Sermon - 18th Sunday After Pentecost (10/4/2020)
Is. 5:1-7; Ps. 80:7-15; Phil. 3:4b-14; Mt. 21:33-46
There is a very simple – and incorrect – reading of this parable. Perhaps you’ve heard it explained this way before. In this interpretation, God planted a vineyard. Isaiah says this vineyard is Israel. But they didn’t produce fruit, just wild grapes. And God tried. God sent God’s servants the prophets, but Israel rejected them. God sent the Son, and Israel killed him. And therefore, when Jesus said that God will take the vineyard away from you and give it to a people who will produce the fruits of the kingdom, he meant: The Jews were bad, but Christians are good.
And there is an equally simple, and equally incorrect, interpretation of our second reading from Paul today. Where Paul says, you know, I used to be the best of all the Jews. I was circumcised on the eighth day, born a Hebrew of Hebrews, from the tribe of Benjamin, zealous for the law, blameless in keeping kosher. But now I see that’s all rubbish compared to Jesus. And so it’s assumed that Paul means: I used to be a Jew, but I was wrong, so now I’m a Christian.
Here’s a general rule: Whenever a passage of Scripture seems to say to us, “We are good and they are bad,” we should probably read it again. Because if that’s what we see there, we’re probably missing the point. And especially when we assume that the text is saying that the “they” who are bad are the Jewish people. I think that, given the history of Christian attitudes towards Jews, and especially the terrible things Martin Luther said and that many Lutherans did in Germany, we as Lutherans have a special responsibility not to jump to that conclusion.
And, as a matter of fact, it’s just wrong – both Jesus and Paul thought of themselves as Jews through and through. It was only much later that church and synagogue began to separate, probably toward the very end of the first century or the beginning of the second century, depending on the place. But neither Jesus nor Paul made those kinds of distinctions between Jews and Christians. And so that clearly is not the right interpretation of our readings today.
To see this, let’s remember the context of today’s gospel reading, which immediately follows last Sunday’s reading. You will remember that Jesus is at the Temple in Jerusalem. He has entered Jerusalem on a donkey, like the prophesied Messiah. He has cleansed the Temple. He has returned to the Temple, and the Temple leaders have come to ask Jesus: By what authority do you do these things? Who do you think you are, coming in here upending tables? Just what do you think gives you the authority to do this?
And in response Jesus tells 3 parables. We had one last week, we have one this week, and we’ll have the final one next week. And these are all harsh parables. Because Jesus is addressing them to the Temple authorities to explain his act of cleansing the Temple. He is speaking these parables to the authorities who think that they’re in charge of the vineyard. The chief priests and the Pharisees even realize that at the end of today’s reading – oh, he’s telling this parable about us. Not all Jews in general, but to the authorities in charge of the Temple, And he is speaking to the crowds in the Temple who are eagerly watching this debate – which is more substantive than our modern presidential debates, I think, but probably just as antagonistic.
What Jesus says to them is: God planted the vineyard to obtain a harvest. God wants something from this vineyard. Isaiah said it: God wanted justice, but the people produced bloodshed; God wanted righteousness, but instead God heard a cry – like the cry of the enslaved in Egypt, which reaches to heaven and calls God into action.
And so God sent the servants, the prophets. And eventually God sent the Son – to obtain the fruits of the vineyard, justice, and righteousness. Instead, what God receives from humans is bloodshed, and the cry of Jesus from the cross.
Jesus tells this pointed story of a vineyard and its unbelievably bloodthirsty and self-centered tenants. And Jesus poses the question to the temple authorities: This vineyard owner who has put up with so much abuse – when the vineyard owner comes, what do you think the vineyard owner will do? For the Temple authorities, the answer is immediate and certain: He will put those wretches to a miserable death. That’s what the authorities do to troublemakers. Unsaid: like you, Jesus.
And in this response, the Temple authorities reveal exactly what the problem is. They assume that because they are in charge, they are right, and whoever disagrees with them must be bad. They think they’re right and Jesus is wrong. And this is exactly how the prophets and the Son get killed: when people with power assume they’re right and the troublemaker is wrong, and take matters into their own hands. It’s a problem when Christians do this, it’s a problem when Jews do it, it’s a problem when Muslims or Buddhists or atheists do it. It’s a problem when human beings do it – when they assume they’re right and others are wrong and this justifies their violence.
But if, in the parable, the landowner is God and the vineyard is God’s people, when the prophets and then the Son are killed – we know what the Temple authorities think any reasonable vineyard owner would do. But what does this owner of the vineyard actually do?
Well, the gospel says, after the tenants killed the Son, they locked themselves in a room out of fear. And then suddenly, through the locked door, the Son appeared in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” You see my hands and my side, but, that’s all behind us now. The question now is, what are we going to do together about producing some fruit?
That is not the ending of the story anyone was expecting.
Jesus says we should have seen it coming: Do you not know the Psalm that we still sing every year at Easter: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone of the whole structure? This is God’s doing, and we are amazed with joy.” This is who God has always been, the God of Jews and the God of Christians alike, the God who is found in the one who is rejected, in the least of these, in the poor and the sick and the broken, even among the dead. This is where God always can be found, and where God is producing the fruits of the kingdom. Always has, always does, even now.
And this is what Paul is trying to say in today’s second reading: I thought I was doing everything right, and yet on the road to Damascus when I met Jesus risen from the dead, I realized that I had been doing everything wrong. I thought that I was righteous, but when I saw the risen Jesus I understood: I’m not the righteous one; he is.
And so, Paul says, now the only thing I want to know is not the great stuff I can do, but I want to know Christ, and his resurrection – the power of God to bring life out of death, to produce the fruits of the kingdom, not in my good works, but where no one expected them to grow. And I’m even willing to share in the sufferings of Christ, if that means I can share in his resurrection. I’m even willing to be the one who is rejected myself, the one who is considered a troublemaker by the proper authorities, the one who is associated with the excluded and the poor and the unimportant and the different. Because that’s where God is.
Paul hastens to add that he still hasn’t figured it all out. He doesn’t know what it all means yet. He only knows that it all goes back to the resurrection – it all goes back to the power of God to reverse and upend anything in order to bring life and growth. This is the foundation, the cornerstone, of our faith: that the vineyard owner we serve is singlemindedly intent on producing the fruit of the kingdom in us. And no matter what we do, the vineyard owner is not going to take no for an answer.