Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
October 5, 2008
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Psalm 19
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46
If there is one thing you can say about Jesus over these past few weeks, he has been relentless in challenging religious authorities. Today we hear another vineyard story and Jesus’ target audience continues to be the chief priests and elders of the temple; religious authorities, so to speak, who make the rules which govern religious law and religious practice, and see to it that they are maintained and obeyed. And if we could only raise one point which Jesus is making in these stories, it would have to be about authority. Authority which makes a claim on God’s authority by assuming ownership of things which belong to God. Authority which misappropriates the authority God grants to his human creatures, especially by religious leaders whose role it is to represent him. In today’s gospel account God grants authority to tenants to manage his vineyard. It is the job of tenants to be good and responsible stewards of the resources God provides to them in the vineyard. People God can rely on to bring forth good fruit from their labor which will be put to good use by the owner.
This is the problem Jesus addresses in our gospel lesson today. The problem lies with these so-called temple authorities. They see themselves as owners, instead of responsible tenants and good stewards of the authority God has given them. They become their own authority and shun the authority of their God. As owners and keepers of the faith and traditions of the Temple they do not take well to those who would question, or challenge, or assume their authority. Anyone who tries, does so at his own risk. And if you remember, Jesus risked everything last week when the chief priests and elders asked him by whose authority he was teaching in the Temple. By aligning himself with the authority given by God to John the Baptist, Jesus makes it clear that his authority also comes exclusively from God. And we all know that it won’t be long before Jesus pays the ultimate price for taking that risk, for challenging religious authorities who no longer serve God’s purpose for his vineyard and God’s purposes for them as his tenants.
The story Jesus tells about God’s vineyard in our gospel lesson today is quite simple and straightforward. And the message Jesus intends for temple authorities to hear is the same message we need to hear as tenants of God’s church in this world. It is a message meant for anyone who believes that they can claim complete ownership of anything in this life or have ultimate authority or control over it. It is a message which came to Wall Street this past week, a message which is being heard by those who have believed in their rightful ownership and sovereign authority over natural resources like energy and environment, and human resources which come from the making and spending, saving and investing and borrowing and lending of money which comes from our hard-earned and not so hard-earned labor in God’s vineyard. Which, of course, makes a gospel lesson some 2000 years old so completely relevant for us in today’s world.
But before we look at this story’s relevance for us and for the chief priests and elders of Jesus’ day, we need to look at the story itself to see how incredibly simple and transparent the message is for anyone who will hear it. This particular vineyard story is commonly called the story of the “evil tenants,” and there is a good reason for that. The story is not about the owner of the vineyard, nor is it about the vineyard itself; this story is about the tenants who have been given the responsibility for producing the fruit of the vineyard from the good seeds the owner has planted in the vineyard.
Jesus’ parable actually takes the form of a simple allegory. The vineyard represents Israel. The landlord represents God who planted his seed in the people whom he chose to bear the fruit of his kingdom on this earth. But in case this is beginning to sound anti-Semitic, we need to know that the tenants in this story are not the good people of Israel; they are the religious authorities of Israel who have come to see themselves as the owners of the vineyard God has leased to them and they have misled their people in the managing of it. The slaves who the owner has sent to this vineyard are the prophets and sages who, throughout the ages, have been ridiculed and scorned, beaten and imprisoned and put to death by these leaders, these tenants who would not give up their harvest to serve God’s good purpose for it in the world. Exasperated by the way his tenants are treating his messengers, the owner finally decides to send his own Son to receive the good fruit of the vineyard which he, himself, will bear to the world. The owner believes that surely his tenants will respect his Son. But, as we well know, the tenants kill even his Son.
Well, the chief priests and elders who hear Jesus’ parable that day find it simple enough to understand, and they find much to like about it, until they recognize themselves in it. After telling his story, Jesus asks these temple authorities what they think the owner of the vineyard should do to those tenants when he returns for himself. They all agree the tenants should all be put to a miserable death and the owner should lease the vineyard to other tenants who WILL give him the fruit of the harvest. Little do they know, however, that they are condemning themselves by their own words. But here is the Good News of our gospel lesson today. In the end, these tenants, these chief priests and elders, will not be condemned by their own words, nor will God leave them to die for their greed and their cruelty to the other messengers he has sent. At worst, they will be removed as God’s tenants in his vineyard. And at best, they might not be spared a miserable death, but they will be spared an everlasting death. Because God has sent his final messenger, his Son, into the world to redeem such sinners as these. And by Jesus’ own management of the vineyard, by his very life and death and resurrection, new tenants are placed in charge and they are charged with producing the good fruit of God’s kingdom by the very seeds he plants and harvests in them.
And who are these new tenants of God’s vineyard. They are us. All three gospel accounts tell this same story and all three gospel writers claim the followers of Jesus to be the new tenants who will continue to bear fruit for the kingdom. Matthew tells us that God will continue to build his vineyard on the stone the previous builders rejected, his Son, Jesus. Jesus has become the cornerstone of the watchtower in the vineyard, and anyone who dares to claim ownership of the vineyard or mistreat those whom God sends into it to for their self-serving purposes will become broken people, even crushed by the consequences of their actions.
Pretty hard words, I’d say. But amazingly accurate in describing the political and economic circumstances we are experiencing in our nation today. Economic greed and mismanagement by tenants placed in charge to manage our financial resources are now crushing our economy and finding themselves to be broken by it. New tenants have taken charge of the situation and they are looking for a quick fix. But it is clear that a quick fix is not going to work. Like the chief priests and elders who think the tenants should be killed for their actions and their inaction some of these new tenants are calling for resignations and firings. But it will take more than getting rid of former tenants to restore the resources of our economic vineyard. It will take a change in the way our tenants manage them.
As a people of God who claim to be his tenants in the church and in the world, we know that good fruit produced in the vineyards of God’s world must be put to use for God’s good purpose. Tenants who are put into place to manage God’s vineyards must recognize that the resources of God’s vineyard do not belong to them, nor are they meant to serve their own purposes. God owns the natural and human resources which produce the fruit of this kingdom. Tenants who are given charge of them must also recognize that they do not have absolute authority to manage the natural and human resources of this vineyard; their authority comes from a higher source, the source who created these resources be used for his good purposes for all of creation. For people of God, those good purposes are laid out for us in all of scripture; by the prophets and sages God sent to his people in Hebrew scripture and by the example of Jesus and the work of his apostles in Christian scripture.
In today’s scripture lessons we can see how Moses brought God’s good purpose to us in the commandments he gave to Moses. The Law, which gives us a set of standards for living our life as God would have us live, by the quality of our relationship with God and with each other. We see God’s purpose for good in today’s Psalm in the beauty and wonder of his Creation. We hear Paul speak of God’s good purpose for us in the letting go of our notion of ownership and control and authority over the things of this life. Things which are meant to be used not for our own self-centered, self-serving purposes, but for God’s purpose in this world. Money and power and possessions which Paul calls “rubbish” in light of God’s goodness revealed in Christ. Finally, we see God’s good purpose being served in the point Jesus makes in telling the story of the evil tenants. And his point can be found, quite literally, in his self-reference as the cornerstone of his Father’s vineyard.
Unlike the foundation stone, the cornerstone is the last stone to be place in a building. It is the stone which connects all parts of the building and holds it together. In ancient times the cornerstone was placed at the very top of a building for everyone to see. It was a focal point, a thing of beauty which gave people a sense of connection with it. When Jesus speaks of himself as the cornerstone, he acknowledges himself to be the person around which all things in this world are connected and held together for a common purpose and a common good. That common purpose is God’s purpose for good in creation, and that common good is the good we are and the good we do for each other in the world, precisely because we are creatures of God’s vineyard on this earth, connected to each other by our adoption as children of God. But the center of God’s goodness can only hold if we hold each other in a place which is central to our common well-being.
As a people of God and tenants of God’s vineyard we need to remember that whenever we remove ourselves from the central purpose of our life, from the authority of God and from our connectedness to each other, we become like the tenants in Jesus’ story. We become self-possessed. We become possessive about our money and things; we become possessive in our relationships with family and friends, we become possessive about our work, seeking the best advantage or the greatest benefit for our personal good, instead of the good of our clients and the people we work with; we even become possessive about our church. We begin calling it, “my church,” and soon the church becomes about “me” and what makes me happy and self-satisfied, instead of being part of the body of Christ and the good we can be and do for God’s kingdom on this earth. A sad thing begins to happen as we become more self-possessed and possessive, we begin to feel empty. And the only way we believe we can fill our empty places is by possessing more money and power and things and people. A commentator on today’s gospel said it best. “When we become too full of ourselves, we become too empty for anything else” It is our emptiness which makes us greedy for our own need to be served,” and that makes us incapable of recognizing the need of others, and the resources we have for serving them.
The message I believe we need to hear in Jesus’ story of the evil tenants is this: We are God’s tenants. He has planted in each of us a vineyard capable of harvesting great good for the sake of our common good in the his earthly vineyard. The natural and human resources God has blessed us with must not only serve our personal good, but our common good, as well. Else we become like evil tenants who will ultimately pay the price of being broken and even crushed by our own sense of authority and control and self-serving possessiveness. Like the tenants of our current political and financial institutions we will continue to look for rescue and bailout from the very people we neglect to care for and care about in this vineyard we all belong to. A vineyard meant to produce the fruit of the kingdom for all of God’s people in this world.
As the newest tenants of the vineyard God has planted in us and the vineyards God has planted in this world, we have been given the awesome responsibility to bear the fruits of our life and the fruits of our labor to serve God’s purposes for them. Because we are called by God to be his tenants in the vineyards of this world we need to live the life God has given us to live and do the work God gives us to do, remembering that we are accountable to a higher authority than our own for managing the human and natural resources God provides to us for serving our common good. Because all that we have belongs to God. We belong to God. And we belong to each other.