Mine

"Mine"
Mark 12:1-12


I don’t have a whole lot of stuff that I can call mine.  Especially big stuff.  Something substantial.  I own a truck.  That’s the most expensive thing I’ve called mine.  I’ve never owned land.  I’ve never bought a house.  I’ve never owned a boat.

But the American Dream is to have something (like a house or some land) that you can behold and say, “This is mine.  I own it.”  It’s what drove the settlers out to the plains states.  Getting a piece of the wide open spaces.  Having something that is all yours--something that no one else can say “mine” about.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie, “Finding Nemo” is the seagull scene.  Nemo’s father, an overprotective clownfish named Marlin, and Dory, a regal tang fish, are close to finding Marlin’s son Nemo.  But they need the help of a pelican to save them from the seagulls.   Here’s the scene.

(Show movie clip)

The seagulls are great examples of everything that drives us to say “Mine!”  There are a number of problems with continually saying, Mine.  One is discontent.  Once we say “mine” to a few things, we become discontent and want more that we can call mine.  Once we have some, we want more.  The danger is that we are never totally happy with what we already have.

The Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy, once wrote a short story titled, “How Much Land Does A Man Require?”  It was about a wealthy landowner who was selling his land.  Another man, Pahom, not satisfied with his already ample parcel of land, saw this as an opportunity to expand.

The wealthy landowner said to those who wanted a piece of the estate he was selling that they could buy as much as they could walk around in one day.  So Pahom set out walking.  Later that morning he had walked around a good-sized piece of land, but thought to himself, This isn’t enough land for a man; I require more.  So he set out again and walked faster this time, encompassing a larger tract of land.  Again, he said to himself, This isn’t land enough for a man, and started running.

Just before sunset, which was the time limit the estate owner had set, Pahom could be seen running and stumbling along.  He was totally spent.  Just as he arrived at his starting point, having walked around a huge portion of land, Pahom fell down dead.  Tolstoy ended the story with the biting line, “His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for Pahom to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he required.”

That ties in with another dissatisfaction that comes with saying, “Mine.”  It creates confusion between needs and wants.  Or a need becomes defined as anything I want whether I need it or not.  The preacher, E. Stanley Jones, told about the time he spent the night as the guest of a poor farmer.  The man led Jones to his bed in the hayloft and said to Jones, “If there’s anything you want, let us know, and we’ll come and show you how to get along without it.”

And the other danger of saying, Mine, is a python-like hold on what is owned.  Once we have something that we call “mine,” we don’t let go of it easily.  We put alarm systems in our homes so that we can be alerted when someone breaks in to take by force what is ours.  Some people try to cling to what is theirs to the point of death.  Even though I’ve never seen a hearse pulling a UHaul trailer, there are still people who try to “take it with them.”

Rose Greenhow was a Confederate spy during the Civil War.  She tried to make sure her fortune was not confiscated so she sewed all her gold coins into the hems of her dress.  She got on a boat that was crossing the Mississippi River.  The boat sprung a leak and sank.  Greenhow had a life preserver on, but the weight of her gold sewn into her dress was too much for the life preserver to keep her floating.  She sank to the bottom of the river and drowned.

I wondered, when I read her story, if she had the sudden realization at the point just before death, that it all didn’t matter--that what she clung to so fiercely trying to protect with her life, was really worth giving up her life, after all.


By being compelled, like the seagulls, to say, “Mine,” we may not be able to hear Jesus’ parable fully.  Or, we may her it clearly, but our resistance to its truths is going to be too hard to overcome.  There are people who would rather fight over, cling to, or go down with what is “mine” than embrace the truth of Jesus’ parable.

The parable Jesus told was about an owner of some land.  The landowner developed the land into a vineyard, doing all the work himself.  He got the ground ready.  He planted the grapevines.  He dug the pit for the winepress.  He built the winepress.  He built a watchtower from which to protect his investment.  It took a few years before the grapevines matured to the point where grapes could be harvested.  The landowner waited, taking care of the vines during this maturing period.  When the vines developed to the point of producing harvestable grapes, the landowner rented his vineyard out.

At that point in the parable, there are some unspoken, but clear assumptions and expectations of the vineyard owner.  The first is that he is the owner.  The renters are not the owners.  He assumes this is clear to the renters.  They don’t own anything in the vineyard.  They are hired only as caretakers and harvesters.  The renters are given full authority to work the vineyard, but not own the vineyard; or have any hope of ever owning anything in the vineyard.

The second unspoken expectation of the vineyard owner is that the renters will do the work of upkeep, vine dressing, and harvesting.  He expects this because he had made a considerable investment of time and money in those grapevines.  If the renters don’t do their work, they could not only lose the landowner a lot of money, but they’d destroy the vines and therefore any hope of a future harvest.  So the landowner expects the renters to take care of his property and crops.

That leads us to the final expectation of the vineyard owner, and that is that the renters will, when the grapes are harvested, pay him his profits.  The renters will certainly be paid for their hard work and diligence, but the landowner still expects that he will receive from the renters the return on his investment since he is, after all, the owner.

The tension is created in Jesus’ parable by the fact that the renters have an entirely different set of assumptions and expectations.  One of the foremost assumptions is that they, the renters, can become the owners.  That is the prime motivation behind all the renter’s actions.  It comes to a head when the vineyard owner sent his son, after all the other messengers and servants had either been beat up or killed by the renters.  The renters said, “This is the owners son.  Come on, let’s kill him, and his property will be OURS” (vs. 7).  The renters want what they don’t own, can’t own, but try to own by deadly force.

Another mis-assumption the renters make, countering the owner’s expectations, is that they don’t owe anybody anything--especially the vineyard owner.  They can have it all for themselves.  They don’t have to give the landowner what’s rightfully his.  They can keep it all.  They believe that since they did the work, they should keep it all to themselves.

Someone in Sunday School last week brought up the story about the three television evangelists who were talking about how much of the money that comes in that they keep.  One evangelist said that he drew a circle on the ground and threw the money in the air.  Whatever landed in the small circle was for the Lord, and the rest he kept for himself.

The second evangelist said she did the opposite: only he drew a larger circle and whatever landed outside the circle was for the Lord.  The third televangelist laughed and said, “I have the simplest method of all.  I just throw all the money in the air.  Whatever the Lord wants I let him take, and everything left that hits the ground is mine.  That seemed to be the same attitude of the renters in Jesus’ parable.

The final mis-assumption the renters make is that the owner had no authority over them, even though they were just renters.  The owner was too far away, and because of that distance was powerless to stop them from doing whatever they pleased.  The owner was too far away to stop them from keeping the grapes all to themselves, from cashing in the all the profits, and mistreating the messengers to the point of killing the son.


So, the two main points Jesus has woven into his parable follow these two questions:
1)  Who is the true and rightful owner?
2)  What is the relationship of the renters to the owner?

Everything gets terribly off center when we answer the first question with the wrong answer.  A large part  of the meaning of the parable has to do with this point.  If you don’t understand who the owner is, you will get a lot of other answers wrong as well.

Whenever you purchase a piece of property, or a house, one of the processes is running the property through a title search.  Everyone who has ever owned that piece of property will be listed on the title.  The title becomes a little piece of historical information.  But I will bet the family farm that on every title for every piece of property the original owner is not listed.  In fact, the only true owner is never listed.  That is, God Almighty.

Ultimately there is only one owner of everything that is.  When, after your deaths, you stand before God, you will have nothing with you but your immortal soul.  And even that, God owns and will ultimately decide its fate.  You can say, “But I owned a bunch of land and stuff.”  God will reply, “You owned nothing; it was all mine.”

Think of everything you own.  Bring it to mind.  Picture it in your head.  Imagine all the stuff about which you say, “Mine.”  And now, with that same picture in your mind, say to yourself, “This stuff is actually not mine; I don’t own any of it.  God owns all this, and God is only giving it to me to take care of so that I can give God what is his due.”  How easy is that to say?

A woman was out shopping one day and decided to stop for a cup of coffee.  She bought a tiny bag of cookies with her coffee, putting the cookies in her purse.  All the tables were filled.  There was one at which a man sat reading a newspaper.  She asked if she could share the table, and he motioned to the opposite chair.  She sat, opened her purse, took out a magazine and began reading.

After a while she looked up and reached for a cookie, only to see the man behind the newspaper also taking a cookie.  She glared at him.  He just smiled at her, and she resumed reading.  Moments later she reached for another cookie, just as the man took another one.  Now feeling quite angry, she stared at the one remaining cookie--whereupon the man reached over, broke the cookie in half and offered her a piece.  She grabbed it and stuffed it in her mouth, as the man smiled at her again, rose and left.

The woman was really steaming as she angrily opened her purse, her coffee break now ruined, to put her magazine away.  There she saw her identical bag of cookies.  All along she’d unknowingly been helping herself to the cookies belonging to the gracious man, thinking they were hers.

How often we treat God the same way, thinking that all that we have is ours, and God is taking something from us that belongs to us.  That’s why I said it may be too hard for us to really hear this parable.  We have been, for so long, answering the primary question wrong.  We have totally lost the truth about who is the owner, and what of anything we can really say, “Mine.”

That question begs so many other questions:
Am I willing to accept the position of renter and never owner?
Can I turn my illusions of ownership over to God?
Can I trust God to be a fair owner?
Can I pay the owner his due without grousing or regrets?
Can I be free of the temptation of grasping, trying to take over ownership?
How does God want me to change my attitude towards all my stuff as renter?

We can be like the fly who landed on the flypaper and said, “My flypaper.”  But when we do, the flypaper rightfully replies, “My fly!”  It is the fly who loses.  The consequences of your answers to these questions are drastic and life altering.  Answer them carefully.