Tenants of the Vineyard

Trinity 18 - Proper 22 - Year A – Eucharist – 8.x.23

(Isaiah 5.1-7; Philippians 3.4b-14; Matthew 21.33-46)

“Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard.” 

The words are Isaiah’s - from our first reading. But the whole story of God and of his relationship with his people is actually a love-song concerning his vineyard. God loves us. He wants us to be his people. He wants us to flourish. He wants to find in our lives the fruits which can grow when we are rooted in the love which God has for us.

Jesus takes up the image of the vineyard on a number of occasions. In recent weeks the Gospel readings we have used have given us the story of the labourers in the vineyard – where those who are called to work for the shortest time receive the same reward as those who have worked longest and through the heat of the day. We’ve heard as well the story of the vineyard owner who asks his two sons to go to work there: one says “yes,” but doesn’t go, the other refuses but in the end goes off to work – which of them does the will of his Father? What seem to be obvious interpretations of the parables are actually challenges to the way the world works and the way we think that God works. They’re challenges to us when we think we have everything worked out – but actually need to think again. They’re a challenge to us when we recognise that what we count as fairness might need to give way to justice. They’re a challenge when we recognise the limitations of our human psychology – if only we can dare to open ourselves to the mind of God.

Today’s parable is at first sight a re-telling by Jesus of the story we hear in our first reading from the prophecy of Isaiah. The vineyard which the owner has painstakingly dug out, cleared and planted – with a watch tower, a wine press and the expectation that it will in due course produce fruit in the grape harvest. 

But then there’s a difference. In Isaiah’s vineyard there grow only wild grapes: there’s failure - and that failure is the wrong fruit: it’s not producing what God wants – an image of the failure of God’s people in Isaiah’s time to act as God wants. All that can be done is to clear it of the vines. Even worse, it will become a wasteland and be overgrown. It’s an image which points to the defeat of the people of Judah by the Babylonian conquerors and their deportation into exile.

In the version of the story told by Jesus, there’s something different. The problem in this vineyard is not the failure of the harvest. It’s the problem of the people who are looking after the vineyard. The harvest comes. We assume that the tenants of the vineyard gather in the fruit. But then they won’t pay the rent. The landowner sends his servants to collect his dues – but the tenants simply beat them up, stone them, even kill them. Finally, the vineyard owner sends his own son – he expects they will respect him and do the right thing. But instead the tenants grab him, throw him out of the vineyard and kill him. We don’t have to think too hard to see the allusion to the Passion of Jesus himself – speaking God’s word, but rejected, taken outside the walls of the city and put to death on a Cross.

Jesus leaves his audience with a question: “when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” The answer he’s given is what we might expect: he’ll wreak vengeance on them – he’ll put them to death for their crime, and the vineyard will be put into the care of other people who will look after it better and pay their dues.

That’s the answer which Matthew tells us Jesus is given by those who hear his story. I wonder what you would say? Many people have interpreted it as saying it’s about the replacement of the Old Testament and its people with the people of the New Testament. God had previously worked with the Jews – but now his relationship is to be with Christians, with those who hear Jesus, with us. One people replacing another (it’s called supersessionism). But is that actually the judgment that God would make?

“He will put those wretches to a miserable death…” – and take away the land he’d given them. But that’s what the people say to Jesus. Jesus doesn’t say, you’re right. Jesus simply tells the story. Jesus gives us not an interpretation but a challenge – and that challenge might be to ask how we would act if we were the tenants who don’t want to pay their rent. What might we do to hold onto the things we want? How would we expect the vineyard owner to react? What do we think God makes of us when we are caught out doing the wrong thing?

Jesus’ telling of this parable is a story of rejection. But it’s not about the way he rejects us. It’s about the rejection of God’s way which we ourselves make. It’s about knowing what you should do, but refusing to do it. It’s about knowing how deliberately we get things wrong – and we know and expect that there’s a price to pay.

But the good news is that God’s way is not the way of rejection. It is about judgment: and the Gospel reading ends, “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.” They know that they have been found out. We have those times when we feel the weight of failure – the burden of guilt – pressing upon us like a stone which crushes. But the judgment of God is given with mercy – with a forgiveness which can make things new.

A few weeks ago I was looking at Caravaggio’s painting of the Conversion of St. Paul. Paul – then known as Saul – is on his way to persecute the Christians of Damascus. He’s zealous for his understanding of the Jewish Law – he’s employed by those chief priests and Pharisees who had confronted Jesus. But now he’s thrown from his horse, lying on the ground, blinded by a light from heaven, hearing the voice of Christ speak directly to him. “Who are you, Lord?” he cries. Reduced to helplessness, this is where his new journey must begin. Everything he’d known seems taken away. All his “gains,” he says in our second reading, he now counts as loss because of Christ. He needs to be made anew. He will find that it’s the people he had persecuted upon whom he will have to depend. There’s judgment for Saul, but also mercy. By the time he writes to the Philippians he is sharing his faith – and it’s summed up in the words we read today: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection…” It’s a resurrection power which is possible only because Jesus has taken the way of the Cross. We can share in Christ’s risen life, only because he has first been rejected by people like Saul – people like us. 

This final parable of the vineyard is a challenge – a challenge first to us. Are we happy with merely getting by in our daily lives? Is our aim simply to keep possession of the fruits we think belong to us, even if they’re not what they should and could be? Do we find ourselves in contention with other people, refusing the claims which might rightfully be made on us? 

Or can we recognise the place God’s plan and purpose might have for us? “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you…” says Jesus. Who is he saying that to? But the first aim of Jesus is to call people to God’s Kingdom. “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” These are the first words Matthew’s Gospel records Jesus saying as he begins his public ministry.

God is not wanting to take things away from us. God is actually calling us to his Kingdom. He’s calling us through Jesus – even as Jesus finds himself rejected. He’s calling us through Jesus by the sacrifice he will make on the Cross out of love for the world. He’s calling us when we feel rejected and worthless. He’s calling us to see those fruits our lives can bear but which we may not value.

At least some of the people who hear Jesus’ telling of the parable of the vineyard understand it to be told against them. But there’s something far greater when we see the place it has in God’s purpose and our calling. Jesus is calling us to see not that we are rejected but that we are called by Christ, that we can know him, that the power of his Resurrection will bring us to a new life with him.