Introduction
Emmanuel Lutheran Church, east of Beatrice, Nebraska, invited me to preach and preside at worship on Oct. 2, 2011, the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Readings
Isaiah 5:1–7
Psalm 80:7–15, antiphon vv.14–15
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33–46
Homily
Let us pray …. May the words of my mouth and the meditations in our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Jesus’s parables have a sneaky quality to them. Not because He sets out to be devious, but because He takes the ordinary parts of daily living and transforms them into vessels filled to the brim with the power and insights of His Father’s desires for His people.
Today’s Gospel shares with us Jesus’s well-known teaching, the Parable of the Vineyard. It’s familiar, but it’s probably not fair to call it a beloved parable. It is one of His teachings that speaks a little too clearly for our comfort, that leads us to squirm beneath the pressure of its message.
As we listen to the story, we cannot help but see our own faces reflected in the angry and twisted expressions of the tenants. Like them, we have worked hard at home, on the job, in the church. So we feel we have earned the fruits of our labors. But then, the landowner—God Himself—sends first His slaves and finally His own Son to claim what is rightfully His—the harvest from the vineyard.
That doesn’t sit well with the tenants. And so, after killing the slaves, they turn on the landowner’s Son as well. This brings down upon them the judgment of the landowner. At the end of the parable Jesus leaves His listeners, both then and now, to ponder the shape and the depth of that judgment.
Of course, we don’t really work in a vineyard, although saying that in Nebraska is not quite as safe as it once was. A quick Google check reveals that Nebraska has twenty-five wineries scattered all over the state. So maybe you do work in a vineyard, or you know someone who does.
That little familiarity we might have with vineyards makes it easier for us to see why Jesus, along with Isaiah and the Psalmist before him, settles on the daily workings of a vineyard as an image and expression of God’s dealings with us, His people. As His children, we live together in communities God has chosen to cultivate. Raising up communities that live according to His will requires patience, the same kind of patience one needs when cultivating grapes.
The lives of the tenants in the vineyard help us to appreciate this long-term project. They must find the right soil, the best light, and the land with appropriate moisture. They must pick the varieties of grapes that thrive in the local climate. They must plant tender, young vines and train them, prune them, bind them gently to supports, and then wait for several years before the first bunches of grapes appear. They must hope that mold and pests do not overrun the vineyard and kill off the vines. Then they must wait for the right time for harvesting to capture the grapes at their peak of flavor and sweetness. Finally, they must know how to press the grapes, to extract their juice, and how to encourage the fermentation that changes juice into wine.
A good vinedresser lives with the vines, getting to know them, their environment, and their responses to those changing conditions. It takes knowledge and skill to make fine wine to please the palate. We can see how a sense of ownership can grow, how tenant vinedressers can come to think of the vines as their own possessions. They can lose sight of the truth that the owner of the land also owns the vines, the fruit that grows on them, and the wine that flows from the winery.
That’s the way it is with us. We live in a country that recognizes our right to own property. One of our country’s founders, Thomas Jefferson, took to heart the thoughts of John Locke, who had claimed in the 1600s that “life, liberty, and property” were the natural rights of human beings. Jefferson changed the emphasis slightly in the Declaration of Independence, citing our “unalienable rights … [of] life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Even with that change, we in this country still cling to our shared belief that God, the source of natural rights, has given us the right to own property. Much of our law is written to define who owns property and how they may use it. We have procedures for how property can be taken for the public good, regulations to govern how we may use our property, a tax code to cover the levies imposed on various forms of property, and estate laws that shape the ways we pass on property when we die.
But in the midst all of the work we have put into gathering property and possessions and into protecting and defending our ownership, we often lose sight of the truth that Jesus speaks to us in this parable. Our world, its abundance, and even our own lives are not ours; they are the possessions of God our Father. He is the landowner and we are the tenants He has called to work in His vineyard.
On the one hand, that sounds a little harsh, a little extreme. Isn’t there something that we can really call our own? Isn’t there some thing we can ultimately control and dispose of as we choose. Isn’t this my life? Don’t I own my house? Haven’t I earned this money? Isn’t this my body? No, not really.
We did not choose to be born. We cannot make out of nothing the matter and the energy that comprise our world. We can shape and adapt and use and misuse what God has made. But we cannot become gods ourselves, beings who create and redeem and sanctify.
That’s the hard and the good truth. It is good to be creatures of God and to be the tenants in His vineyard. We are blessed to be the ones our Father has chosen to care for this creation, to share the Good News of His Son, and to live in the community empowered by their Holy Spirit.
The parable tells us about God’s judgment and about His blessing. The point at which judgment and blessing part ways comes when we face the question about how we will live as tenants. Will we be the ones who welcome the Son of the landowner or the ones who seize Him, throw Him out of the vineyard, and kill Him.
As Jesus says to His listeners, we hear Him say to us,
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 (Matthew 21:43, NRSV).
One way to look at these “fruits of the kingdom” is to return to the vineyard, to the grapes God causes to grow from His vines. A branch of the vine is the Church, grafted onto the base stock—the trunk—that is Israel, the chosen people of God. We are the grapes that sprout from this vine. By the grace of God we grow lush and full. He harvests us and presses us and ferments us into wine.
By planting, pruning, picking, pressing, and fermenting us through good times and bad, through blessing and trial, God makes us follow in the path of His Son. He was pressed upon the cross, so that His blood can be poured out as wine to heal the world of its sin. He was baked upon the cross, so that His body can be broken as bread to feed all who hunger for righteousness.
When God makes us to be the fruit of the kingdom, then by His own hands, He breaks us and pours us out so that others may see what He has done with us. This is what leads them, by the Spirit, to join us in saying, “Jesus, we give you all that have. We give you ourselves. Harvest us and gather us into your Father’s kingdom.” Amen.