Four grandchildren and three years ago - that sounds a bit like Lincoln and I'll bet some of you are hoping for a sermon as brief as the Gettysburg Address - four grandchildren and three years ago, a lot of folks in the congregation told me, "You're going to love being a grandfather." And you know what, they were right! Four beautiful grandchildren, and I so much enjoy the older two, Jadyn and Katie, at play. Katie will have a toy in her hands and Jadyn will come over and casually take it from her and Katie will just smile. Or Jadyn will have a toy and as Katie approaches Jadyn will say, "Here, Katie." Both these young ladies have a growing vocabulary, but as far as I know they have yet to learn an obscene, four-letter word that has caused as much trouble and turmoil as any other word in the dictionary. As far as I know, they have yet to learn that four-letter word, "Mine"!

This vexing word, "mine," is the vital issue of the vineyard ... the vineyard in the story Jesus tells. The vineyard is no vineyard ... the vineyard is Israel. The vineyard is the Promised Land. The tenants are God's chosen people. The Creator of the vineyard, the owner, is God, who goes away and leaves the care of the vineyard in the hands of the tenants. And then at harvest the owner returns to collect the produce. He sends slaves to the tenants. One is beaten, a second killed, a third is stoned. He sends more slaves, and again with the beating, killing and stoning. Finally, he sends the son. The owner sends his own son and the tenants sense if they kill the son, the vineyard would be theirs. They looks at the acres upon acres of olives and grapes and think, "Mine, mine, mine." God has chosen Israel to be a light unto the nations. God has chosen the people of Israel to produce a harvest of justice. And yet, as Jesus tells this provocative story to the Jewish leaders, who get the point of the story all-too-clearly, well it's like putting the final nail in his own cross. It is Monday. The religious leaders want to arrest him on the spot, but they bide their time. It is Monday, but Friday is not far off. And if Friday, the day of the Cross is near ... it means that Sunday and Resurrection is not far behind. Another story for another time!

Jesus tells this story during the Passover season. He tells this story in the Temple courtyard, a day after he overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the tables of those selling pigeons and lambs for sacrifice. It was only yesterday. Now these activities in the Temple courtyard were legitimate practices. Coins were needed to purchase the pigeons and lambs needed for sacrifice. However, the money changers were gouging the Main Street poor with Wall Street interest. And in the holy season of Passover, the price of pigeons and doves was sky high. It was only yesterday Jesus overturned the tables of the vendors and the applecarts of the religious leaders, shouting to anyone in hearing distance, "You have turned my Father's house into a den of thieves." The very ones who were supposed to be pointing to God, were too busy filling their pockets. "Mine, mine, mine."

A teacher of preacher, Tom Long, puts it so skillfully, "The people (of Israel), led by the religious officials, had constructed not 'a house of prayer' but a self-serving house of privilege. The prophet Isaiah had dreamed of a great highway providing access to God, but the religious leaders has erected roadblocks and exit ramps." And the question needs to be asked, "Has the church done any better?" Long contends, "Now the church is responsible to God for the harvest of the vineyard.; now the church is challenged to be, as Jesus puts it, 'a people who produces the fruits of the kingdom.'" Sadly, down through the ages the church and her leaders have too often mimicked the religious leaders at the time of Jesus, telling the world that if you want access to God is through our rules and conditions and interpretations of scripture, for God is "mine, mine, mine." A glaring example is the withholding and hoarding of the vineyard grapes.

Today is World Communion Sunday. The first Sunday of October always World Communion Sunday, although I'm sure it was emphasized a lot more in the middle decades of the last century than it is now. Our world has become so polarized in so many ways, that even Christians can be accused of downplaying the reality that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ ... all having the same status before our God. Nevertheless, all too many Christian communities will not share the grapes of the vineyard, saying in effect "mine, mine, mine," and if you happen to be at a wedding or a funeral where Communion is served, you are likely to be treated with words echoing Seinfeld's so-called soup nazi, "No bread for you." It is the shame and the scandal of Christianity.

A couple of years ago, I was privileged to preach and share bread and wine with other Christians on the Mt. of Olives. From our vantage point, we could look down upon the Temple Mount ... and what 2,000 years ago would have been the Temple courtyard. Not every pilgrim in the tour group came to the worship service, clouding a bit what was a beautiful cloudless Jerusalem day. I wasn't the right flavor of Christian for others in the group - who felt that their denomination held the sacred truth and nothing but the truth, so help them God. In effect they were saying of Jesus, mine, mine, mine."

There are good reasons, I suppose, why pastors and priests of other Christian traditions, might exclude you and me from the Communion table. At least that's what we've been told. But I have never heard a reason which would trump the Lord's invitation: "Yours, yours, yours."

In retrospect, it might have been good that the whole group wasn't there that morning on the Mt. of Olives. I would have lost all respect and credibility if everyone witnessed what happened at the end of our liturgy. Somebody told me our bus driver wanted to receive Communion. He was sitting on the bus, guarding our belongings, and I said. This is the body of Christ, given for you." I didn't ask if he were a Lutheran. It's not the Lutheran bread, but the body of Christ." He refused the wine, though. I thought it was because he would soon be driving the bus. I found out later that he didn't take the wine because he was a Muslim. It turned out to be World Communion Thursday in Jerusalem.

As I read this Gospel text, the church is called to have stewardship over, and not ownership of, the bread and the wine of the vineyard. As I read this Gospel text, Jesus is saying that the church is to be a tenant church - called to oversee the vineyard. But, it is not their vineyard. It is God's vineyard. Think of a restaurant. When the waitress brings out the entrée, unless she owns the restaurant, she is only serving you food that belongs to the owner.

It is the church's mission to oversee God's vineyard, while overlooking no one. On World Communion Sunday - on any day bread and wine is offered - the church must proclaim to anyone seeking Jesus, with whatever understanding they bring to the table. "My friend, take and eat. Jesus may be mine, but he is also 'yours, yours, yours.'"