Guided by the Spirit
Back at the end of April this year, my employees and their families joined me in celebrating the 40th Anniversary of my company, Chemical Containers, Inc. Our very humble beginning was back in 1983 when a very naïve 26-year-old followed his heart and quit his job!
As I look back over all these years, it occurs to me that had I waited a little longer or been more mature, I may not have even tried. I had no clue that the odds of me making it were quite slim, perhaps a good thing. I didn’t know the statistics: 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open. 45% fail during the first five years. And 65% fail during the first 10 years. Only 25 percent of new businesses make it 15 years or more. I had no idea of the obstacles coming. All I knew at that time was that I had a burning desire to have my own business. I had no money and soon found out I had no credit.
I guess the bankers had read the statistics! Without their help, I continued anyway. A dream, an idea, a desire, and the ability to work hard.
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The King's Produce
This morning’s parable presents significant challenges. Jesus is in the Temple, just days before his crucifixion, confronting the chief priests and Pharisees in their failure to produce the harvest The Lord seeks from their stewardship of his vineyard, which is Israel. He is confronting their historic failure to heed the many prophets God has sent to get Israel’s leadership back on track. He’s confronting their brewing plot to kill God’s Son, Jesus himself. He warns them that God is going to find new tenants to produce “the fruits of the Kingdom.”
Our challenge arises from the way this message rolls forward across generations. Who are the tenants today? We are! What is the fruit of the Kingdom? We are! At any point in time, we are in an ongoing process of being the new tenants even as we are also the (hopefully) ripening fruit of the harvest, while raising up more harvest who become tenants and ripening fruit.
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By What Authority?
We need to set the scene. Imagine if some street preacher walked in here on the Tuesday morning of Holy Week and started teaching and holding services without my permission. I know exactly what I’d say. “Excuse me, by what authority are you doing these things? And who, pray tell, gave you this authority?”
In order to grasp the weight of today’s Gospel we need to consider where we are time-wise in Matthew’s Gospel. It is what we call Holy Week. Jesus has made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem for the Passover Feast. He has driven out the money changers in the courtyards and he has done some healings in front of big crowds.
And we need to consider where we are physically. Jesus is teaching in the Temple. The Temple itself was the second one, about 550 years old, and was roughly 90 feet long, 30 feet wide and 45 feet high. The Temple would have fit inside this room except it was a bit taller. Herod the Great, the Herod that tried to get the wise men to tell him where the baby Jesus was, had completely restored the Temple and built a huge complex of plazas, colonnades and courtyards all around it that was as big as 29 football fields. The foundation of the Temple Mount was 62 feet high, part of which we know today as the wailing wall. It was one of the great wonders of the ancient world.
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