I.Theme – Look carefully at the vineyard you are cultivating!
"Vineyards with view of Auvers" – Van Gogh (1890)
The lectionary readings are here or individually:
Old Testament – Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm – Psalm 80:7-14 Page 703, BCP
Epistle –Philippians 3:4b-14
Gospel – Matthew 21:33-46
The main motif in 3 of the 4 readings is about the vineyard which beginning in the Old Testament refers to Israel and by the Gospel to those tending it. Corruption is evident in Israel in the 8th Century BC and in 30AD with Christ. In Christ time the vineyard represents all places where we have been called by God to produce the fruits of the kingdom. The real villains move from Israel as a country to specific groups cited by Matthew.
The Isaiah reading is one of the oldest parables in the Bible. This song of the vineyard is a parable and a prophetic attack on corrupt Israel. It begins as a love song, singing of a deep love that is giving and caring, moves on to convey disillusionment, and then to express anger and a withdrawal of love and care. The coming destruction (verses 5-6) results from the people’s failure to do what God "expected," and more literally and poignantly, what God "hoped for" (verses 2, 4, 7). God doesn’t destroy the vineyard directly. Instead, what he described was simply the removal of his care and protection of the vineyard, the careful work done earlier.
The Psalm is a carryover from the Old Testament reading. The same imagery of Israel as the vine in God’s vineyard is used here. This is the exile’s lament over the vineyard now in ruins. It is an expression of abandonment and a lament psalm pleading for restoration. But while Isaiah wanted to spur the people repent, the psalmist sought to spur God to repent.
The Phillippians reading is Paul’s personal testimony beginning with his Jewish credentials and his achievements in the Jewish faith – a Pharisee, a keeper of the Law, a persecutor of the church. Yet what he discovered was that a right relationship with God was based not on Law but on a right relationship with Jesus Christ.
Greater than any of these qualifications and attributes is to know Christ. This is no head knowledge (as, he implies, is the knowledge of the law) but means taking on a way of life, one that includes suffering. Here is the famous metaphor of the race, when the runner knows that to dwell on a mistake in the last lap is to distract her from focusing mind and energy on the last few yards. Behind this is Paul’s anxiety about another view strongly at work in the young church, that the only approach to the new faith is through the old. To receive the grace of God in Christ you do not need to be ‘primed’ with the Law and all its observances.
The Gospel reading is the famous Parable of the Wicked Tenants which continues the vineyard setting. The story is of an absent landowner who sends two sets of servants to collect rents.
For the first set, they beat one, killed another and stone. The second set of servants met the same fate. He next sent his son .Believing the son to be the sole surviving heir, they kill him in hope of gaining the vineyard for themselves. If a landowner died without an heir, the land passed to the first claimant, so by killing the son (presumably the only one), the tenants become landowners and they become free.
The vineyard is the nation of Israel and the owner is God. The cultivators are the religious leaders of Israel, who, as it were, had charge for God of the welfare of the nation. The messengers who were sent successively are the prophets sent by God and so often rejected and killed. The son who came last is none other than Jesus himself.
What is the parable saying? That Christ knew what lay ahead of him, he knew death on the cross awaited him. Jesus’ point seems to be that his opponents (Pharisees) have mistaken their leadership over Israel for outright ownership of Israel. His main concern is the simple fact that they are responsible for pointing Israel to God, yet they have instead pointed her to themselves.
This was a risqué story and it caused a lot of muttering amongst the Pharisees. They were not bad people (except for the fanatical few that any religion seems to harbor), indeed the very opposite, but Jesus suggests that their kind of goodness has now been superseded. Others will manage the vineyard including the church.
The ‘moral’ is consistent with Paul’s teaching about the legalism that tended to characterize the religious people of the day. Then Jesus infuriates his hearers by quoting one of their texts as if it was as much his – the stone that the builders rejected (Psalm 118:22) but giving them a new dimension in making it refer to himself.
The parable serves to show how the temple leaders have been entrusted by God and how they have rebelled against God. It also prophesies their violent rejection of the Son. Jesus’ opponents understand all of this. They get the parable, but they reject its truth.
We are expected to live under the authority of the Owner; to produce and give back the proper fruit. Sin is not primarily doing bad things, but an attitude of selfishness that has no need for God. We must constantly be on the guard if we are not producing the fruits that will expand the Kingdom of God. A new owner may be waiting in the wings.
We today often find it profoundly worrying when other people lay claim to religion, whether it is people of another culture living in our midst or people claiming to have found alternatives in other spiritualities. By all means let’s keep our critical faculties, but let us also hold open the possibility that they have found something that deepens and enlivens our own beliefs and practices.
II. Summary
Old Testament – Isaiah 5:1-7
Usually when a biblical passage begins with reference to a song, it is a joyful or triumphant occasion. In Isaiah 5:1-7, the tone is judgment.
The setting is 735BC. Israel and Judah are imaged elsewhere as the vineyard or vine that God has planted. Since grapes were a staple food, used both for wine and preserved as raisins for use throughout the year, the grape harvest was extremely important and needed to be protected from animals, birds, and even theft
In v1-2, Isaiah, the prophet is the best friend of the bridegroom and functions a messenger, of maintaining communication between the bridal pair and then of leading the bride home.
Vineyard’ was a metaphor for the bride which was familiar to all his hearers.
The owner of the vineyard (God) made every possible preparation for a fruitful harvest — picking a good site, preparing the land, choosing the best plants, arranging for protection and for processing the grapes. But what he got was "wild grapes," or more literally, "stinking things" (verses 2, 4). The portrayal of God here is significant. In particular, what God "expected" or "hoped for" does not happen; in short, God does not guarantee the results.
In v3-4 is the complaint. Speaker now changes to Yahweh who in the first person who appeals to the people of Judah and Jerusalem for their verdict. Audience is asked to pass judgment on the vineyard.
Now, singing as the friend, the prophet asks the question, what more could I have done? The poor results cannot be the fault of the owner of the vineyard. Why then did it yield only bad fruit? The fault lies elsewhere.
Where was the breakdown? Verse 3 offers only two possibilities: “Judge between me and my vineyard.” The failure lies either with the owner (God) or with the vineyard (Israel)
The words used in vv.5-6 recall images of war – devour, trample, make waste – so as the people have caused blood to be shed through injustice so they will be punished violently.
The coming destruction (verses 5-6) results from the people’s failure to do what God "expected," and more literally and poignantly, what God "hoped for" (verses 2, 4, 7). That is, the failure to enact and embody justice and righteousness invites catastrophe
It is interesting that the response was not that he would tear up the vines and destroy them, although that might have been expected.
Instead, what he described was simply the removal of his care and protection of the vineyard, the careful work done earlier. He would remove the protecting wall and hedge, This would allow the animals to have free run of the vineyard, not only allowing them to eat the fruit but also putting the plants themselves at risk of damage. Anyone may go into it to cut off grapes or cut off vines, perhaps to use as fuel.
The vineyard will be abandoned and without care or cultivation, it will be overrun and eventually be destroyed. The owner finally said that he would withhold rain from the vineyard. It would quickly dawn on them that only God can withhold rain.
The fruit they were to produce was to fulfill their calling in the world as God’s people by doing torah, that is by following God’s instructions for how to live as God’s people in God’s world
The people had proved unfaithful, negating the faithful and hopeful acts of the Lord. What Isaiah stresses is that that judgment may be part of the Lord’s careful preparation and waiting for the fullness of his people.
There are two requirements -justice and righteousness, as essential embodiments of the people of Yahweh. He looked for justice and saw bloodshed for righteousness but heard cries of distress.
Here justice is not a legal category, but is a way to talk about equality and fairness arising from a concern for others that is willing to place human need and relationship as the highest priority of life flowing from relationship with God. In the fullest sense, to "do justice" is the same thing as loving one’s neighbor as oneself.
In the last verse, the Prophet reveals
-Israel is the vineyard
-People of Judah are the vines
Isaiah emphasizes in this parable the direct and intimate relationship between God and his chosen people, which ought to be expressed in mutual love and loyalty. But the people have broken this covenant of love. God expected a response of faithfulness and righteousness. Instead of this, the corruption of the law is a daily occurrence
Psalm – Psalm 80:7-14 Page 703, BCP
Psalm 80, contains a "plot" similar to the one found in Isaiah 5:2-6. Indeed, Psalm 80 assumes the destruction that is anticipated in Isaiah 5:5-6. The question asked by the psalmist in 80:12 – "Why have you broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?" – is answered in Isaiah 5:1-7. In short, the people have invited their own destruction by the failure to do justice and righteousness.
Psalm 80 pleads for the restoration of the vine/people. The Isaiah tradition itself also uses the vine imagery both to explain the consequences of disobedience ( verse 4), as well as to plead for the people’s obedience (verse 5) and to anticipate an eventual restoration (verse 6).
The three sections of the psalm are thus defined as a cry to God to save (verses 1-3), followed by the identity of the plight of the northern kingdom (verses 4-7), and concluding with the familiar imagery of Israel as the vine planted by God (verses 8-19). Only the last section is covered it readings
The latter part of the psalm (vv. 8-19) includes vv. 8-13 which deliberately picks up the imagery and content of Isaiah’s song of the vineyard (Isa 5:1-7). The latter speaks of God as a vineyard owner and Israel as his vineyard, which having yielded stinking things instead of fine grapes, is broken, abandoned and left to the wild animals and plants. In Psalm 80 this image is turned on its head and made into a lament: ‘Why then have you broken down its walls …’ (v. 12). That then leads into the final plea to God (vv. 14-19). Israel’s only hope lies in the ‘turning’, one could translate ‘repenting’, of God.
These verses focus on the imagery or allegory of Israel as the vine planted by God. The story begins with the Red Sea deliverance of the people from Egypt (verse 8), and leads into the blessing of being rooted and branching out in prosperity from the sea to the River throughout the land to which they are led by God (verses 8-13).
Similar to Isaiah’s famous parable of the vineyard in Isaiah 5, Psalm 80 recalls God’s history of faithful love by making the analogy between that history and a gardener planting a vineyard. But while Isaiah wanted to spur the people repent, the psalmist sought to spur God to repent: "Turn again, O God of hosts; look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand planted" (vv. 14-15).
The rhetorical strategy in Isaiah 5 (or Micah 6) has the parental God saying to the rebellious children, "After all the faithful love that I have shown you, why are you rebelling against me?" Here, the rhetorical strategy has the suffering children saying to the parental God, "After all the faithful love that you have shown us, why are you allowing us to suffer?"
The cry of the psalmist returns to call forth God’s favor to look down upon the vine and have regard to its favor after being burned and cut down (verses 14-16).
Through this psalm we hear the all too familiar story of people falling away from the God of salvation and trusting in human reliance. The lament is real and the depth of rejection is deeply felt. The plea to God to save is desperate. The lament and agony of these words and the hope of returning to God’s promise of life is to be heralded in this season.
Epistle – Philippians 3:4b-14
Paul had planted the Church in Philippi (Acts 16) and seemed to have developed an intimate and continuing relationship with the congregation. The tone of the letter is more of a "continue to do what you are doing, but even more"-tone than one of castigation or warning. Second, there are passages where Paul identifies and warns the congregation against opponents. We don’t know who they are precisely, but he calls them those who would "mutilate the flesh" (3:2). Most scholars think of a Jewish-Christian party who came into Philippi after Paul departed and proclaimed the necessity of submitting to Jewish ritual (i.e., circumcision) before the Gospel could be received
In any case, because of Paul’s radically creative interpretation of the Gospel (it is equally available to Jew and Greek), we can understand the continuing nature of opposition to him
The particular passage before us is part of a larger section where Paul warns the church about false teachers, 3:1-21. Unlike the members of the circumcision party who continually trouble the church with their work-based piety, Paul has willingly abandoned his reliance on law-obedience to access the fullness of God’s promised new life, and now looks to God’s grace in Christ, and this through faith.
Paul has warned his readers about those who try to convince them that being a Christian requires acceptance of Jewish law, including circumcision. True circumcision is of the heart – and not of the “flesh”, i.e. following legal precepts, as in Judaism. Inner circumcision is what is required of us.
The target of his attack is not so much Jews as Jewish Christians, who dispute Paul’s legitimacy and object to his attitude to scripture. They demanded that scripture and its commands were infallible and saw Paul as watering down God’s word in the interests of winning people to his way.
In order to gain a true perspective on our journey through life, we have to be able to engage our past. Honest reflection involves recognizing those things of which we are ashamed, as well as those ways in which we have experienced privilege, or made significant achievements. Paul recognizes that things which he valued in the past, which gave him status, are no longer important to him. . Not that Paul has left the past completely behind. He still argues from scripture like a Pharisee (that is, as someone who is skilled in the study and use of scripture), he is still a member of the people Israel; he is still zealous in his behavior. What has changed for Paul is the standard by which he evaluates his life. For Paul, that standard is now his understanding of the life pattern established by Christ.
1 Reversal of values. Being in Christ carries with it its own values
The presence of Christ in their midst means that worldly values of achievement and accomplishment, of recognition and reward, are not the focus of life. Indeed, Paul uses a very strong term (“rubbish”) to describe the value of his pre-Christian past in comparison with today.
He is not abandoning scripture, let alone abandoning God, but he is abandoning a theology based on seeking to please God by zealous protection of divine laws. He is abandoning a theology which sees God as obsessed with his own laws and preoccupied with becoming angry and offended when things are not done in exactly the prescribed way. Such theology is a projection of human egotism.
In Christ he has found an understanding and embodiment of God which says that God’s being is characterized by love and generosity which is pained and angered by human sin and harm and seeks to reconcile people from their estrangement and their captivity – including their captivity to religion.
2. Priority of knowing and living in conformity to Christ who was doing the work of reconciling
In other passages Paul speaks of this knowledge as a kind of "union" with Christ, It is a relationship of intimacy It is applying Christ daily in our lives.
“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal 2:19-20).
Knowledge comes through experience of sharing in Christ’s suffering and death both in baptism and in daily life. The product is righteousness, a relationship of the intimacy with God.
The sharing of that life includes the vision of resurrection and hope. It also consists of engagement in mission and ministry, compassion and reaching out, as God in Christ reaches out. That can include suffering, if that is what this solidarity demands, but it is not the blind suffering of the fanatic, but, as he expresses it elsewhere, the travail so that something new may be born, the pain entailed in enabling more and more people to experience God’s generosity. This means going all the way with Christ, through pain and suffering if need be and beyond that ultimately into hope.
3. It is a process – a race, battle, even a boxing match (I Cor. 9:25ff). This language of knowledge of the divine is of central importance in Christian spirituality, for it implies that we don’t have at this instant everything that we would want or need with regard to the divine knowledge. What he has now is the beginning of his salvation – Resurrection in future
Paul refuses to claim he has graduated or has arrived (3:12-14). He taunts some of the Corinthians who seem to think they have arrived (1 Cor 4:8) and doubtless here, too, he has in mind the same kind of arrogance.
Either way the prize is not a thing but a relationship with God and Christ. He really wants us to find our ministries and our lives by finding ourselves engaged in the life of God.
Paul is careful to distinguish between the present and the future. Resurrection is his hope; it is not his present reality. Overconfidence in some future promise, whether it is resurrection, a possible job, or a hoped for outcome in a relationship, can deceive us into thinking that the promise is already fulfilled. Believing that we have already attained what is still in the future can lead us to become careless, to not attend to the things that need doing now in order to build a foundation for the future. Paul cautions us to remember that our present moment is destined to become the past that holds the roots out of which the future present will grow
Paul also does not let this prize give him a false sense of what life is like in the present: that is, the promise does not become a new kind of privilege that protects or entitles. Rather, it is through sharing in the sufferings of Christ that Paul says he will attain resurrection. This is not a call to martyrdom. Rather, it is a call to live into the faithfulness of Christ. How we respond to this call will grow out of our reflections on the past, present and future—of our individual lives and our life as a community.
Gospel – Matthew 21:33-46
This is part two of Jesus’ response in parables to being asked about his authority (21:23-27). Last week we considered the first parable which confronted the Pharisees with their rejection of John the Baptist (21:28-32) This parable continues Jesus’ response to the chief priests and elders who had questioned him about his protest in the temple (Matthew 21:12-17):
This week we look at Matthew’s use of the parable which he originally found in Mark 12:1-12 as the sole parable which formed part of the response
The parable’s image of the vineyard is drawn from the famous song of the vineyard in Isaiah 5. There are subtle distinctions however. There the vineyard is Israel and the vineyard is blamed and destroyed for being unfruitful.
1. In Jesus’ parable the problem is not the vineyard, but those responsible for tending it, those in charge.
2 There are no tenant farmers in Isaiah; God destroyed the vineyard itself.
It is the third parable in Matthew with a vineyard setting (20:1-16 — the workers in the vineyard; 21:28-32. The parable keeps everyone on edge.
So the conflict is over who should run it, or, more broadly, who has responsibility for the kingdom. In an extraordinary statement Matthew has Jesus declare that the kingdom will be taken away from the Pharisees.
The parable is immediately relevant for Matthew and his community because they have been struggling (without success) to position themselves as leaders of Israel’s faith and are being increasingly driven to the margins by resurgent Pharisaism.
The story is of an absent landowner who send two sets of servants to collect rents.
For the first set, they beat one, killed another and stone. The second set of servants met the same fate. He next sent his son .Believing the son to be the sole surviving heir, they kill him in hope of gaining the vineyard for themselves. If a landowner died without an heir, the land passed to the first claimant, so by killing the son (presumably the only one), the tenants become landowners and they become free.
The tenant farmers are frustrated, desperate, and driven to violence. There were also social dues (gifts), religious tithes, and taxes adding up to about 35 or 40 percent. About 20 percent of the annual produce would be left to feed the family and livestock of a free-holding peasant. Far less would be left to tenant farmers who also owed land rent.
And then comes the twist … the landowner is not dead, and he does precisely what he would be expected to do under such circumstances: he wreaks terrible revenge, slaughtering the farmers and replacing them with others, so he can return once more to the ease of the city while others earn his bread.
Symbolism
Landowner – God
First servants – prophets and martyrs who have died for the faith through the years
Second set – replacements for Israel, probably those who follow Christ or distinguishing between former and latter prophets.
Son – Jesus. the tenants cast him out of the vineyard first and then kill him — closer symbolism to Jesus’ actual crucifixion. He is the Son whose mission is violently rejected by the Father’s own tenants. He is the Son whose rejection is vindicated by the Father
Cornerstone – — the key element — in one’s life. The thing around which all other things are connected or held together or lined up by. In contrast to this are the tenants whose lives revolved around self and what they can get for themselves.
Tenant – Phrarisees. These religious officials rejected those whom God sent and will see his death. The story says they were furious when Jesus directed his harsh words toward them and called them the poorest of tenants
What is harder to see, however, is Jesus’ tacit acknowledgment that they have in fact been appointed by God. In the parable, they are hired by the landowner to protect and maintain the vineyard. They are not marauders tearing down the fence to plunder.
They have broken the landowner’s trust. More specifically, they have presumptuously staked a claim to that which does not rightfully belong to them.
Jesus’ point seems to be that his opponents have mistaken their leadership over Israel for outright ownership of Israel. His main concern is the simple fact that they are responsible for pointing Israel to God, yet they have instead pointed her to themselves. The indictment, then, is not against Israel per se, or even against the temple "institution," but rather against God’s appointed leaders
The parable serves to show how the temple leaders have been entrusted by God and how they have rebelled against God. It also prophesies their violent rejection of the Son. Jesus’ opponents understand all of this. They get the parable, but they reject its truth. "Yes, we are God’s tenants, but we are not those tenants; and you are certainly not God’s Son." They cannot see—or have lost sight of—what God’s will for the world really is. So, in their eyes, Jesus’ ministry can only be a scandal.
Obviously, the landowner does all that is necessary so that the produce would be assured for both himself and his tenants.
But the tenants want more than their rightful share—they want the whole heritage. Ironically, their actions lead to their losing everything—even their lives.
Turn over new people. Is it Gentile or is it not a new group of leaders but a community, the church, which is making this claim. It will now hold the keys of the kingdom. It will now carry responsibility for tending the vineyard. There is a new head of the cornerstone The church is a community and as a community carries the mandate of nurturing and caring for the vineyard. It is another way of defining the church’s identity in terms of love.
The vineyard represents all places where we have been called by God to produce the fruits of the kingdom. Those places could easily include our households, our place of business, our school, our neighborhood, our clubs, and our congregations, etc
The land, the vineyard, the wine press, the abundant harvest, and the wine are all symbols of God’s peaceable Kingdom;
The violent behavior of the tenants seeking to take over the vineyard for themselves is a shameful dishonoring of their contract with the owner; a disobedience akin to Adam and Eve; and a hubris / pride akin to the Tower of Babel.
We are expected to live under the authority of the Owner; to produce and give back the proper fruit. Sin is not primarily doing bad things, but an attitude of selfishness that has no need for God.
III. Articles for this week in WorkingPreacher:
Old Testament – Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm – Psalm 80:7-15
Epistle – Philippians 3:4b-14
Gospel – Matthew 21:33-46