Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Many of you have met Tom Giordano, though you may not remember his name. Tom is my Dad’s high school and college classmate. He was my sister’s 5th and 6th grade teacher. He’s a long-time close family friend and played the organ at my ordination at Christ College Irvine 17 years ago. He and his wife, Lois, were with us in worship again earlier this year.

Tom had a habit as a teacher. On the first couple days of school, he would walk around his classroom and touch something and say one of three words: “mine,” “yours,” “ours.” He would touch his desk and say “mine.” He would touch the classroom piano and say “mine.” He would touch a student desk and say “yours.” He would touch a student backpack and say “yours.” He would touch the set of encyclopedias and say “ours.” He would touch the sink in the classroom that also had a drinking fountain and say “ours.” It became very clear very quickly that there were boundaries in that classroom.

I think the tenants in Jesus’ parable this morning needed a lesson from Tom Giordano because obviously they had a problem with the concepts of “mine,” “yours,” and “ours.” Well, actually, they had no problem with “yours.” They mainly had a problem with “mine” and “ours.”

The situation very much reminds me of some of what is seen on those afternoon television judge shows. The scenario may involve different actors and different items but so many of those cases shown on television have to do with someone loaning something to someone and then having to take them to court to prove that that something is still really theirs. And it’s not at all unusual for that someone to not only have made the item theirs in their mind, but maybe even to have ruined the loaned item in some way in the process.

To us, the transaction in Jesus’ parable seems clear. A landowner owned some land. He developed the land, investing a lot of himself and his money in the process. He hung a “For Lease” sign on the developed property and entered into an agreement with some workers who had no money of their own – certainly nothing invested in his property – to live on the property, to grow produce and to pay the landowner at the end of the harvest a set portion of the crops grown on his property. The rest of the crops belonged to the tenants as their profit.

“Mine.” “Yours.” “Ours.”

It’s a simple concept, but the tenants didn’t go for it. In their minds there was no “mine” or “ours.” In their minds, everything was “yours.” And not only was that what was in their minds. It’s also how they ordered their lives as they began killing anyone sent on behalf of the landowner, including his own son. The tenants had it in their minds that they deserved so much more than the landowner since they were the ones who did the work, since they were the ones who labored day after day, since they were the ones who sweated and got all dirty day after day.

One day many years ago a socialist went to visit Andrew Carnegie and soon was railing against the injustice of Carnegie having so much money. In his view, wealth was meant to be divided equally. Carnegie should have been outraged, but instead decided to toy with this socialist. He asked his secretary for an assessment of everything he owned while at the same time looked up the figures on world population. He did a little arithmetic and then told his secretary, “Give this gentleman 16 cents. That’s his share of my wealth.”

That kind of puts everything in perspective, doesn’t it?
We need to hear this parable. We need to hear that interaction between Carnegie and the socialist because we also seem to have a problem with “mine,” “yours” and “ours.”

Sometimes that problem has to the world in general. That was Adam and Eve’s problem, wasn’t it? They took God’s world – that which was “mine,” – and at the very least made it “ours” and probably even just simply made it “yours.”

I think we see that in the world around us today. We take what is God’s, don’t even give Him credit for it, and make it our own personal property.

More specifically, we see that problem in the Church. We call Historic First Lutheran “our church.” We think of the stuff we do as “our mission,” “our ministry.” We think of the tithes and offerings we collect as “our money.” We think that everyone and everything should be catered to us and if something isn’t quite the way we like it – maybe the music is too loud or too soft, maybe the style of music or worship doesn’t suit our likes, maybe someone, even the pastor, says or does something we don’t agree with – we simply pull away: physically, spiritually, financially, all the while thinking to ourselves, “Well, I will show them.”

That kind of what I like to call “spoiled child syndrome” is present in every church and has ruined many churches. Not only has it ruined many churches but it has sent a very clear message to God Himself. That message is that the Church belongs to me, that it does not matter what God has invested in the Church, that it does not matter that we are only temporary tenants in the Church, that it does not matter that if there is even such a thing as “our rightful portion” of the Church because of the labor we have put into it, that portion is so, so small.

The Chief Priests and the Pharisees knew that Jesus was talking about them [Matthew 21:45], which is more than what can often be said about most of us. We seem to have fallen so much further into selfishness that we often can’t see how God’s Word applies to us.

Yet, despite us, God continues to work. You see, whatever we have done here on earth to monkey with the title to God’s Vineyard, God holds the true documentation in His Hands and the Church has never changed ownership. The Church is not for sale – it never has been; it never will be.

When it comes to the Church, it’s all “mine” – and that’s God doing the speaking. Only one person dreamed and designed and constructed the Church. One only person died for the Church. Only one person continues to guide and direct – and sometimes even redirect – the Church. That one person is God as He interacts with us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The reason that you are here and the reason that I am here is because someone somewhere allowed God’s Vineyard to produce as it was meant to do, allowing God His proper place, giving God all the credit. May somewhere someday someone say that about you and me and this place.


In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pastor Christopher Schaar
Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena