The Rev. Robert Lundquist XX after Pentecost 10/2/05 St Paul’s, Ft Collins

“Let me sing for my beloved a song…”

What we see in this parable from the prophet Isaiah is God as creator, God as parent, God as lover. We get a sense of the painstaking craftsmanship that goes into building the vineyard. And despite that care, the harvest is bad. It produces wild grapes, putrid fruit. “Wild grapes” don’t sound so bad to our modern ears, but in the original Hebrew they are literally “stinking things.”

The vineyard owner’s heart breaks. He has not other choice but to let is all return to nature, to break down the walls and let the wilderness back in. The harvest of his vineyard has been only bloodshed and injustice, the prophet tells us. The LORD of Hosts removes all protection – not in anger or vengeance, but in sorrow. God has no other choice.

Then we have another parable, another vineyard. Jesus tells us about the owner lavishing the same care and attention on his property. But this time there are tenants. Vicious tenants.

Jesus’ hearers would have heard this in a context probably unfamiliar to us. Palestine in that time had been constantly conquered and occupied by different powers. The rulers, the “landlords” changed seemingly every few years. As a practical matter, who knew who the owner was? In the parable it seems the residents are saying, “Enough!”

But it appears they go overboard. They beat and kill the messengers, and then the son of the landlord. “What will the owner do to those tenants?”, asks the teller of the parable. Now remember that Jesus is still addressing the chief priests and elders – two weeks ago our Gospel lesson placed Jesus in their disapproving midst. “By whose authority do you teach?”, they asked him. Last Sunday we heard the next part of the story – the two sons who are asked to go work in the vineyard. Today we hear Jesus still questioning the chief priests and elders of the temple.

What will the owner in the parable do to the tenants? “He will put them to death and find new stewards!”, say the religious leaders. This only makes sense, doesn’t it? In the ways of the world, this is the only solution. In the ways of God, we must dig deeper to understand what is actually happening.

First, we must note that Jesus does not agree with the “off with their heads!” sentiment voiced by the priests & elders. Instead he begins to talk about the cornerstone, and how the Human One is rejected by the authorities. The cornerstone is crucial to any building – it is literally the foundation, as Jesus is using the term. The rejected cornerstone – is it not fit to be built upon? Or is it merely unrecognized by the builder?

In truth God is doing a new thing with a discarded foundation, says Jesus. It is the matter of the spirit vs the law – what is the spirit of God’s will for humanity. Jesus, in his parabolic way, is looking not towards a clean sweep of the old, but instead to the harvest, to the fruits of the Kingdom. Last Sunday we learned that doing God’s will is the fruit of the Kingdom. And this is what Jesus is talking about.

The second point to consider: What are the ways of God as opposed to human will? We’ve got to ask, because it sounds so foolish of the owner of the vineyard to send more messengers to the tenants after they’d already mistreated and slaughtered the first ones. Why in the world would he send his son? I mean, we see what’s coming as we follow the story…

And I want to note that this passage is one much quoted by anti-Semites and those who hate the Jews. What happens to the son in this tale, and the words about killing the tenants, have been abused for centuries. Obviously this is not the intent of the teller, and as Christians we share a heavy responsibility to refute this use of our scripture.

Returning to the parable, we must note the utter illogic of sending the son. We can only acknowledge the ongoing pattern of God’s love, a love which is long-suffering, compassionate, and completely illogical in the face of outrageous idolatry and sinfulness. Abraham Joshua Heschell, in God in Search of Man, calls this pattern “the divine pathos,” the great paradox of Biblical faith. It is God’s never-ending pursuit of humanity, the Divine longing for each of us, all of us. It is a love that results in death, a love that ends up in crucifixion.

Author Shel Silverstein wrote the well-known story, The Giving Tree. It’s about a boy and a tree. The tree loves the boy, who climbs in the branches, sleeps in the shade, and hangs a swing from the limb. As the boy grows older, he needs things, things like fruit and lumber which the tree is happy to give. Still older, the boy wants a boat. He cuts down the tree to build the boat. And the tree still loves the boy. Finally, the boy, now an old man, returns to the tree. All that’s left is the stump. And all the boy needs is a place to sit. And the tree still loves the boy.

I’ve always found The Giving Tree to be a moving, but flawed, parable. But it fits today’s story, reaching to describe the limitless extent of love. Unlike The Living Tree, though, God’s love for us is neither co-dependent nor based on neediness. God’s love is real.

So despite our hard-heartedness, our ignoring the needs of others, our judging, criticizing, carping, withholding, grabbing and hoarding… Despite our nations’ waging a was begun in deception, our nations’ further skewing taxes away from equitable, our pandering to greed and enriching a few, our arrogance toward other peoples and our failure to “play nice” on the playground of the world… God still loves us. We are God’s stewards. And we’ve been entrusted with a magnificent vineyard.

“Let me sing for my beloved a song about her vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill…”

AMEN.

A Parish For All People!