Tenant Church

Matthew 21: 33:46
October 8, 2017
First Presbyterian Church, Sterling IL
Christina Berry

This week’s gospel reading finds us again in the gospel of Matthew. Jesus has been verbally contending with the temple leadership, and he has, as is usual with him, been telling stories. The text today is an interesting bit of scripture in that it begins as a parable but becomes a kind of allegory. That is, rather than the usual parable form, that creates an entire world which won’t quite translate into a simple explanation, this story invites us to hear a one-to-one correspondence between the characters and setting of the story and the real world in which Jesus lived. The story begins with a common first century economic arrangement: the tenant farmer.

Unlike the sharecropper of American history following the civil war, the tenant farmer’s relationship with the landowner was somewhat more fair and not an occasion of exploitation. Still, the landowner held all the power, and could evict the tenant at will. Jesus tells a story of tenant farmers who take advantage of the landowner, rather than the other way around. Let’s listen for God’s word to us in Matthew 21: 33-46. 33

"Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, "They will respect my son.'

But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, "This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.' So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?"

They said to him, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time."

Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the scriptures: "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes'? 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. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls."

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

If you were a poor farm laborer in the first century and you lived in the Middle East, where Jesus lived, you probably didn’t own a house, or livestock, or any property. You probably didn’t own much more than your coat and your cloak. You worked for about a denarius a day, enough for your daily bread.

Unless you were “lucky” enough to be a tenant farmer. Then you worked a piece of land as if you owned it, much like a sharecropper or a serf. At harvest time, you kept a share of the crop, and the landowner took the rest. The lion’s share, actually. It was not your property, and never would be. If the crop failed, so did you. But it was better than some other options, like selling yourself or your family members as slaves.

It was a living.

The disciples and the temple leaders and whoever else was standing around as Jesus debated would have had no trouble recognizing what Jesus was getting at. Let’s remember the setting: the temple in Jerusalem, where Jesus had arrived a few days before, riding on a donkey, and hailed as the Messiah, the one coming to save. He threw the money changers from the temple, then left town to spend the night in nearby Bethany. When he came back to town, the temple authorities demanded to know by what authority Jesus was doing such things.

Then Jesus starts telling stories, and they are mostly parables, cryptic and challenging allusions to actual events, with strong messages. These parables are also mostly about vineyards.

Vineyards. They weren’t all grape farmers.
Most of them weren’t. Why vineyards?

In Bible Study on Wednesday, alongside this gospel reading, we read a few verses from the Old Testament reading from the lectionary. It’s from Isaiah, chapter five, the first seven verses. Listen to this reading from the prophet, and see what you think:

“Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?
And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!”

“He expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!”
Who knows whether the religious authorities thought of Isaiah when Jesus was telling stories, but it had to have gotten their attention.

And Jesus when Jesus finished his story, he asks them, “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?"

Not realizing that they are falling into his rhetorical trap, they answer, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time."

Well, then. 

 Hahaha on those Pharisees, right?

But wait.

Matthew’s gospel is addressed to the ecclesia, the church.
That would be … us.

Over and over, as Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem, Matthew’s gospel makes its’ point: be humble, like a little child; if you are rich, give up your wealth and share with the poor; the last will be first; the least will be the greatest; be the servant of all; take the lowest spot… do you see a pattern here?

This story seems harsh, on its face – we are uncomfortable with such violent imagery. We don’t really like it when Jesus talks about people being crushed. If we hear the story as allegory, we can calm ourselves down by saying, “Well, it was about the Pharisees, the Jews, not about us.”

But Matthew wants you to be certain: it is about us.
The church – the gathered community.
You and me.

We are tenants, sisters and brothers.
This is not our vineyard.
We don’t own one blade of grass, one leaf, one single grape.
This is not our vineyard.

We don’t own this church.
We don’t own this building. 

We don’t own one single molecule of anything. 

Not. One. Thing. 

Lest we begin to think that we have earned something, we are reminded: we are tenants, and the crop does not belong to us. We are tenants, living here at the pleasure of the landowner. We have work to do. We need to be productive. It is our job. We have fruit to grow. 

God, the landowner, has sent messengers to us to tell us what is required. Usually, we’d rather not listen to those messengers. Maybe we don’t literally beat them up, or kill them. We do it figuratively, by ignoring them and the content of their messages. 

Our focus tends to drift inward, toward ourselves. 

We ask each other, “How do we keep this thing going?” 

We wonder how we can get more people in the doors on Sunday morning at 9:30 AM. 

We wonder how we are going to keep everything going the way it has always been done. 

There is nothing wrong with thinking of these issues. But when the time of harvest comes, the landowner is not looking for an attractively painted winepress, or a remodeled watchtower with new wallpaper and furnishings, or an expanded workforce that packs people into the vineyards, even if they are not actually doing anything but showing up. The landowner is looking for fruit. God owns the vineyard; God calls and pays the workers; and God does not deal with us according to what we deserve, but according to God’s grace. 

If that is indeed true, it is crucial now that we attune our ears to the messengers God has sent, and what they have told us, over and over again. Every Sunday School child learns that prophets are those who bring us messages from God. If we look at those messages, at least those we have in the Bible, we see some common themes emerging: 

1) Obedience to God’s law – the law of love for God and others. 

2) The promise of God’s faithfulness to the covenant: that God seeks to redeem and restore us. The covenant is for every living thing – everything – on the planet. 

3) The call to faithfulness and obedience for every land and nation. As a parenthetical aside, I remind you that this call is for every human, in every land and nation, not ever a call to be a so-called “Christian America.” 

4) And probably most importantly, the demand for doing justice, for mercy for others, and care for the poor, to welcome for the stranger – in short, that first one, amplified: love for God and neighbor. 

Like those tenants in the story, we have a tendency to reject the messages and the messengers who bring such demands from the landowner. It is much easier to think of this vineyard as our own, and to go about the things that, in our human judgment, make it nice: with the music we like, whether contemporary or the pipe organ; with sermons that soothe us and don’t ask too much of us; with pleasant social gatherings that we enjoy.

There is nothing wrong with any of that, but it is not what we are here for. Jesus invokes Isaiah because that prophet had such power in their minds, and his powerful words still ring true for us. You’ve heard them many times, if you have been in church, but listen again to this messenger from God, the servant of the landowner speaking to the tenants: “Look, you serve your own interest …and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. …Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself?... Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, … to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke? … to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, …” 

That’s the fruit that the landowner is looking for, according to the messengers who have been sent to us. And there is a promise for us, that comes with this agreement: 

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. 

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am. …

if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. 

The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. 

We are tenants, we here in this church, and the master of the vineyard has told us what is good. 

The lord of the vineyard, Jesus Christ, has called us to him, 

to be his people, 

to do his work, 

to speak his words of mercy, 

and to offer his love to the lonely 

and his justice to the oppressed. 

This is the fruit by which the vineyard owner will know us. 

Thanks be to God! 

Amen.