Sermon preached at St. Alban's, Spirit Lake, on October 5, 2008
(Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, BCP Lectionary)
by the Rev. Carl D. Mann

Texts:   Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:7-14
Philippians 3:14-21
Matthew 21:33-43

When I was a senior in high school, I was chosen as one of three people by my classmates to speak at my graduation. The three of us got together and decided on a theme, which was to speak about the school itself from our perspective of the past, present and future, and I was selected to talk about the present.

So I wrote a story about a fictitious boy and his observations of the current state of affairs in education in general and his school in particular. Now I have to be honest, at the time, I wasn’t too thrilled about things in my school. I believed that there was an apathetic attitude which existed at all levels; the kids, the teachers, and the parents. So I used examples from my own experience to describe the problem, and then offered some possible solutions with the idea that we all had better get to fixing the problem and not just treating or ignoring the symptoms. In short, I guess I was telling a parable.

Well, the example that I used to show the apathy of the teachers was based on an event that had occurred between my English teacher and me the previous year. Now I didn’t use names because the idea wasn’t to get even with the teacher for how she had treated me but rather to show that apathy was present in all areas of education. And this probably would have worked except for the fact that all of our speeches had to be run through the English department to check for proper grammar and spelling. Unfortunately, for me, the teacher who was assigned the task of reviewing our speeches was the same teacher whom I had described in my story. When she read my speech she recognized the situation that I had used, and in her mind’s eye, not only had I pointed my finger at her and named her directly but I had put it on a large billboard on Interstate 380 in bright, flashing, neon lights! Suffice it to say that Jesus and I had a lot in common afterwards. Although I wasn’t crucified, I took the verbal equivalent of a thorough scourging by the authorities.

What I had attempted to do in my speech was very similar to what Jesus is doing in this parable, which is telling a story in such a way as to convince the listener of a particular problem and, if the shoe fit, to convict the listener of their involvement with the intent of bringing about a solution.

Now the traditional teaching of this parable is that the vineyard is Israel and the tenants are the chief priests and Pharisees. The slaves are the prophets, and of course the son is none other than Jesus. So in this parable when Jesus asks the chief priests and the Pharisees what the owner of the vineyard will do when he arrives, they correctly answer that the owner will put the tenants to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will produce the produce at the proper time. And by giving the correct answer they have convicted themselves of being the tenants in the parable which is allegedly attested to by the following verse which we didn’t read this morning; “When the chief priests and Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them.”

Now I find it interesting that Matthew has used the word ‘perceived.’ After they heard the story it was their understanding that Jesus had singled them out as the bad guys. When Jesus said tenants they saw in bright flashing neon lights, “chief priests and Pharisees!” But they may have misunderstood the story because of their proximity. It’s sort of like the warning on a rear view mirror. Instead of saying, “Objects are closer than they appear” it would read, “Objects may appear closer than they really are.”

Now as I said before, it has been conventional wisdom to understand the vineyard as Israel. In Isaiah this morning, we read that the Lord had a little vineyard on a very fertile hill, and did everything possible in order for it to produce good fruit. But instead of sweet juicy grapes it produced wild grapes, which if you’ve ever been ignorant enough to sample, such as myself, you will find that there are very few things in life that can make a face pucker to such an extreme. And of course the wild grapes represent the rebelliousness of Israel against the Lord by chasing after the gods of their neighboring countries instead of being loyal to His covenant. So because the fruit was no good the Lord allowed the protective hedge to be destroyed, the vineyard to be devoured and trampled into the ground, and made desolate from a lack of moisture being overgrown with briers and thorns which is what happened to Israel in reality when they were conquered by Babylon.

This is the scriptural background from which Jesus is basing his own parable of the wicked tenants. But Jesus has a knack for looking at things from a different angle. He is a master of perception.

The key phrase is in the last verse where he states, “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.” In other words, the vineyard is no longer Israel in history but rather it is the kingdom of God. This is a huge shift in dynamics!

Previously, it had been perceived that Israel was the vineyard and the Israelites were the fruit; the chosen people of God. Time and again they turned their backs to God in spite of the warnings of the prophets. But with the coming of the Son, the vineyard is now depicted as the kingdom of God, and the chosen people are in the role of the tenants to which is has been leased.

Now it’s important for us to understand that the kingdom of God is not a physical place or location but rather a concept of God’s sovereignty; the kingdom of God is God’s will being played out in the world through His mercy and justice. God chose Israel to be the tenants of this concept in that as good stewards they would cultivate this divine concept to fruition. And the fruit that was expected to be produced by Israel was for them to be the active agents of God’s will, proclaiming to the entire world that there was only one God, and that it was His desire to be reconciled with it, restoring the whole of creation to what it was originally intended to be. They were to proclaim the rule of God by being a living example, receiving and dispensing God’s justice and mercy in thought, word and deed. Not just among themselves but to Jew and Gentile alike. The nation of Israel, and Jerusalem in particular, was to be like a light shining bright upon a hill as a perpetual beacon guiding everyone into the loving embrace of Almighty God.

Now I am not suggesting that the traditional teaching of this parable is entirely untrue because the chief priests and Pharisees perceived that Jesus was referring to them and the shoe fit rather well. But what I am suggesting is that the message to the chief priests and the Pharisees as well as to all of the chosen people of Israel is the same for us as Christians today; the kingdom of God is not reserved for just one group of people. It is God’s will that all of us live in, through, and by His kingdom and it is our responsibility to proclaim this to the world!

Through Jesus Christ, the cornerstone of God’s justice and mercy, we all have been given the opportunity to be good stewards of God’s kingdom, and it is in our best interest to proclaim its coming to the world which is the fruit of the kingdom. This is the work of the Church that we are called to do and it is through this labor in the love of the Father, through the saving grace of the Son, and by the power of the Holy Spirit that He is able to establish His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Gloria Patri