think they know exactly where to start.

            This one goes.                That one stays.

            This group’s all right.    That group we can do without.

I have colleagues who continually want to cull the field, making decisions on the basis of belief….behavior….even baptism. As many of you know, my wife is into genealogy. She’s traced portions of her family back over 500 years. Just a few months ago, we learned that she had a relative who was burned at the stake in Switzerland. Why? Because he had the wrong understanding of baptism, that’s why. They weeded him out. Then they burned him up.

As for me, I don’t always know whether I am weed or wheat. Wasn’t it Alexander Solzhenitsyn who said: “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Which, I suppose, includes my heart. For all I know, I may even be the weed in somebody else’s garden. Perhaps in your garden.

Once or twice a year, I tilt my head back and sing those wonderful words of Fanny Crosby about “vile offenders.” I am not sure I always believe myself to be a “vile offender.” I mean, I don’t have a long history of black deeds. One reason I could never make it as a tent evangelist is that I don’t have a “sordid past” to describe in graphic detail….meaning that “meeting Jesus” did not force me into an “about face,” so much as a slight “veering to the right.” But when I read the Apostle Paul, it forces me to look in the mirror and acknowledge some measure of offense, “vile” or no. With Paul, “if I say I have no sin, I deceive myself.” Seedy and weedy….that’s me.

But I don’t always know whether you are weed or wheat, either. I used to think I knew. There was a time in my life when I was less reticent to make judgments. I remember shouting at the younger brother of my best friend: “Pat Max, you are rotten to the core.” I can’t remember what he did that made me feel it….or say it. And his brother (my friend) never let anybody forget it. His brother would walk around saying: “My brother’s rotten to the core. Ritter says so. And everybody knows Ritter’s gonna be a preacher.” Today, Pat Max is an upstanding citizen and a successful attorney. Don’t make anything out of that. Just accept it as an admission that I was wrong.

And there’s a third thing I don’t know. I don’t know what God can do with weeds (or wheat) on the way to the harvest. I mean, if we believe that grace is as amazing as we sing it to be, then what we see in the morning is not necessarily what we are going to see at night….what we see in the springtime is not necessarily what we are going to see in the fall….and what we see in the beginning is not necessarily what we are going to see in the end (when God gets done working in the garden).

I look around and notice that you are a pretty weedy lot. I hope that doesn’t surprise you. I mean, you didn’t think you were a field of “American Beauties,” did you? And even if you did, I suspect the film of the same name shot that designation full of holes. But don’t worry about whether I find you weedy. You have no fear from me. Thanks to this parable, God has taken the shovel and machete out of my hand.

Toward that end, let me recast the parable (courtesy of the wonderfully innovative work of Barbara Brown Taylor).

One afternoon in the middle of the growing season, a bunch of farm hands decided to surprise their boss and weed his favorite wheat field. No sooner had they begun to work, however, than they began to argue….about which of the wheat-looking things were weeds. Did the Queen Anne’s lace, for example, pose a real threat to the wheat, or could it stay for decoration? And the blackberries? After all, they were weeds. But they would be ripe in a week or two. And the honeysuckle….it seemed a shame to pull up anything that smelled so sweet.

About the time they had gotten around to debating the purple asters, the boss showed up and ordered them out of his field. Dejected, they did as they were told. Back at the barn, he took their machetes away from them, poured them some lemonade, and made them sit down where they could watch the way the light moved across the field. At first, all they could see were the weeds and what a messy field it was….and what a discredit to their profession. But as the summer wore on, they marveled at the profusion of growth. Tall wheat surrounded by tall goldenrod, accented by a mixture of ragweed and brown-eyed Susans. Even the poison ivy flourished beside the Cherokee roses. It was a mess. But a glorious mess. And when it had all bloomed and ripened, the reapers came.

Carefully….gently….expertly….they gathered the wheat and made the rest into bricks for the oven where the bread was baked. And the fire the weeds made was excellent. And the flour the wheat made was excellent. And when the owner called them together….farm hands, reapers, along with all the neighbors….and broke bread with them (bread that was the final distillation of that messy, gorgeous, mixed up field), they all agreed that it was like no bread they had ever tasted before. And that it was very, very good.

Let those who have ears….and half a brain….hear and consider.

Note: My treatment of this parable was inspired by Episcopal priest and professor, Barbara Brown Taylor. The final recasting of the parable is drawn from her sermon on The Protestant Hour, delivered in 1990.

When God Gets Fed Up

Dr. William A. Ritter

First United Methodist Church

Birmingham, Michigan

Scripture:  Ezekiel 36:16-30

The best definition of prevenient grace I ever heard suggests that ours is a God who goes searching for people who don’t possess the good sense to know they are lost. More than once in my early career in youth ministry, I frantically searched an amusement park, a campground and, in one case, the entire south side of Chicago, for a group of kids who, upon being found, couldn’t understand “what the big deal was.” In today’s text, the people of Israel knew full well “what the big deal was.” Not only were they lost, they knew both the why and the wherefore of their lostness. They were exiles, living in Babylon, having been carried off by their captors. Their deportation took place under the watchful eye (and with the full compliance) of their God. What did God do when the enemy came? The prophet Ezekiel tells us that God looked the other way and lifted nary a finger to help. There is even a hint that God played a more active role in their dispersal, given that in 36:17 Ezekiel says:

This is what I heard the Lord say. “When the people of Israel dwelt in their own land, their conduct was like the uncleanness of a women in her monthly time of impurity. So I poured out my wrath upon them, scattering them among the nations, dispersing them through the countries according to their conduct.”

Which is not a pleasant message to bear, let alone hear. After all, who wants to be told that when you are on the outside looking in, it’s pretty much where you deserve to be.

Then, at last, comes a hopeful word….a promising word….a counterbalancing word….just when you think the prophet will never get around to saying it.

I will deliver you, says the Lord God of Israel. I will lead you out. I will bring you back. I will take you home. Clean water I will sprinkle upon you. A clean heart I will place within you. Abundant grain will stand tall in your fields. Abundant fruit shall hang low from your trees. And you shall once again be established in the land that I gave to your ancestors.

The implied message would seem to be: “Therefore, start packing, lest you spend one more day in this godforsaken hellhole than is absolutely necessary.” Whether the Lord said exactly that is academic. That’s what the people heard.

And that’s more like it. That’s what you and I want to hear. “Tell us, Bill, that no place is so forsaken so as to be deemed godforsaken. Tell us, Bill, that even the world’s hellholes will have their darkness splintered by the sunlight of heaven. And tell us, Bill, that we can never be cast so far from shore as to preclude the possibility of being reeled back in. “Good Lord, deliver us,” we cry despairingly. “And He will,” cries the prophet, responsively. “He will.”

All of which has a familiar ring to it. Isaiah said it. Jeremiah said it. It’s just taken Ezekiel a little longer to get around to it. One has to put up with more gloom in Ezekiel on the way to the hope. Yet, sooner or later, even Ezekiel’s God comes through.

Except it’s not all that simple. For in the midst of this long-awaited promise, we find this strange word: “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name which you have profaned among the nations.”

“It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act.” What does that mean? It means just what it says. It means that while God is about to save his people, God is going to do so, quite apart from anything having to do with them. Which is not what we would normally expect to hear. We would expect to hear that God loves them….that God cares for them….and God’s heart goes out to them in spite of everything that may have previously come between them. But that’s not what the text says. It says that God has such a low opinion of this people (as a result of their cheating hearts and idolatrous ways) that, if there is to be a deliverance, Israel will have nothing whatsoever to contribute to that deliverance. “It is not for your sake that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name.”

Among Old Testament scholars, Walter Brueggemann currently occupies that pedestal reserved for the “fairest of the fair.” When Brueggemann comments on a passage of scripture, preachers listen. So it is interesting to read Walter’s word concerning these lines from Ezekiel. “I regard this as one of the most dangerous and stunning texts in the Bible, in that it dares to set God’s free and unfettered sovereignty at something of a distance from Israel.” Let me translate that for you. What Walter is saying is that God sometimes acts for reasons having more to do with who God is, than with who we are.

Think of it this way. Picture yourself as parents in a restaurant (a very nice restaurant), trying to eat a meal with your children (your very small children). It has been a long day, which means that your children are tired and not behaving very well. As their parents, you are just as tired as they are, to the point that you are not coping very well. With each passing minute, they (as children) are becoming more obnoxious. And with each passing minute, you (as parents) are becoming more embarrassed. Not really all that much is at stake for the children. They are behaving….well…pretty much like children. But much is at stake for you. For everybody is watching. You’d really like to swat them one, or find some similar means of letting them have it. But you don’t want the people at the nearby tables to think poorly of you, to the point of concluding that you who birthed these children, can’t control them. So you become the very models of “parental patience” (given your concern for the opinions of those who may be looking on).

This is pretty much what Ezekiel says happened to God. Israel had tried and exhausted God’s patience, having thrown one sufficiently long tantrum, until even God could take it no longer. What concerns the prophet is that even God may have a breaking point, and that the one who is said to be “slow to anger,” may (nonetheless) have a flash point to that anger. “What happens,” Ezekiel seems to wonder, “when even God’s compassion runs dry….when, having gone so many extra miles, He find himself reluctant to go one mile more? What then?”

Then (Ezekiel says) Israel’s last hope….our last hope….the only hope left…..is that God will be sufficiently concerned with his reputation that He will act to preserve his good name, even if God has long-since passed the point of worrying about ours. “I am going to deliver you,” says God, “not because of you, but because of me….so that the nations will see that I am God, and will know that it takes a very great God to love a people like you.”

Now that notion probably bothers many of you. I know it bothers me. What’s more, I know why. First, it bothers us because we have assumed that, at the core of his nature, ours is a rather mushy God. To whatever degree we have slipped into the habit of seeing God in grandfatherly imagery, such imagery has less to do with our belief in a God who is old, than in a God who is soft. Grandfathers, in the main, are more inclined to be soft than stern. And the notion of “sternness” (which is laced throughout Ezekiel’s writing, not to mention the entirety of prophetic literature) is hard to square with the notion of “softness.” Meaning that when push comes to shove, we will always choose soft over stern. We’ll opt (every time) for the Charmin God….squeezably soft. And there’s much to be said for a pliable God….easier to relate to….easier to be in touch with….and easier to be loved by.

But the word “soft” means absolutely nothing until it is measured against (and balanced by) something “hard”….something that neither yields nor bends. Some years ago, when my wife was working for a community agency known as Farmington Youth Assistance, she sponsored a lecture by a nationally-acclaimed parenting guru named Pat Hurley (a most insightful and funny man). As I remember it, the title of his talk was: “How to Raise Your Parents.”

Marvelous lecture. Lots of kids in the audience. Lots of parents, too. Pat Hurley had the kids in the palm of his hand. At one point, he was talking about two different voices that parents employ to say the same simple word….the word being “no.” One voice says “no” in a way that says: “It’s not negotiable. It’s not discussible. Don’t moan, groan, whine, beg, make a face, throw a tantrum, or badger me 30 minutes from now with 17 additional arguments. It’s going to be ‘no’ then, just as it’s ‘no’ now.” But the other parental voice says “no” as if to say: “But if you want to take a shot at changing my mind, be my guest.” Then, Pat Hurley turned to the kids and said: “Raise your hands if you can tell the difference between yours parents’ ‘no’s.’” And virtually every hand of every kid in the room shot up.

Every home has a place for both kinds of “no’s.” Love renegotiates some things, while drawing the line at others. So, one suspects, does God. Soft and stern. We surrender either at our peril.

While I was thinking about softness and hardness….and the degree to which they could co-exist in the same God….I spent an evening with a dear friend of mine who was in the process of babysitting his grandchildren. My friend’s grandchildren are great kids. And he loves being their granddad. The role fits him like a glove. I hope, someday, to be half as good. But you need to know that his grandkids are both boys, ages two and a half and three and a half. And, as the saying goes, they are “all boy.” This means there are times when he wears out before they do. Which is partially his fault, given that he is the one who heats them up, only to wonder why he has trouble cooling them down.

But the bigger difficulty consists in the fact that they can’t conceive of their grandfather as having a stern side. To them, every “no” is negotiable. Meaning that they push the limits until they exhaust themselves in the effort….or until he gives them back to their mother….his daughter. We are talking about the same daughter who knows he has a stern and inflexible side, and was smart enough (in her growing up years) so as not to provoke him to demonstrate it. Remembering those early days with his daughter, he said: “All I had to do was look at her and she knew I’d had enough.”

I was talking about all of this with my own daughter (who I never felt much of a need to discipline). Whereupon she said: “That’s because I knew ‘the look.’ And when, at some point in the discussion I got ‘the look,’ I knew not to push things any further.” Today, I’m not sure I could reproduce “the look.” But it must have been pretty effective. I trust that my daughter loves me as much for “the look” as for my mushy malleability (which was, more often than not, my true fatherly nature).

Our hope, says Ezekiel, is not rooted in the fact that God will always bend to us, but that God will be true to himself. Which bothers us, because it strikes at the notion that God is a rather mushy deity. But it also bothers us because (down deep) we like to think of ourselves as being rather nice people. Why wouldn’t God want to deliver us? How could He become fed up with us? After all, aren’t we doing the best we can?

One of the nice things about reading as much Bible in any given week as I do, is that it forces me to read a lot of stuff I would skip over, were I merely reading the Bible in search of sermon material. One of scripture’s recurring themes that I would just as soon skip is the theme of divine depression over our sorry performance. In no small number of places, God is depicted as being sorry that He made us, even to the point of flirting with the notion of scrapping the whole enterprise and writing us off as a noble experiment, gone sour.

I don’t know what to do with all those passages. But I am forced to conclude that God may sometimes feel that way. It’s not (I suppose) that we’re so bad, but that we promise so much while delivering so little. Were we born losers, God could probably take it better. But I doubt that’s how He sees us. I think He sees us as Mike Ilitch does the Tigers, possessing so many good pieces, yet unable to put them together to the point of delivery.

Not that we lack for excuses. All of us have them. And when we run out of them, we lay the rest of our problems off against our nature. “Don’t look at us,” we say, “that’s just who we are.” I hear that phrase being used over and over again to explain, excuse and rationalize some of the stupidest behaviors. But it works. For if I am willing to understand that “you are just who you are,” then maybe you’ll understand that “I am who I am,” and neither of us will ask the other to be “other” or “better.” So it’s quite easy for me to say how nice I find you to be, trusting that you will say the same about me. Yet, is ours the ultimate judgment that matters?

Robert Coles of Harvard (who writes so beautifully of what life is like on the boundary where Christianity meets psychiatry) tells of a particularly troubling patient in his early years of clinical practice. His client was a woman of 25, a graduate student in literature, who seemed to be suffering from a hard-to-pin-down mixture of guilt and remorse. Upon concluding that her feelings of dis-ease were somehow connected to a sexual liaison with her professor, Coles began leading her toward some internal act of catharsis and cleansing. In doing so, he focused the therapy on the specific person of the professor, only to have the young woman keep insisting that the professor was only one piece of the problem, and that (in her own words), “there is someone else who needs to be mentioned.”

After exhausting all the possibilities as to who that suddenly-significant-someone-else might be, Coles changed the subject, only to notice that a strange new word surfaced in her conversation. That word was “transgression.” Suddenly Coles knew the identity of the “someone else who needed to be mentioned.” So he planted the suggestion very softly, leading her to acknowledge: “Yes, I will probably never be able to come to terms with myself until I come to terms with God, whose judgment matters more to me than my own. It’s not how I look at my affair that matters, but how God looks at it.”

I find myself wondering if any of us even care how God looks at our affairs….or at us. And were we to really ponder that question, might we be led to conclude (with Ezekiel) that if God acts to deliver us, it will have to be because of some graceful quirk in his nature, rather than some clear and obvious merit in ours.

There’s an old chestnut of a story, remaking the rounds of late. It concerns a minister who died, met Peter at the gate, and learned that he needed 100 points to get in.

“After all, I was a minister for 47 years,” the man said.

“That’s nice,” said Peter. “We’ll count that as one point.”

“I visited shut-ins every chance I got.”

“Shut-ins. One point.”

“I worked with junior high youth in every one of my churches.”

“Junior highs. One point.

“And many were the times I set up chairs and tables, and even mopped the church floors when nobody showed up to help.”

“Chairs and mops. One point. Making four points. Leaving 96 points.”

“Ninety six points? Save for the grace of God, I don’t stand a chance.”

“Grace of God. Ninety six points. Come on in.”

My friends, let the word go out to the nations that it takes a very great God to love a people like us.

When the Inmates Take Over the Asylum

Dr. William A. Ritter

First United Methodist Church

Birmingham, Michigan

Scripture:  Mark 12:1-12

Preliminary Notes:

This sermon was introduced in my Steeple Notes letter with the following paragraph:

When I lived in the bungalow on Wisconsin Avenue, a large apple tree covered most of the backyard. Alas, it was not our tree. It belonged to Jack and Rose Dempsey, our next door neighbors. It just leaned in our direction. Which meant that we got most of its blossoms and fruit. Given that we never sprayed, the apples were often wormy. But my mother performed miracles with a paring knife. I can still taste the applesauce and the pies. What was strange was how “territorial” we became about a tree that wasn’t ours. We didn’t want people messing with “our tree.” Which came to mind when I reread Mark’s wonderful Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Mark 12:1-12). I’ve preached it before. But I now have enough age and experience to preach it better. At any rate, it’s a good “harvest sermon.” Listen to it under the title “When the Inmates Take Over the Asylum.”

The Parable of the Wicked Tenants is dangerous to preach, but for reasons other than one might commonly think. That’s because this parable is also an allegory. Few are. But this one is. And whenever one confronts an allegory, the temptation is to treat it as a puzzle to be solved. So it becomes easy to look for “inner meanings,” wherein the vineyard owner is God….the vineyard is Israel….the tenants are the Jews….the watch tower is the parapet of the temple….the messengers are prophets….and the owner’s son is none other than our Lord Jesus Christ. All of which is probably true. But it allows us to treat the narrative as a crossword puzzle to be solved at an intellectual distance. Whereupon we can step back, savor our accomplishment, and wait for the puzzle the preacher is going to give us next week.

This “fresh look” is prompted by the very gifted prose of Barbara Brown Taylor who not only introduced me to the concept of the “sharecropper,” but suggested the parable be turned upside down to view it from the tenants’ perspective.

The Sermon:

Once in a while, when I take my memory bank and give it a vigorous shake, the names of Vinco Pogachar and Matko Farkas come floating to the surface. Not that many people ever called them Vinco and Matko. At least not in North America. On this side of the pond, people called them Vince and Matt. But in the old country….one of my old countries….the country presently called Slovenia (but once called Yugoslavia)….they were Vinco and Matko.

I came to know them because my grandfather sponsored Vince when he came to this country. My grandfather was Slovenian, too. Eventually Matt and Vince (who were married to sisters) went to Canada and settled north of Niagara Falls….by Lake Ontario….near the little town of Grimsby….in the Ontario fruit belt. Where they grew fruit. Lots of fruit. On lots of trees. On lots of land. Meaning they were good at it. And, most likely, got rich from it (although I have yet to meet a farmer who has ever admitted to having any money).

In my childhood, I spent a little time on those farms and even picked a little fruit on those farms. I hated picking cherries because of the size and peaches because of the fuzz. But I thought that apples and pears were okay….especially pears, because the size seemed to fit my hand better than any other growing thing that God (in his infinite wisdom) decided to hang from trees.

As of this telling, I haven’t picked a pear in decades. And the last time Kris and I went through Canada, we got off the QEW at Grimsby and tried to find Vince’s farm. But I couldn’t be sure….what with all the condos, I mean.

Times change. People, too. Today, I get my pears from the Royal Oak Farmer’s Market. And I buy my cherries from the little roadside fruit stand near Elk Rapids. That way I can eat them in the car and spit the pits out the window….or through the roof (when I drive with the top down). And I told you about the apple tree of my childhood….which wasn’t on our lot….but grew mostly over our lot….giving us lots of apples….which, although universally wormy, rewarded anyone with a high tolerance for worms or a nimble excellence with a paring knife.

It’s harvest time, isn’t it? And don’t you just love it? I mean, the Michigan crops are in. Abundant and sweet. Taken alone, the corn and tomatoes are to die for. For someone who loves to eat, it doesn’t get any better than this. Take that, Tuscon!

Did you ever stop to think how many stories in the Bible talk about harvests? Grape harvests. Grain harvests. Earthly harvests. Heavenly harvests.

            Even so, Lord, quickly come,

            Bring the final harvest home.

            All is safely gathered in,

            Free from sorry, free from sin.

This little story of the wicked tenants is all about a harvest. Which, as one of you will surely point out, I preached earlier in my tenure under the title “God and Banana Pudding.” But when I preached it before, I did so as Jesus preached it originally….and as every other preacher has preached it repeatedly….from the perspective of the landowner, who is God. And you can never go wrong preaching about God. Well, you can. And I have. But that’s another story. So let’s not get into that here. Instead, let’s try to come at this story fresh. And how shall we do that? By choosing a different place to start. Instead of starting with the owner of the land, why don’t we start with the tenants on the land. Indulge me as I do a little rewrite job for you.

* * * * *

Once upon a time, there was a wealthy land baron from Chicago who, while vacationing in northern Michigan, bought a derelict apple orchard and added it to his vast holdings. Not wanting to leave any of his acquisitions in the shape that he found them, he pruned the trees, cultivated the weeds, fixed up the sales shed and put a brand new sign out on M-72, just a couple miles east of Williamsburg. Then he leased the place to a down-on-their-luck family from Kalkaska, writing the lease at less than market price. But not before extracting an understanding that the new tenants would give him ten percent of the apples when the crop came in. Then he got in his Lincoln Town Car, drove back to Winnetka, and nobody in Williamsburg ever laid eyes on him again.

Now these were inexperienced tenants. But they were good tenants. They worked hard. And they worked long. They used organic pesticides. They hauled water by hand when their first clumsy attempt at an irrigation system failed and a mini-drought was in progress. And when an early frost threatened the crop (mere days before it was due), they built small fires and set out smudge pots so the fruit would not freeze under a blanket of smoke.

Come harvest time, the air smelled of applesauce. The trees were so heavy with fruit that they looked like painted ladies bound for a ball, wearing more jewelry than their bodies or gowns could comfortably carry. And when the harvest hit, it hit quickly. Which meant that the tenants had to summon every available cousin (first, second, kissin’ and otherwise) and they had to work in shifts. Some picked while others slept. Then the sleepers picked while the pickers slept. They kept at it until they were all in….and until it was all in (the harvest, I mean).

Proud of their accomplishment, you can imagine how surprised the tenants were….day next…. when, lo and behold, they saw a 16-wheeler with Illinois plates backing down the driveway and heading toward the barn. Whereupon two guys with pencils nestling in their ears and muscles bulging in their t-shirts, got out…..surveyed the crop….did some quick figuring….and then started loading apples onto the 16-wheeler without even introducing themselves.

When the tenants stepped forward to protest, it became apparent that the guys in the t-shirts weren’t about to be dissuaded. So the rest of the tenants….along with a few neighbors who just happened by to check out the action….decided to introduce these big boys from Chicago to a Kalkaska County version of People’s Court. One of them cranked up the Bobcat, while the rest of them got pitchforks, pruning hooks, the fire hose, along with several water balloons. And, before long, they had persuaded the muscle guys to return to Chicago, empty handed. “Get lost,” was a cleaned-up version of what they said. And the muscle boys did just that.

Which was wrong, of course. The tenants shouldn’t have done that. You know it. I know it. Who knows….maybe even the tenants knew it. They’d made a deal (including the ten percent cut). They should have honored it. Still, there is something about their situation that makes us at least momentarily sympathetic.

After all, they are the “little guy.” And some of us have been the “little guy”….and may still be the “little guy.” And little guys don’t always like big guys. Or respect big guys. Especially when the big guys are landlords. Absentee landlords. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever been a renter? Then you know what I mean.

Or maybe it’s because most of us have relatives….parents, or likely grandparents….who once farmed somebody else’s land….bringing in somebody else’s crop….making somebody else’s profit. So we know how hard that life can be.

It’s not the American Dream, you know….to live the existence of a sharecropper. The American Dream is to own a small slice of paradise, or maybe even a big slice of paradise….your own home…on your own land….growing your own vegetables…for your own table. As Barbara Brown Taylor says: “None of this always-looking-over-your-shoulder-handing-your-profit-over-to-somebody-else stuff.” Most of us in this country (including more preachers than you would think) really do believe in ownership, autonomy and self-reliance. Some of us may have occasional quarrels with capitalism. But, by and large, they are lover’s quarrels.

In short, popular sympathy rides with the tenants. “Give ‘em a break,” we find ourselves saying. “Cut ‘em some slack. Knock ten percent down to five. And give ‘em additional grace periods….if not additional years. After all, Winnetka’s economy is booming. Kalkaska’s is struggling. Why, two years ago, they had to close the schools in Kalkaska 12 weeks early. They didn’t have the money to run ‘em.”

Two weeks ago, my brother-in-law took us out for a ride in his brand new boat on Higgins Lake. His brand new “performance” boat. It was a great day and a great ride. His boat is called “The Eliminator” and it can go over 70 miles an hour. Did you ever go 70 miles an hour in a boat? You have to scrape the flies from your teeth, I’ll tell you.

When we were going much slower (in order to look at the shoreline), we came upon several places where the shoreline held not one dock per lot, but several….with each built onto the one before it….six or seven docking spaces strung together….jutting out into the lake like mini-marinas. Up there, they call them “road ends.” It’s where a road coming down toward the lake, dead-ends at the lake. And people who couldn’t afford to own property on the lake started putting their boats in there. And eventually built docks there. One dock on another there. Without ever asking anybody there. And without ever paying taxes there. Some of them, now standing thirty or forty years there. Which means that it is not uncommon (especially on a Saturday or Sunday) to have tons of cars parked there. As well as tons of boats tied up there. With half million dollar cottages having been built adjacent to there.

Nobody knows quite what to do about the dock squatters. And those who think they know what to do….legally or otherwise….aren’t about to do it. Because, whether you know it or not, there’s a sympathy in northern Michigan that looks with favor upon people who can’t afford houses on the water and with disfavor upon people who can. And that sympathy is more widespread than you might think.

No, the tenants are clearly wrong. But a case can be made for them. And sympathy can be felt for them. And why do I want you to see that….and feel that? Because of where you and I fit into the story, don’t you see. Because we are not the landowner….even though we own a fair amount of land (and love Chicago). Neither are we the big muscle boys in the t-shirts….even though we have our share of worldly clout and love (just love) our trucks. And we are certainly not the owner’s son….even though we use his name a lot in popular conversation and remember his brutal death both fondly and yearly.

No, in spite of the fact that we have worked long and hard for everything we have….and in spite of the fact that we have deeds, titles, fence lines, mortgage payments and tax bills to prove it…. we are deluding ourselves when we attempt to deny our tenancy. For, in the economy of the Kingdom, we are not the fat cats. And, since this is Dream Cruise weekend, neither are we the fast cats. Who are we? We are the slow and skinny cats. And whether our holdings would suggest words like “bigfoot” or “smallfoot,” we (who hold them) are people of clay feet. Meaning that we have got it all over our shoes….and, most of us, clear on up to our hearts.

Since the deal made with the landowner was forged so long ago, most of us have forgotten it. We have conveniently misplaced the tenant’s agreement, so that we could write up a deed instead. Which was easy, given that the landowner seemed to spend so much of his time away. And when he sent messengers, it was easy to turn them back with “no” for an answer….or simply avoid them, because they tended to come on Sundays, and we have found more and more things to do with our Sundays (like making cobbler, shopping for antiques or playing golf).

The owner could have summoned the police or called out the dogs, I suppose. He could have even sent an army of angels. Warrior angels. But he never did. Which is, if you want the truth, one of the reasons I doubt he ever will (send the warrior angels, I mean).

He just kept sending messengers. And we kept roughing them up (in ways often silent, but equally deadly). Until he sent his son, unaccompanied and unarmed, to remind us that we were guests upon the earth. And his son said that while there were privileges to being guests….wonderful privileges….one of them was not the privilege of pretending that the guests had no Host.

You see, when the takeover came….when our takeover came….we gained the gift, but lost the Giver. And when we lost the Giver, we lost whatever perspective the Giver could offer on the proper way to manage and care for the gift. You’d think we would have known better. But history hasn’t proven it to be so.

All he wanted was to have us take care of it….and return a portion of its fruit to him. Not because he needed it, mind you. I doubt that the owner needs one more apple…..one more bushel of apples....one more butter-crusted cobbler made of apples….or one more cinnamon-sprinkled bowl of applesauce, for that matter. After all, once the owner gets his share of our apples, all he’s gonna do is give ‘em away. No, the reason he claims his rightful portion is for us….for our benefit. He does it to keep the tie binding….the relationship alive. So that we will never forget that whatever we have or whatever we own, we are the guests of a gracious God….who seemingly can forgive any sin but forgetfulness, because it begets a whole lot of sins that are worse (like ingratitude, haughtiness, arrogance and pride).

By the way, the tenants killed the son, too. But he would not stay dead. And, to this day, he haunts the orchard, reminding us that we are God’s guests upon the earth, so long as we remember whose earth is and how it is to be used. We can love it as our own. We can water it by hand. We can build fires against the frost. We can even take deep pleasure in the harvest.

All we may not do is spurn the owner and persecute his messengers. After all, we are sharecroppers. Which is a reminder I need to give myself more and more often, now that I live in nicer and nicer places….have more and more of the world’s resources….and own more and more personal stuff.

To pretend otherwise is screwy thinking. Backward thinking. Out-of-whack thinking. Me…. mine….and damn-everybody-else thinking. In short, crazy thinking. Hence, my title: “When the Inmates Take Over the Asylum.” Haven’t you noticed that crazy people tend to turn the world into a crazy place?

We get so territorial about things. But even territory is temporary. Need I remind you that we are just passing through? Not that it isn’t sweet while it lasts. But, as the old refrain goes, “We ain’t got long to stay here.”

So plant it. Prune it. Pick it. Process it. Bake it into a pie. Share it with a neighbor. Put a little in the freezer for a rainy day. But set some aside for the owner. Who, I am told, has a harvest plan that’s to die for. Or, as Vinco Pogachar used to say: “Billy, how ‘bout them apples?”