Proper 22 -- Isaiah 5:1–7; Psalm 80:7–14; Philippians 3:14–21; Matthew 21:33–43
A sermon by The Rev. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, IL, on Sunday, October 5th, 2008
Ever lose something?
(I have to admit, I do, on a regular basis!)
Ever lose something that wasn’t even yours in the first place?
I had just such an experience – losing something that had been entrusted to me, something that wasn’t mine – back when I was a bike messenger in New York City over 30 years ago. For about two months, I was one of those bike messengers who carried packages and letters around town on my two wheels. I rode all over the island of Manhattan, from the very southern tip down near the Battery, all the way up to Harlem in the north.
One day, I lost an envelope I’d picked up at one location, and couldn’t find it when I got to the other end, to the place where I was to deliver it. It simply wasn’t there, and I couldn’t figure out what had happened to it.
So, I had to call into the office and tell them I’d lost this envelope. It was a humbling experience, one that I remember to this day. As I entered the office, I thought to myself, “Well, this is the end of my fledgling bike messenger career.” (As it turned out, the manager was quite understanding, as was the messenger service’s client….they agreed to generate another copy of whatever it was I was to deliver, I went and picked it up, and eventually got it to its destination in good order.)
Imagine, then, the embarrassing reaction of the chief priests and the elders, who are Jesus’ target in the parable we hear in our Gospel reading for today, as Jesus’ words, “Therefore, I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it,” land on their ears. In essence, what Jesus is saying to these proud, self-consumed leaders of the nation of Israel 2,000 years ago is, “You’re fired!”
“What you thought you owned, you chief priests and elders, what you thought was your private possession – the kingdom of God – is being torn out of your hands, and will be given to others,”, seems to be the “bottom line” of what Jesus is saying.
“You blew it!” might be another way we could summarize the meaning of Jesus’ harsh rebuke, putting it in today’s terms.
But the chief priests and elders ought to have known better….For, you see, our Old Testament reading from Isaiah 5: 1 – 7 parallels Jesus’ parable, heard today. Both Isaiah’s terms and Jesus’ terms are identical: “vineyard”, “hedge”, “tower”, “wine press”.
Moreover, the “bottom line” of both passages is also the same: The lack of fruitfulness leads directly to the removal of those who were supposed to tend the vineyard.
You see, both Isaiah and Jesus target their words to a proud-but-ignorant people, the Chosen People of God. For these stiff-necked people – both those who lived in the 8th century BC and those who lived in the 1st century AD - are proud of their heritage as children of Abraham, inheritors of the Covenant between God and His people.
Isaiah, writing in the eighth century BC, addresses the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel just as the Assyrians are poised to invade and destroy those 10 tribes who had separated from the southern two tribes[1] two hundred or so years before.
God’s judgment swoops down on these Northern Kingdom people, who remain ignorant of their own lack of justice, their own barren conduct which yields no fruit for the kingdom of God. In direct consequence of their ignorance, God’s judgment comes in the form of the Assyrian invasion, and the vineyard, God’s pleasant planting, is destroyed. Those who had been appointed to be caretakers of that vineyard are removed from its planting, from its tending, and from the enjoyment of the fruits of its abundance, forever.
Likewise, Jesus addresses the leaders of the people of Israel some 800 years later. Ah, how little had changed from Isaiah’s time to His….
Lack of righteousness, seen most clearly in the machinations that these same chief priests and elders will engage in only a few days hence, as they plot to murder Jesus in the cause of political and religious expediency, shows the barrenness of the vines they had been charged with tending. There is no fruit of righteousness, no evidence of the justice that God demands.
Jesus seems to connect Isaiah’s time with His own in the parable He spins out before them: for He chronicles the sad history of the persecution of the prophets by God’s Chosen People as he substitutes “servants” for “prophets”…. “When the season of fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants, to get his fruit; and the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another,” He says.
Perhaps these chief priests and elders had forgotten that they were merely tenants, not owners, of the vineyard. Maybe because the magnificent Temple – a Temple that was being built with human ingenuity and human toil - that was all around them deluded them into thinking that they were the owners of all they could see around them, titleholders to the vineyard.
But Jesus makes clear that they didn’t create the vineyard, nor did they set up a hedge to protect it, nor did they build the tower, nor dig its wine press.
They were merely appointed as its caretakers, its stewards.
Somehow, they must’ve mistaken their presence in the vineyard with ownership of it.
Or perhaps they knew they were merely tenants, but thought they could get away with a “fast one”, much the same way the people of Isaiah’s time might have thought they could fail to produce the fruits of God’s righteousness and justice, but maintain their status as caretakers of the vineyard.
As we reflect on the meaning and the applicability for us as 21st century believers, what lessons might we draw from Isaiah’s warning, and from Jesus’ parable, both of which are linked by symbolism and by circumstance? May I offer these two as suggestions to prompt our reflection:
- There is no “lease-with-option-to-buy” in the kingdom: We remain, by God’s design, stewards and caretakers of the kingdom that God has established, that God has provided for. We will never be owners of that kingdom, no matter how hard we work. As a result, we are called to operate within the rules God has established for the care of what belongs, ultimately, to Him.
- If God can’t work with us, He will work around us: The ancient Kingdom of Israel was destroyed, and much of its population deported, as the Assyrians swept in from the north and the east in 722 BC. Similarly, the people of Israel and their beloved Temple suffered defeat and destruction in 70 AD as the Roman army conquered Palestine at the end of the Jewish-Roman War.[2] (Perhaps Jesus’ warnings rang in the ears of the early Christian believers as they read Matthew’s accounting of Jesus’ parable….perhaps they drew parallels between Jesus’ parable and the events of 70 AD.) If we fail to produce the fruits of God’s righteousness and justice, God will remove us as tenants of His kingdom, and He will find others to carry out His work in the kingdom He has created.
May we, by the power of the Holy Spirit, recognize that we are appointed as stewards of God’s riches, not owners of them.
May we, by the power of the Holy Spirit, be faithful stewards of God’s kingdom.
May we, by the power of the Holy Spirit, not lose our place as tenants of the vineyard God has created and entrusted to us to care for.
AMEN.
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[1] Which had formed the Southern Kingdom of Judah.
[2] 66 – 70 AD
