One of my facebook friends is a
minister in another Christian denomination. Every now and then I'll
see a post about how awful it is that there are people who oppose
same sex marriage, or bigots who oppose gender assignment surgery for
children who don't feel comfortable with their biologic sex,
or people who feel that we should have
no barriers to immigration or citizenship. Needless to say, my
friend is pro-abortion, pro-gun confiscation, anti-police – you
name the left wing cause of the day, my friend embraces it. My
facebook friend is very passionate and vocal about these positions.
And my friend claims all of these positions are based on gospel
values. My friend is a tenant in the vineyard.
When I read one of Jesus' parables, I
try to look for the challenge that is there. This is one of those
where it's hard at first to see the challenge. It's hard to read
this parable and not think that Jesus is talking about the Jews, who
rejected him, and us Christians, who have inherited the privilege of
working in the vineyard, because we haven't rejected him.
The Church does us a favor here,
though, in having us listen to the Old Testament reading and the
Psalm, both about vineyards. In Isaiah, the prophet is reflecting on
the history of the people of Israel, who have been so carefully
protected and built up by God, and who continue to rebel. Now God
has had enough. He is going to quit taking care of the vineyard and
let it go to ruin.
In the psalm, the writer is reflecting
on what seems to be God's withdrawing his protection from his people.
This is one of those psalms of lamentation, which ends with the
prayer that God will restore his watchful care.
The people who were listening to Jesus
probably knew these two writings by heart; they heard them read every
year in the synagogue, and if you were a Jewish man, you made an
effort to study scripture and understand it. The people listening
were quite conscious that they had become the neglected vineyard, the
vineyard in ruins. They were subject to the Romans, they were ruled
by a tyrant – and if you lived in Jerusalem, you could always see
some poor soul hanging from a cross. The people listening to Jesus
longed for the God who had abandoned them to return.
Jesus tells a vineyard parable but
this time with a twist. The vineyard owner has put his property in
the hands of tenant farmers. These tenants would work the vineyard
and then divide the crop according to the formula that had been
agreed upon; usually they would get one third and the landlord would
get two thirds. Not a way to get rich, but certainly you could raise
a family and have a little left over. If you made your share into
wine, you could probably make even more money.
But these tenant farmers decide to
take the whole crop, and very foolishly, it seems, beat and kill the
messengers of the owner, and ultimately kill his Son.
But if you think about it, the real
fool here is the owner. Who in his right mind would send a second
delegation when the first had been treated in that way? And who
would then send his Son into that situation, thinking, “They will
respect my Son.” Probably you and I wouldn't.
Now in the gospel it says Jesus
addressed this parable to the chief priests and the elders. But when
he asks the question, “What will the landowner do to those tenants
when he comes?” who is answering the question? Jesus preached to
crowds; he didn't pull the chief priests and elders into a room where
only they could hear. In fact, I suspect there weren't any chief
priests or elders in the crowd. Jesus probably addressed the parable
to them, but they were not the ones who answered his question. The
crowd did. And when he replies, “The kingdom of God will be taken
away from you” he is still rhetorically addressing the Chief
Priests and the elders. It is their failure he is pointing to, not
that of the people who are following him, who, after all, are mostly
Jews from the lower classes – farmers, fishermen, tradespeople –
even tax collectors and prostitutes.
I think this is important, because
then the condemnation becomes a lesson for us as well. The leaders
of the people had been given ample time to lead the people into the
kingdom of Heaven, but had failed over and over again. From what we
know, the priestly caste was pretty corrupt, in contrast to the
Pharisees, who were misguided, but very sincere. The priests tended
to be Sadducees, who rejected the idea of resurrection and were
favored by Herod. They were simply preying on the people and playing
at religion.
As we will learn further in the
Gospels, Jesus explicitly promises his apostles that they will be the
ones who will rule over the people who are in the kingdom of heaven.
But the coming of Jesus is something the apostles themselves come to
realize is tied up in a new kind of priesthood – a priesthood of
the whole people. It's no longer the job of the leadership to
cultivate the vineyard; it is the job of, as St Peter says, “a
chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special
possession...”
God did not take the vineyard away
from the Jews and give it to Christians. God took the vineyard away
from the chief priests and the elders, and put it into our hands.
And not just our hands, the hands of everyone who wants to do God's
will upon the earth. The real message is that no human being can
blame someone else for the destruction of the vineyard, for the
failure of the vineyard to yield fruit. The parable is telling us
that human beings are meant to bring about God's kingdom; we all are
tenants, and if we decide we should be the owners and that is our
mindset, then we too have killed the son and deserve the punishment
the landowner will mete out.
The parable tells us that the
landowner, Our Father, has a great deal of patience, patience beyond
what any human being would have. But even God's patience runs out.
So the question we should ask ourselves this week is, “What will we
have to show the vineyard owner when he comes to collect his share?
How are we building up the kingdom of heaven?”
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