Awakening & Letting Go
Sermon preached by Dn. James Wilcox on Sunday, August 30, 2026
Readings are from 1 Cor. 16:13-24; Matt. 21:33-42
When we hear Gospel accounts such as we just heard, we often have a habit of believing that WE are the good guys, and that we’d never take the side of the Pharisees or the other religious leaders had we lived back then. I’d like to offer that today’s Gospel lesson is less about the history of Jesus’ adversaries, and more about learning the inner workings of our own hearts.
Upton Sinclair once wrote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” [1] In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus squares off with the religious leaders of his time whose mindset is exactly that.
To review — and i must admit this is a very curious parable — a certain homeowner planted a vineyard and rented the land to some tenants who would work the vineyard to earn their keep. When the harvest came the landowner sent to servants to retrieve the grapes. It is assumed that the workers would have had these ready. But the tenants took the the landowner’s servants, instead, and had them beaten and killed. When the landowner sent another wave of servants to retrieve the grapes, the tenants, again, took them, beat them, and had them killed. Finally, the landowner sends one of his own — his son — whom he assumes they will surely respect. But this time the servants do even worse. They devise a scheme to have the son killed so they can steal the son’s inheritance from the landowner. And it is at this juncture in the story that Jesus leaves his hearers with an interesting question. “When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” The Pharisees and teachers of the law respond by saying, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”
What they do not realize, is that at these words they’ve condemned themselves. In the parable God is clearly depicted as the landowner, the vineyard is Israel, the servants sent to retrieve the harvest are the prophets of old, and the Son who was sent afterward represents Jesus Christ. Which leaves the Pharisees to surmise that they are tenants who put them to death. What is NOT recorded in today’s Gospel are the words Jesus speaks to them in verse them afterward: “Therefore I tell you that the Kingdom of God will be taken from you and will be given to a people bearing its fruit.”
It’s no surprise that this is the moment in Jesus’ public ministry when the religious leaders begin searching for a means of doing away with Jesus. We always look for a way to get rid of the person who challenges the golden calf of our most cherished falsehoods. If our first response is to do away with someone because we don’t like how they challenge us to think more critically about our actions, we have lost the plot. It’s quite clear that the teachers of the Law and the Chief priests had lost the plot, as they had established their own certainties about the coming Messiah. And Jesus certainly wasn’t what they expected. There’s more to this, of course. The Pharisees and Chief priests were an upper and controlling class. They had the upper hand in their societies and getting them to admit they’re wrong in their belief might mean they have to relinquish a good measure of that power. Which is exactly what Christ would ask us to do, as He does time and time again in the Gospel accounts. So here again the Upton Sinclair quote is quite poignant: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
So how does one rattle themselves awake from such a walking slumber? If we look at the numerous times Jesus asks us to let go of the certainty of our belief like the Pharisees hold in today’s Gospel lesson, we find we are often unprepared to do what He asks of us. Once we’ve become really CERTAIN that we are right, it is difficult dislodge that very belief.
In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus we find one of the most revealing accounts about the nature of our own stubborn belief. We see the rich man begging to be released from the inferno of his own belief, that he might warn his relatives about the horror of this fiery place. Father Abraham tells him: “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ He said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’” [2]
Elsewhere in the Gospels we encounter a different rich man. “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” Jesus’ response? “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” [3] And the Scripture tells us “When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.” [4]
When we are faced with hard truths such as these, we can deny it like the people in the Gospel accounts, or we can seek to do away with Jesus and his teachings like the Pharisees do. But if we truly wish to awaken ourselves … how exactly do we accomplish this?
We can learn to simply let go. Let go of your ego. Let go of power. Let go of your perceived power. Let go of the need to control. Let go of the need to be right. Learn to put yourself in others shoes. It is in this process of learning to let go, that we can initiate a spiritual awakening within. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once wrote that, “…the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts.” [5] He didn’t learn this lesson sitting in the comfort of his own home. It was a lesson he learned when he was imprisoned by the state. It was from his prison cell that something awakened with him and he learned to let go: “In my most evil moments,” he wrote of himself, “I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good.” … “Formerly [I] never forgave anyone. [I] judged people without mercy… [I] have come to realize [my] own weakness — and [I] can therefore understand the weakness of others.” [6]
Friends, we do not need to wait until we are imprisoned to begin this process. We can start right now.. Christ tells us that the Kingdom of God is WITHIN YOU. God is simply waiting for you to begin the process.
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[1] Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked. (reprint: University of California Press, 1994), 109.
[2] Luke 16:29-31. NRSVue
[3] Matt. 19:16. NRSVue
[4] Matt. 19:22. NRSVue
[5] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956, An Experiment in Literary Investigation. trans. Thomas P. Whitney & Harry Willets. (New York, NY: Harper & Row, Publishers Inc. 1985), 312.
[6] Ibid, 312.