Matthew 21:33-46
Can you picture Jesus preaching this parable? Can you imagine him speaking to a crowd of listeners in the temple court?
There on the edge of the crowd stand the high priests and the learned teachers: The religious leaders of Israel. And here sits Jesus – telling them a story: A story about themselves. Just a moment ago we heard how that story went:
We heard how a wealthy landowner sent agents to collect his share of the profits only to have them beaten up and sent away by the workers: Those entrusted with the vineyard’s care.
Finally the “naive” landowner sends his own son, and they kill him. “What will the lord of the vineyard do with his wicked workers?” Jesus asks. And with that the sermon is over….
You can imagine how that story went over with the religious establishment of Israel. No one likes to be labeled a “murderer”, especially religious leaders in a religious building.
The sermon was over and Jesus’ congregation began to organize a lynch mob…apparently the parable got to them.
Well, if we’re honest we’ll have to admit the parable gets to us too. We understand the story. We should, for though it is a story of Israel, it is nonetheless our story as well, and the story of the whole human race.
We have always rejected the prophets. Trace your way back through history from Oscar Romero and Martin Luther King Jr to Thomas More and Joan of Arc, back all the way to John the Baptist, Jeremiah, Amos and Elijah. We have a long record of rejecting the prophets of God.
Some we’ve killed…
Some we’ve stoned…
And some we have merely treated with silent reproach.
For generations we have tried to stop the prophets from speaking. Time and time again God has sent prophets to us and we have chased them away or we have simply walked away ourselves choosing not to be in the company of such radicals.
When you think about it, no one loves a prophet…
Prophets spot the gap between what we believe and how we behave and drive the Word of God right in between.
Prophets measure the distance between what we do and what God demands.
God wills peace on earth, then “why” says the prophet do you make or accept war in God’s vineyard?
God has given a commandment that “you shall not kill”, then “why” says the prophet do you stand idly by while your neighbor goes hungry in God’s abundant vineyard?
God says “Love your neighbor”, then “why” says the prophet have congregations of every age circled the wagons when times were tough instead of arising as the servant church God has called them to be?
God says, “Go and be a blessing to the nations”, then “why” says the prophet do you seek the blessing for yourself over and against being the blessing?
In short, we are the ones who reject God’s living Word…
We are the tenants in the vineyard who deserve eviction.
And yet I believe that this story is less about the wicked tenants and more about the absurdly patient landowner. Whereas Isaiah’s “beloved” planter uprooted his vineyard in anger when it produced “wild grapes”, the owner in Jesus’ parable does just the opposite.
He sends agent after agent who are beaten, humiliated and in some cases, even killed. Finally, as if watching a scary movie where we know something terrible awaits the protagonist just around the corner, we see the owner send his son, who himself is also murdered.
Normally an owner would move quickly with overwhelming force to claim what is rightfully his…
So what’s wrong with this owner?
How many beatings and deaths will he put up with?
The owner from Isaiah 5, the first reading this morning, knows what to do: Uproot and completely destroy: Leave no one standing.
Surely this story from Jesus’ lips to our ears is completely absurd. And yet if it is absurd, it is only absurd as a testimony to God’s astounding mercy. Like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, the owner here is patient with a love that will not let us go…
By our logic…
The story should have ended with a massacre. Even Martin Luther, in a rather bleak mood, once responded, “If I were as our Lord God and … people were as disobedient as they now be, I would knock the world in pieces”.
By our logic…
The workers should have been slaughtered and the vineyard turned over to new sharecroppers.
By our logic…
This parable should end violently: an Eye for an eye…a tooth for a tooth… death for death.
But Jesus will not be roped in to that kind of logic…
Knowing full well that he too will endure a grievous act of violence on a vineyard cross…thus putting an end once and for all to violence and death…
Jesus goes on to talk about a stone – a rejected stone - a rejected stone that will become the chief cornerstone. The stone upon which God’s Kingdom will be built...
God’s Kingdom…
Where a lion and lamb lie down together…
Where swords are beaten into ploughshares…
Where all share everything in common and no-one goes without…
Where the naked are clothed and the hungry are fed…
Where one’s is judged by one’s character rather than the color of one’s skin, the money in one’s bank account or the orientation of one’s life.
Murderous vineyard workers and building blocks – perhaps the strangest mixed metaphor in all of Scripture… and yet here it is placed before us.
A mixed metaphor that confronts and challenges everything we take for granted about our world and about our God…
A mixed metaphor that convicts and comforts…
A mixed metaphor that acknowledges humanity’s immense capacity for evil and God’s immense capacity to create a servant church from the dust of humanity’s sin…
A servant church led by such people as
St. Dietrich Bonhoeffer of Breslau, Germany
St. Martin Luther King Jr. of Birmingham, Alabama
St. Oscar Romero of San Salvador
St. –fill in your name-- Go ahead fill in your name. God already has…
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment