Parable of the Vineyard

                                                                Proper 22-A 2014

                              Exodus 20; Psalm 19;Philippians 3:4-14; Matthew 21:33-46

Father Adam Trambley

Oct 4, 2014 St.John’s Sharon

Paul writes in Philippians, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”  Whatever’s done is done, and for Paul some of what was done was amazingly good and some was horrifically bad.  But none of that matters to him because he is going somewhere.  Paul is not staying where he is, but is pressing on to where God is calling him.  He knows that eventually God’s calling is heavenly, but he also knows that before heaven comes he has some work on earth.  Straining forward he presses on knowing that sometimes God’s call can require patience, endurance, determination and even suffering.  But like any hard work, Paul is willing to put in that effort with his whole being to get the heavenly prize, the reward, the fruit of his labor.  Paul encourages us to do the same.

In the Gospel this morning, Jesus is talking to some folks who are not so interested in straining forward toward their heavenly call.  He is talking to the Chief Priests and Pharisees, the religious and political leaders who had a vested interest in looking back to keep things pretty much the way they had been.  This parable is occurring during what we think of as Holy Week, after Jesus has come into Jerusalem and turned over the money-changers tables in the temple, but before Judas betrays him.  So we have some serious religious smack-talk going down here.  I love the line at the end of the parable: When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.  They wanted to arrest him.  So we know they heard what Jesus was saying.

What Jesus was saying was that they weren’t the stewards of their people they were supposed to be.  In the parable, God is the vineyard owner.  He set everything up for a beautiful vineyard, which represents God’s people.  Then he turned the vineyard over to tenants, who were supposed to raise fruit for him. The tenants were the religious and political leaders of God’s people who God put in authority over them. The tenants raised a lot of fruit—remember that God set everything up perfectly-- but when God asked for it, they wouldn’t give it to him.  They beat and killed his slaves who came to collect.  Then the vineyard owner sent his Son, whom they also killed, hoping to keep the vineyard for themselves.  Of course, the son in the parable is Jesus, God’s Son, and the leadership is going to kill him, just like they do in the story.  After the chief priests and Pharisees hear the story, Jesus asks how they think it will end.  They say that the owner will punish those tenants and give the vineyard to better tenants.  Jesus agrees, quoting Psalm 118 to drive his point home.

Now Jesus’ point to those he was contesting with at the time was clear.  God put you in charge of his people and you didn’t listen to his Son, even killing him.  So God is going to invite into his Kingdom all sorts of new tenants who will bear fruit and give it back to God. 

We are part of this second wave of tenants who have been given the kingdom of God to produce the fruits of the kingdom.  We are the people who God has invited in to do his work according to his purpose.  We are the people who recognize his Son and, at least in theory, are happy to turn over the fruits of our labors to him. 

But we still have the responsibility to produce fruit, and the actual production of fruit has been a problem for us as Christians in this part of the Kingdom.  Here I’m talking more broadly than just St. John’s.  I’m also speaking also about the churches in our valley, in much of the Episcopal Church, and in almost all branches of Christendom in the United States.  We haven’t really made sure that the fruit of God’s harvest is brought in.  A retelling of the parable for us might go something like this.

 

A corn farmer had a farm that he leased out to tenants.  He put his Son in charge of tenant relations.  The tenants liked the Son, and they really liked the farmer’s land.  For years they produced bumper crops, and they shipped all the appropriate documentation, notarized and in triplicate, off to the farmer’s Son via Federal Express.  But their harvests were so large, they realized they didn’t have to plant all the fields to have as much produce as they needed.  So they planted less and less.  Eventually, the farm didn’t produce as much, but the tenants were happy, and they figured they could always plant more for the farmer if he needed it.  Harvests got smaller, but the tenants still took the same share.  Then one day the farmer’s Son came back for an inspection and found most of his fields overgrown with weeds while the tenants were in the barn gorging themselves on the seed corn.
What do you think will happen to these tenants?

 

As I look back, I think a lot of good Christian folks have together made a bunch of decisions that led us to a place that isn’t so pretty.  We had everything we needed for bumper harvests – people, leadership, resources, prestige, money, volunteers, buildings.  Then somewhere along the line, we stopped planting and just lived off our harvests.  We had plenty coming in so we stopped planting new fields, cultivating new ground, or even making sure that we kept the best ears to use for seed next time around.  People that wanted to plant in new areas were sent away on their own, and were either unsuccessful or ended up with new crops that don’t look like very much like ours.  We look around today and we see most of our area, and increasing our country, unchurched.  Younger people in our communities have never been in a church, have no idea who people like Moses, Noah or even Jesus are, and have no idea why they would go into a church building.  For many people Christianity is irrelevant, except as a nebulous justification used questionably in certain political debates.  We have huge church buildings all over the place, most of which stand empty most of the time, and quite frankly are mostly empty even on Sunday morning. If we added up their deferred maintenance costs, we can see that way too many Christian churches have eaten into the seed corn, and won’t survive another long winter.  If Jesus showed up, we’d all be happy to see him and want to go spend eternity with him, which in his goodness and mercy he may very graciously allow.  But we shouldn’t be lulled into believing that the current state of affairs in this part of his Kingdom would have been his first choice. 

So where does that leave us today, assuming that Jesus is either waiting a bit to come back, or could be convinced to keep us on staff if he stops by for a visit?  Well, it leaves us pretty much where we started, with a commission to go do the work, bear good fruit, and bring it back to Jesus.  We also have to start with where we are right here at St. John’s, which is not a bad place to be.  Our congregation still has what we need to go out and plant new fields that could bring in a great harvest.  We don’t have the surplus we may have at one time, be we have enough, maybe just enough, but we have enough.  Thanks be God, this congregation has taken our task seriously.  At times we have slacked off a bit, but at other times we have really shared God’s love with the Shenengo Valley.  On more than one occasion, we have decided to plant new fields, whether that meant bringing in people who needed to learn to swim, expanding our doors to those beyond our traditional British heritage, or opening up our parish to people of every age, class or situation that needed a church.  We’ve reached out in love to meet people’s basic needs and opened our buildings and our hearts to the greater community.  Sometimes those actions have produced great harvests, and sometimes small ones, but we’ve never entirely stopped looking for empty fields and finding new places to plant.   So today, when fallow fields lie empty all around us, we have an incredible opportunity to produce fruit for the kingdom.

What does this look like practically?  Here are a few ideas.

First, marshal every moment of monotony in your day and pray for the work.  Jesus instructed us to pray for laborer’s to be sent into the harvest, and we at St. John’s have suggested that people pray for our work here by praying for laborers to be sent into the harvest, for open doors for our ministries, for fruit to be borne by them, and for the financial resources we need to do the work. 

Second, put what we have to good use.  The SeeingThrough New Eyes process we did a few years ago had a slogan, “Be who you are; see what you have; do what matters.”  As a parish we are finding more and more ways to open up our facilities to those from new fields, whether they are ECS clients, community lunch guests, Cana’s Corner participants, AA members, guitar students or those needing inexpensive clothes at the rummage sale.  But we still have as a parish, and as individuals, many resources that could be redirected toward building relationships with people who might not know Jesus or whose lives are not bearing fruit for the Kingdom.  Maybe we have a car that could give someone a ride.  Maybe we have time to call people regularly who are trying to change their lives around and offer support.  Each of us can see what we have and do something that matters with it. 

Third, we all can keep our eyes out for new fields, and think about ways we can plant there.  Maybe we invite people to church or to a program at St. John’s.  Maybe we just invite them to lunch on occasion get to know them.  Maybe we make sure they have what they need for their new baby, or after the death of a family member, or once they’ve started empty nesting and are figuring out how to structure the next phase of their life and give it meaning  And maybe we ask folks from church to help with that.  Now if we are all doing this, we may not have as much time to fill all the church jobs we’ve always had done, but that is one consequence of planting the seed instead of grinding it into meal and making Doritios™ out of it.  Some things may look a bit out of control at times, but part of faith is trusting God to bring forth fruit where we’ve planted our seeds.  The more seeds we’ve planted, the more important the harvest is to us, and the more faith we need to have.  And usually the more prayers we decide to say.  But we’re not called merely to preserve what we have.  We are called to plant and tend and harvest and bring in much good fruit.

The harvest is plentiful, and we have the glorious privilege of being laborers in God’s vineyard.  So forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, let us press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.