When Pastor Susan and I are working out the
preaching schedule, we don’t look at the lessons. The schedule is determined by more practical
things such as who is in town, what committees are meeting, when I have a class
project due, when is James out to sea.
But never have we looked at the lessons when deciding who is going to
preach on which day, because I assure you, if we had, I would have avoided today.
Martin Luther once said that sometimes you
have to squeeze a biblical passage until it leaks the gospel. I’m fairly certain he had this Gospel lesson
in mind. Yowzer.
There is a vineyard owner and wicked
tenants. Really wicked. They refuse to pay their rent. They kill servant upon servant. They even go so far as to kill the vineyard
owner’s son…all in order to avoid writing that grapey check! Seems a little extreme doesn’t it? Everyone in this story is crazy! The tenants are crazy. Who goes about the business of murder…and
over and over again…just to avoid paying the rent? The landowner is crazy…he sends servants,
then more servants, and then rather than involving the police or the mob or an
army, he sends his son. Alone. What did the landowner expect? And the son…who goes alone into the midst of
these crazy people. Surely, he’s a
little crazy, too. Walking right into
his own death like that. Just because
his father asked him to. (Can you
imagine that dinner conversation? “Son,
when you’ve finished your daily chores, I have one more little job for you
today…see, I have these renters…”)
We can look at this Gospel lesson as
allegory, for in Matthew’s time, it would certainly have been so. The vineyard owner is God, the servants are
all the prophets (Micah, Amos, Isaiah, just to name a few), the son is
Jesus. We are the tenants. Wait.
In Matthew’s time, the people who listened to
this parable would have understood that the tenants were actually the house of
Israel. And that the temple had been
destroyed (this was written 70 years after the life of Jesus of Nazareth,
remember?) And while this is important
to understanding our Christian tradition throughout the ages, as my Goddaddy
reminded me this week, “Church is not primarily a history lesson.”
So maybe allegory is not the most helpful way
to look at this passage.
Here’s where Luther’s squeezing, squashing, and wringing of
the passage comes into play, in this day and age, what the heck does this
parable have to do with us?
Let’s look carefully at verses 45 and 43.
Verse 45:
“When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they
realized that he was speaking about them.”
Is Jesus talking about us? The chief priests and the Pharisees were the
pious and the religious leaders of their time…they dutifully read the
scriptures and attended worship and made sacrifices in “the proper way”…and
they were absolutely convinced that their way of living was the right one. That they had the rulebook and that it was
their job to condemn anyone who didn’t play by their rules.
Are we the Pharisees? Heh. She smokes.
He’s a drunk. I heard that she
tried to kill herself. He’s such a wreck
he can’t pay his bills…and he sure doesn’t tithe 10%. She goes to church, but I know she swears
like a sailor in the bar on Saturday night.
The altar cloth is on backwards…again.
Ugh, he’s so fat…glutton. I think
he’s gay. She doesn’t look like, sound
like, think like us. What are they doing here?
Verse 43:
“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.” This parable isn’t about authority. It isn’t about who’s in charge. Is God in charge? Or have we decided that we are the ones
holding the reigns? No, it’s not about who holds the authority. This parable is
about our willingness to act in a way that bears good fruit and our willingness
to repent
(to return to regret to apologize)
when we’ve screwed it up.
And we do screw it up quite regularly don’t
we? If our job is to bear good fruit, if
we are the people responsible for proclaiming that Jesus is the truth, if we
are to stand at the corner of justice and mercy and our call is to be humble
and loving while we stand there saying “Jesus is Lord, follow his life and his
teachings and his example” and we are to do this selflessly with no judgment
for our neighbors, with no condemnation in our hearts, with no regard for the
“me first!” attitude of our nation, our religion, our economic marketplace or
for the state of the altar cloths…if we are to be about the business of bearing
good fruit, if that is our job, we
are screwing it up. All. the. time.
Do we hear the word and respond? Or do we hear the word and try to figure out
how it’s not speaking to us? Or how we
are already “doing okay by the Gospel.”
When did “okay” become the standard ?
Theologian Karoline Lewis asks, “Are we
willing to say, first person and all, that God has entrusted the Kingdom of God
to our tending while admitting that our perception of the importance of God’s
realm lacks the magnitude and holiness that God demands and deserves?” In other words, are we willing to admit that
God has entrusted the nurture and care of God’s kingdom to us. We who are chronically
trying to underplay the importance of the job with which we have been tasked
and who dismiss the greatness and goodness of our Creator?
We are
the Pharisees. We are the tenants in
this parable. We have been given this
tremendous gift which is the kingdom of God, and we have been charged with its
keeping. Are we…are you…am I…bearing good fruit?
How are we taking care of the vineyard into
which God has invited us? For if the
vineyard is the Kingdom of God, that care is revealed in the ways in which we
bear with one another. It is manifested
in the ways we value the gifts we have been given…do we value them enough to
share them with the world? It is
expressed in the ways we deal with the stranger…the one who appears in our
midst and begs welcome.
Are we doing the work? Are we using God’s rulebook or our own? Are we about the business of welcome or
exclusion? Are we proclaiming Good News
or are we keeping it for ourselves and for those whom we deem worthy.
Are we bearing good fruit?
Amen.
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