Proper22A

October 4, 2020

We’ve been spending a lot of time in vineyards recently. This is the third Sunday in a row that we’ve heard Jesus tell a parable set in a vineyard. Two weeks ago, we heard the story of the laborers in the vineyard. Last week, the story of the of the father who asked his two sons to go to the vineyard. 

Speaking of vineyards…

Quite apart from the parables we are hearing, I’m thinking of the 17 vineyards in Napa and Sonoma that have been damaged by the Glass Fire, and the many more that are under threat—a stark reminder of our failure as human beings to be good stewards of the creation with which God entrusted us.

Today, yet another vineyard parable, but a particularly challenging one for us as 21^stcentury Christians. The challenge is not in figuring out what it means. That’s pretty clear from the context, as Jesus’ listeners, the chief priests and the pharisees, got the point immediately.

The chief priests and pharisees knew that Jesus was talking about them. We, as readers, are likely to think the same thing, that Jesus is talking about the chief priests and pharisees. Or worse, to conform to nearly two thousand years of Christian interpretation of this parable that interprets it as an allegory. In this reading, the landowner is God; the vineyard is the world, or Israel, or the Promised Land. The tenants are the Jews; the slaves the prophets sent by God to urge the Jews back to faithfulness, and of course, the son sent at the last is Jesus who was executed by the Jews. That’s a deeply problematic interpretation, one with fateful consequences for the Jewish people, and in an age when we see a resurgence of Anti-Semitism, it is an interpretation we should resist and problematize.

One way of doing that is to resist the temptation to leave the parable’s interpretation in the first century, but to let it challenge us, to place ourselves in the role of the listener, not the reader. What might it mean if Jesus is directing the parable at us and at our context?

I would like to go back to the reading from Isaiah, “the song of the vineyard” because clearly this image of Israel as God’s vineyard undergirds the parable. 

As I think about the world in which we live today, the world we are passing on to the next generations, I think about all of the ways we have been poor stewards of the all that we have been given. The climate catastrophe that we’ve know was coming and is now here; the pandemic that has killed more than 200000 in this nation, thrown millions out of work, increased inequities, and now finally, has struck at the top of our political system, the racism and white supremacy that threat our nation, I wonder who the wicked tenants are.

Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard: 

My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill. 

He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines; 

he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it; 

he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.

And, then, at the end:

he expected justice,
but saw bloodshed; 

righteousness,
but heard a cry!

            God expected justice, but saw bloodshed, righteousness, but heard a cry.

            We should hear the indictment in Isaiah and in Matthew, as an indictment of us, not of some other group that we wish to demonize.

            It’s a hard message because even when we feel like we are the victims of injustice, that it is our views, or ourselves that are marginalized, and demonized, it is so easy to turn that language back on others, to respond in kind. But the tenants in the parable were not just protecting their own interests, they were operating as if it all were a zero-sum game. And in God’s economy, it’s never that, it’s never a zero-sum game.

            Think again about the parable, about the landowner, and about the song of the vineyard. Think about the generous, loving actions of God in Isaiah 5. All of the hard work, the care taken, to clear the land, build a wall and watchtower, plant the grapes. In the parable, similar effort. In the parable, after all that work, the landowner goes off and lets it to tenants. But when they don’t pay up, he doesn’t just evict them and find new tenants; he tries again and again to get a response from them. Finally, he sends his son, his beloved son, thinking that they wouldn’t harm him, that they would respect him.

            So, I ask again, what do we know about the landowner? He’s creative, generous, and patient. Given all that, what will he do next? The answer given in the gospel reading is an answer from the perspective of a dog-eat-dog worldview. I get mine. I get yours, too, unless you are stronger than me. We could translate the story very easily into our own economy and world

But are those the values of the reign of God? Is that what Jesus preached? What does Jesus teach in Matthew? The Sermon on the Mount, turning the other cheek, loving one’s enemy, if someone asks you for a cloak, give him your coat as well. 

How might we answer the question: What would the landowner do, from this set of values, trying to live out the values of the Reign of God? We might want to look at it from the perspective of the landowner, to imagine what we might, or ought to do, in a similar situation. But I’m not sure that’s the appropriate angle to take.

I think that on one level, the question Jesus asks challenges us to reconsider how we think about God. Can we imagine a God whose grace and mercy extend to the unimaginable, beyond our wildest dreams? Can we imagine a God so creative, so patient as the landowner in the parable? A God who has made us stewards of a lovely and bountiful vineyard, and asks us to give back to God, what is owed, and to be as generous to others as God has been generous to us? 

We know that we are loved of God. We know that God has given us so very much. What would it be like to approach the world, our relationships with others, our stance in these difficult times, with an openness to sharing as generously of ourselves and what we’ve been given, as God shares generously with us? What would it be like to recognize and confess all the ways we have squandered all that God has given us, sought to keep it as our own, protected our interests at the expense of others?