Not the Vineyard Image!

Photo of the Rev. Canon Sue Sommer by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

Tell too many parables like this, and you'll get yourself killed. The gospels don't tell us that any of the 12 disciples took Jesus aside and gave him this advice, but I like to think that one or two of them must have. If our friend and teacher seemed to be going off the rails, wouldn't we be inclined to pour him a beer and say something like, "Jesus, buddy, back off! I mean, yeah, the chief priests and the scribes have been on your case, but Jesus, the vineyard image? Are you nuts? Do you want to get yourself killed?"

See, that metaphor of the vineyard was historically a sore topic. Five centuries earlier, Isaiah prophesied the ruin of Israel and used the imagery of a vineyard, planted by God, given every possible care, but the fruit it yielded was wild and bitter. Isaiah then declared that the Lord's vineyard was the house of Israel and that it must be laid waste, uncared for, ruined by drought and choked by thorns. In this way, Isaiah prophesied what, in fact, would happen: the Babylonian Exile, the lowest point in the whole of Israel's history.

But the Exile was 500 years ago. The people turned back to God and God brought them back to the Promised Land. They rebuilt the Temple. And the people renewed their allegiance to the covenant. In fact, the Pharisaic movement -- where strict obedience to the Law was a matter of life and death -- began shortly after the return from Exile. The people came to believed that it was their failure to live up to their end of the Covenant that resulted in the Exile and they wanted to make sure it never happened again. So every jot and tittle of the Law was being accounted for by the Pharisees; meanwhile in Jerusalem, the priests and the scribes had the Temple worship well in hand. Life in occupied Israel might not exactly be a bed of roses, but in the eyes of the chief priests and the scribes, things were pretty much on track, thanks of course to them.

So for Jesus to bring up vineyard imagery was bad enough. To compare the Israel that they had worked so hard to re-build to the lawless and idolatrous Israel that was conquered by Babylon 5 centuries earlier, well, them's fightin' words. But Jesus didn't even let it go at that! In Isaiah's image of the vineyard, the harvest was worthless. In Jesus's parable, the vineyard tenants weren't just worthless. They were criminal. They refused to abide by the terms of the leasing agreement. They refused to return to the owner of the vineyard what was really due him: justice, loving kindness, true humility. And so they met the same destruction that they had meted out to the servants and the son.

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells the parable of the vineyard in the Temple in Jerusalem, in the days that immediately follow his triumphal entry into that city. Clearly, this provocative teaching was intended as a shot across the bow, both for the priests and the scribes. As I said, tell too many parables like this, and you'll get yourself killed. By the 20th chapter of Luke, events have been set in motion that will ultimately result in betrayal, arrest, crucifixion, and death. Of course, Jesus knew that. He knew who the son was in his own parable. And he still told the parable as a warning to power structures everywhere, not just to the Synagogue and Temple leadership in first century Jerusalem but to people in power in every age in every place.

And that includes us. Since the conversion of Constantine in the early 4th century, the vineyard of the western world, at least numerically, has been tenanted by Christians, or by those whose culture or heritage, at any rate, is Christian. The pages of church history are littered with religious wars and persecutions, with institutionalized exploitation, toleration of slavery, sexism, and perhaps especially anti-semitism.[1] Luke, as well as Matthew and Mark, tell us that Jesus delivered this loaded parable to his countrymen. But Luke in particular was writing to a largely Gentile Church. Surely we are to understand that God has given a share of the vineyard to the Church to tend and to harvest. And with that understanding must come the acknowledgement that we also have not necessarily been good tenants. For much of our 2000 year history, we too have refused to return to the owner of the vineyard what was really due him: justice, loving kindness, true humility.

Next Sunday marks the beginning of the holiest week in western Christendom. We will remember Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and we will hear the passion gospel in which the forces of destruction, of scapegoating, and of fear will seem to carry the day. It will feel very much like the violence at the end of today’s parable, where everything is destroyed. Resurrection will seem a long way off. It is not. It brightens the horizon in the east, as in early morning, subverting the darkness with the promise of a new day.

We’re not naοve. We know perfectly well that the forces of destruction remain hard at work in our world post-resurrection. People in power continue to abuse their power. We continue to mistake leasing agreements for a deed of property. We continue to refuse to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk in humility with God. We continue to miss both the letter of the law as well as the relationship with a loving God that the law always pointed to (St. Paul’s assertions  notwithstanding).The resurrection did not put an end to our self-destructive ways. It does something far more subversive, and ironically enough we see it in the final shocking image in today’s parable, where the vineyard is destroyed. The Church’s historic triumphalist interpretation of that has missed the point. The death of the son of the vineyard owner is followed by new life – new life which always triumphs over the power of people and cultures to self-destructive. The resurrection takes away the power of our self-destructive ways to have the final word in salvation history. In the dawning ray of resurrection light, we can claim that the vineyard owner remains sovereign. God's love does reign and shall reign, in this vineyard and forever more.

[1] Well I recall my father’s best friend, Irving, telling of how his widowed mother emigrated to this country, pregnant with him. His father had been murdered, and the store they had owned in their village in Hungary destroyed on a Good Friday by Christians fully persuaded that all Jews shared in the guilt of the death of Jesus. This, in the 20th century.