This makes three consecutive Sundays of Jesus telling parables about vineyards. Two weeks ago it was the owner who hired people throughout the day, and paid the latecomers the full wage just like the early risers. Last week it was the two sons he asked to work in his vineyard, the first of whom said “no” but changed his mind and went, and the second who said “yes” but didn’t come through. And now this, making it a trilogy of vineyard parables, all from Matthew 20 and 21.
Seems like something you should have noticed, doesn’t it? Don’t feel bad, it took me a while and I’m the one writing the darn sermons. Next time these come around the three-year cycle, I think I should plan on taking the whole month to do on-location research at Blue Sky and Russell Hill and Walker’s Bluff and Pomona Winery. Because good preaching is just that important.
There are, of course, hundreds of sermons to be found in any of these parables. There are also some common threads that run through all of them. One of those common threads is the idea of inversion and replacement: as Jesus put it in the first of the trio, “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” It was the people who came late who received the landowner’s generosity; the early-birds received the same thing but they were unhappy while the latecomers were rejoicing. In the second parable, the son who started on the right track ended wrong, and the son who started wrong ended well. And in this parable, the original tenants fail wickedly and are replaced by others who will bring forth a harvest for the owner. See that pattern of inversion?
We should pay attention to context, and particularly to whom Jesus is speaking. The first parable about the full wage for latecomers is addressed to his disciples. He is training them to be evangelists. They will go to the ends of the earth. One of the tricky things they’ll have to deal with will be that they’re used to being the chosen people set apart, but now the Gentiles have to be fully included. The Jewish people have been worshipping God all these generations, but now all of a sudden the Gentiles are included. Ever since Abraham, really ever since Adam and Eve, this is exactly what God has been promising to do. But it was a profound change, and change is unsettling, and if you read the Acts of the Apostles you’ll see how much the early Christians struggled with this change. This parable must have been often discussed in those debates: "we’re the early workers, we’re the ones who’ve been in the vineyard all along. We don’t want to be like these guys in the parable, who were grumbly and discontent when the Master was generous to the latecomers." We work for a generous God, and that’s not something to complain about! The Gentiles are new arrivals, but they are full members of the Body of Christ. Jesus ends that parable saying the last will be first, and the first last. But in the story, they all get the same thing. And I hope you remember what that is.
The same inversion theme is found in the last two parables, but now Jesus is talking to the priests and elders, the religious leaders. They wouldn’t have missed his meaning. He was calling them out as that second son, who promised to work in the vineyard but didn’t follow through. They had the appearance of faithfulness and religion, but not the reality. Their words didn’t match their actions, and we all know which of the two speaks more loudly. Who is the first son, then, who began in rebellion but had a change of heart? Jesus specifically mentions tax collectors and prostitutes, the kind of people the priests and elders looked down on as terrible sinners. It’s all those who have lived in darkness but now seen a great light. It’s all those who might have taken some terribly wrong turns in life but find healing and conversion in Christ.
And finally, as a sort of climax of these three, we hear this bracing story about the wicked tenants. If Jesus was clear and unmistakeable in the last parable, this one is even more so. Everyone who heard this parable knew that Israel was the vineyard of the Lord. We just heard the Prophet Isaiah using that very image. And the parable does not paint a nice picture of the people in charge. They’re tenants, but they want to be the owners. They don’t give what is due. When the owner sends messengers, they kill them. This is the story of Israel. In the next chapter of Matthew Jesus will say, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill prophets and stone those who are sent to you!”
Finally, the owner of the vineyard sends his son, with the heartbreaking reasoning that “surely they will respect my son!” And you know what happens then. “What,” Jesus asks, “do you think the owner will do to those wicked tenants,” who have killed his son? They give the obvious answer: “He will put those wicked men to a wicked end.” But Jesus doesn’t accept that answer. “Have you never read in the Scriptures, ‘the stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone?’” hinting that when the Son is put to death, all is not lost after all. That’s when the real inversion will be seen. But now, he says, “the Kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.”
Let me just take a moment to say that interpreting this in some kind of anti-Jewish way is not only immoral, it’s idiotic. Jesus can’t be saying that the Kingdom of God is taken away from the Jewish people, because most of the first people to receive it were Jewish. Perhaps you’ve heard of the Twelve Apostles? Sadly, that does have to be said. We Christians have a long, sinful history of blaming on the Jews what should be piercing our own hearts.
So, let’s let it pierce. Because in 2014, aren’t we the ones who’ve been working all day supposedly under the landowner’s employ? Aren’t we at least sometimes the second son who said he’d work in the vineyard but never really showed up? Aren’t we the tenants who haven’t produced the fruit we should? And what about the blood of the Son? If we’re going to say that Jesus died for our sins, and really mean it, then that’s on us too.
None of that sounds like good news. But it isn’t a message of despair; it’s a call to conversion. And I hope no one thinks we are entirely barren of fruit for the Kingdom. There are dozens of children in Gallatin County in their most critical growth years who are getting a better diet this weekend because of the Church, because of you. There are people who have heat and water today because of you, because of the Church. There are people sitting here right now, and I hope you’re one of them, who have found strength and healing and inspiration in the Gospel that is proclaimed when we gather as the Body of Christ.
But if we shouldn’t despair and think ourselves worthless, neither should we break our arms patting ourselves on the back too hard. There is a challenge in these words of Jesus, and we should take up that challenge with courage and joy. To be welcoming to the newcomer, to make sure every person who encounters us is made to feel like a full part of things, given a full wage. We could do better at that. Let’s do better at that! To make our lives, our actions, every day of the week, more fully match the words we speak inside this church on the weekend… we could do better at that. Let’s do better at that! And to be tenants who represent the true Lord, the one who will return, the one in whose name we labor until he returns, to bear fruit for the Kingdom of God… let’s take up that challenge with courage and joy.
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