The first time I preached on this text, it was my next to last year in the old liberal denomination. While the local people were receptive to the word that was preached, the denomination that proclaimed ownership of their building was becoming more and more abusive of any young ministers who took the Word of God seriously. Providentially I have lived in a time when beating, scourging and killing for the doctrines of grace are only a distant memory of the Protestant Churches. The closest I have ever come to such things was the newspaper clipping that my father found in an old family Bible, that recorded the death in Ireland of three distant relatives, after whom several generations were named in memorial. Yet, I can sadly testify that the facts described in this parable are all too true in Christ's own Church even today. A friend of the congregation was driven out of the Methodist Church some years ago in somewhat similar circumstances to my own. And there are several quiet unassuming gentlemen in my area who were once called to the ministry and then driven from the task by unfriendly bureaucrats who could and would not tolerate the gospel of grace.

In that worn piece of paper from my old notebook, the seventy's version of this message was entitled "Love's Last Appeal." And that it probably was, here in the context of Mark's report, we see that this parable of personalities is aimed at the leaders of the Old Covenant Church. Would they listen, would they understand that their very politicization of spiritual power was not in accord with the desires, rules and regulation of the very One whose church they presumed to govern for their own doctrines, powers and purposes?

Dr Keener tells us how the rustic rural heartlands of the Roman Empire were organized. "Much of the rural Roman Empire, including parts of Galilee, was controlled by wealthy landowners, whose land was worked by tenant farmers." And so it has been throughout most of history in the majority of the world where farming has been organized. Medieval Europe, Latin America, Africa and much of the Orient were owned by the nobility, whose feudal relations with their peasants, serfs and slaves represented precious little in the way of partnership between owner and worker. To be sure, some situations could be better than others. Land rent was not always confiscatory in every time and place. Sometimes, rulers - in order to gain the loyalty of their people - would allow small holders a direct relationship with the crown. The Czars early on realized a need for seriously devoted servants, and so their contract farmers, the Cossacks served them faithfully and exceptionally well. Frontier areas of several empires saw similar relationships.

Only in America, and a handful of other areas - have the farm folk been given some generations of freedom to own and manage the resources of farm and field. Only in the last few decades has the freeholder fallen on hard times in our free society. At a Sunday School class in one of the old liberal churches I left so many years ago, one of the children of the church had gone into the Peace Corps and come home with a "holy" zeal to eradicate the land owners overseas who dictated prosperity or poverty to the tenant farmers. "The land in those areas is owned by only three per cent of the people", she exploded - as she condemned the whole ugly practice. Gently, but perhaps not tactfully enough I reminded her that three per cent was the same statistic as had been attained in our own country. And had not her own family been one of the first in our county to buy up a dozen or more of the once common small farms, I asked? The money that had sent her to school and allowed her to go overseas had all been generated by land rent here in this country. I think she still takes that observation personally, since she has never spoken to me since!

Now, what application has this story to do with the parable of personalities in this chapter of the Gospel of Mark? Precisely this, however ignorant we may be about the ownership of the agricultural areas and the practices of the landed gentry, the fact remains very many people have and are living in a subservient relationship to another person whether they like it or not. In our time, these conditions are flourishing and even increasing. The American era of freeholders, small businessmen and entrepreneurs is rapidly closing down. However, the attitudes of freedom, independence and self sufficiency are still a habit. I would suppose that the next generation of teachers will not even realize what academic and personal freedoms have been stolen by the educational establishment. Neither will the second and third generation of corporate employees comprehend the necessary skills nor zeal to be their own people.

Be that as it may, the important lesson to be learned is that church where we worship is not our own organization. It too belongs to another, an absentee Landlord if you will. And of course, this is what the parable before us is all about. How the Israelite, Hebrew and Jewish managers of the Old Covenant Church failed generation after generation to receive the messengers of the Lord of heaven and earth. The prophets were persecuted, one even being murdered in the sacred precincts and another sawn in half as the writer of Hebrews tells us. What would the temple leaders do with God's own Son, Jesus pointedly asks?

We know well from the Gospels what the Jewish Sanhedrin did on their own accord. A year or so ago, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Rome apologized to the Jewish community for any treatment that the church had given to their people over the centuries. We are still waiting for a similar symbolic apology for their having murdered our Christ! And I would believe that we will still be waiting when the devil needs a snowmobile to travel through his infernal regions. You see, they can't apologize for what the Old Covenant Church did, because it would prove the truth of this particular parable. And if they ever admitted that Jesus was anything other than a false prophet requiring death, they would have to worship Him as Lord and Savior!

And so, the immediate prophecy of Jesus must be acted out. And as verse twelve informs us, the Sanhedrin were eager to get on with destroying the very Son of God. Only public opinion slowed their zeal to see Jesus destroyed. Well did the psalmist write the words for Jesus' condemnation here hundreds of years earlier:

Every thing that would happen to the Lord Jesus Christ was providentially expected from the dawn of time. And even as the wicked tenants meted out their wrath on His servants and Son, the Lord God of all the universe was, is and still able to turn the focus of history in any direction He so desires.

Pardon me, if I sound a little exasperated. But couldn't these dunderheads see the obvious? Here was the very Son of the God they presumed to worship telling them explicitly what He knew they were going to do! I remember years ago, standing in my grandmother's kitchen, looking up at the cookie jar and wondering if she had them counted. From upstairs, I heard her voice not to spoil my dinner by snacking between meals! How did she know what I was thinking and planning? Had our generation not been tempted by commercials and corporate outlets to eat between meals, grandmother's advice would have been well taken over the last thirty years! At least I listened to my grandmother that day, only when she was long gone did I forget her advice.

Sadly, the Jewish leaders had been operating in a presumed spiritual vacuum where the prophetic voice had been still for four hundred years or more. They had not the appetite for studying the original texts of their faith, but instead had derived their own manmade system of technical observations over the years.

Now we should not imagine that the Christian Church is immune from the same temptations. After all, the Thomast Church in India, the Coptic Church in Ethiopia and a recently discovered Catholic Cult in Japan are but shadows of the faith which their fathers and mothers had been given. Even at the time of the Reformation, very many people remained comfortable with the Roman cultus and its less evangelical understanding of God's theology. Very little has changed in that organization in the last four hundred years. Of course to their credit, the stone statues are less prevalent and maybe more of their people are being encouraged to read their Bibles for themselves. In many ways, the catholics are closer to the gospel than the reimaged main line protestant denominations who actually sometimes think that abortion could represent a covenant obligation At least the Catholics still have a concept of sin and redemption. A sense that even too many evangelical churches are giving up in order to pack the crowds into their weekly religious performances.

"The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone."

Let us not make the same all to human mistake that so many in our own and every time have made. Let us not presume that the Church, its doctrines or any aspect of its religious life belongs to anyone but the Son of God, our own Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, the crown and His own Church when He comes again to claim His own. Amen.