“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. 34 When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. 35 But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36 Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. 37 Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ 39 So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40 Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” 41 They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”
    42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:
    ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone;
            this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’?
43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. 44 The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” 45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. 46 They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

The verse I want to focus on for just a moment is verse 43. “I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you [the chief priests and elders who think you know everything] and given to a people [Gentiles, people who, you think, know nothing] who will produce the fruit of the kingdom." That’s early church history in a nutshell. The Jesus movement never won over the Jewish people as a whole, so it passed on to the Gentile world. But imagine what the chief priests and elders must have thought about that. They must have thought, “We’re doing our job, the job God gave us to do, the job we’re trained to do.”

This passage makes me think about my own career in the ministry. I can identify with these chief priests. When I got my ministry degree in 1979, I knew I didn’t know everything, but I did believe that I had some pretty nifty tools in my kit. There was something I wanted to give, passionately. I had a vision, and conviction, of what the church could be, and should be. As well as what the world could and should be. The church should be an example to the world, a light for the world. And I was sure that, when I had a chance to tell a congregation what that vision was, they would embrace it too. They would get the fever.

My first congregation was in Hyannis, Massachusetts - on Cape Cod, kind of a nice place to start out. I found an adorable little cottage to rent, just a short walk from a beach. God was really smiling on me and my plans. Not only that, but in that church, right across the hall from my office, there was a non-profit agency that rented space, and Robin worked for that agency at the time. That’s how we met.

Robin will tell you that when I rolled into Hyannis, fresh from New Haven, I felt, and probably acted, confident that I would be a “successful” minister. My vision was going to work, because this vision was based on all the truly wonderful and even amazing things that had happened to me so far, especially all the church experiences I’d had. Now, twenty-three years later, I can ask, “How did it work out?”

Maybe some of you ask this question too. How did your own vision, or plans, work out, when you stepped onto the stage of real adult life -to start a career, to raise a family, to be an artist, a scholar, to make the world a better place?

For me, the applause was not deafening. In fact, as far as seeing my vision become a reality, I would have to say, in all honesty, that my ministry has been mostly a failure. Not a total failure. There have been some great moments - right here in this sanctuary, in fact, as well as some of the things we do in the community. In the last issue of Tidings, there’s an article about the ministry a few of you are doing up at CVH. That’s what I would call success in ministry. And we’ve had some others.

But for the most part, that grand vision I had at the start, and still have, never flew the way I wanted it to fly, and still want it to fly. The Christian gospel is still, for me, the most profound, powerful, beautiful, saving truth in the world. I believe that even more than I did when I started. I understand more than when I started. I see it as more indispensable than when I started. But as far as getting other people to believe it, I never became a successful minister. My success rate has been in the 1 or 2% range. What grade do teachers give a score like that? F.

Hearing me say that, you might say to yourself, “That’s so bleak. How can this guy get out of bed in the morning? Why isn’t he totally demoralized and depressed?”

For one thing, even a 1% success rate - in this line of work - is very sweet. But mainly, the reason I’m not depressed is because even though my plan didn’t work out - and there are certainly many other factors in the world and culture that help to account for this’ I don’t carry the whole weight of that failure - something else worked out, something I never expected. I wanted to bless the church. Not much happened there. But instead, God blessed me, through the church. And I’ll use that first congregation as an example.

I’ve already told you about the services that church held in the summer, at the local drive-in theater. This was not my idea. This was the work of a previous administration. The deal was, the ministers and the choir climbed up a ladder to stand on top of the projection booth, and the sound was broadcast into the cars on an AM radio station. At the time, this was really hard to take. We didn’t do that at Yale. I was mortified.

But you know, I really cherish that memory now. I also told you in that previous sermon about the time Robin came in her little red Honda Civic with her dog, Lady, in the back seat. Lady was a big, sweet dog with a number of undignified habits I won’t describe in detail. When Si Gesin, the choir director, sang a solo from on top of the projection booth, Lady started howling. Garrison Keillor doesn’t have a better story than that.

Robin and I were married in that church - not at the drive in, but in the sanctuary, on a Sunday morning. And on that day, May 16, 1982, love poured out of that congregation. There were 430 people at our wedding. We told people not to bring wedding gifts for us, but if they insisted on bringing something, to bring food items for the local food bank. People brought armfuls of shopping bags. There was enough food to fill a large truck.

Another image from our wedding sticks in my mind - We had two choirs, a Senior Choir and a family choir, the Spectrum Singers - sort of like our Celebration Singers. I remember when they were singing, I suddenly realized that at least three quarters of the members of that choir had just gotten fresh haircuts, just for that day.

But most of the blessing has come simply from being part of people’s lives - many of your lives. Sandra and I have been with some of you when your parent, or grandparent, or husband or wife was dying, sometimes even at the moment of death. This is never easy, but moments like that bind us together. It’s an enormous privilege. The kingdom of God never flowered the way I wanted it to flower, but it’s flowered in other ways I never imagined.

About six years ago, Susanne Fusso came to worship here, for the first time. She was going through a little rough patch in her life at the time. She liked it here and got involved. I remember very early on the 2nd hour program she gave us on the Russian novel, The Brothers Karamazov. She’s accompanied the choir on the piano. She’s co-chair of the Deacons. Today Susanne is one of us.

About three years ago, Joe Siry started attending here. He liked it too. It reminded him of his home church in Washington DC. At the time Joe was going through a dark time after the death of his father, followed by the death of his very close sister. Now he’s one of us. Two weeks ago, he gave a fascinating talk two weeks ago on the architecture of First Church. He’s taught Sunday school.

Susanne and Joe are both on the Wesleyan faculty, but they never got to know each other there. They didn’t think they had anything in common. But when they saw each other here, in church - and this is the way they described it to me - they realized they had something very deeply in common - just by the fact that they were here.

Today, I have another privilege - to tell you that Joe and Susanne are planning a wedding. This is the official announcement, right now! And not only that, but they are thinking very seriously about getting married here, on a Sunday morning. And it may even turn out to be exactly one year from today, on the first Sunday of October 2003. We all had a part in that, in their lives, just by being the congregation that drew them both here, and see what happened?

We get started in life. We imagine how it will be. We know how we want it to be. We even think we know how God wants it to be. But very often, God has different plans. That can be very disappointing. It can hurt. It can be frightening. It can be demoralizing. It requires all the faith and courage we can muster. But that’s the time to remember that even down the roads we don’t choose, strange, wonderful, even glorious blessings keep coming.