PROPERTY SPECULATOR PRESSES PROSECUTION OF PROTESTORS’ COMPLAINT OVER PENDING PROCEDURAL PROCURMENT PAYMENT PRACTICES

Why were the chief priest and the pharisees upset at the end of Matthew 21:33-46 and we are not?

If the Scriptures are the living word of God, then why do we continue to make the Bible a history book?

Is it possible to see ourselves today in this story?

Might we be the workers in the vineyard?

Or might we be the slaves sent to receive the fruit from the vineyard?

So many questions, so little space to explore them.

Peter (not the disciple) and the church council of a declining congregation he once served went on retreat to plan a new evangelism and membership program. Peter returned profoundly moved and reported that one question pivoted the conversation. When the council had been ready to leave, one person in the group had asked, “The work we have done is really good, but when are we going to have time to talk about serving the people God is sending us?”

Peter (not the disciple) has talked about this with me late into many nights, and he still reminds me how everyone put down their bags and another pot of coffee was made. They all pulled out their notepads and together discussed who they thought that God had sent them to serve and what a ministry with those people might look like. That conversation reshaped the ministry of that congregation.

Peter opines often that congregations over-plan who they want to invite to their party considering how to generate greater giving, develop the children’s Sunday School environments and curricula, devise projects for the youth to raise enough money to finance trips for mission projects and the national youth gathering, plan worship, and ensure the piano and organ are in good repair and tuned. He knows these are important, but he regrets how rarely conversations involve, “Who are the people God is sending us and how are we serving them?”

In most congregations we are far too involved in picking, planning, and preparing for how we choose to serve rather than welcoming and responding to whomever God presents to us at our doors.  In vineyards of abundance, we work hard at devising how we are going to disburse the plentitude of God’s provision among ourselves and to those whom we choose while those who do pound on the door are dismissed, discouraged, and deterred. They are hindered and dissuaded.

This week’s parable presents the perfect example. It is part of a long exchange in the temple courtyard. Power within the Jewish community at the beginning of the 1^st century is derived from Roman occupation, fear, and death. In response, Jesus challenges those who presume to wield power (the chief priests, the scribes, the pharisees, and elders). In turn, they ask Jesus by what authority he does the things he does and teaches the teachings he teaches.

As was his way, Jesus uses a parable. He tells them of a vineyard which has been planted and the hedge against predators and the world has been set. The wine press is dug. The watch tower is built. While the owner is away the workers have continued to care for the vineyard. Now the fruit of the vineyard is ready to be shared.

Those listening heard the parable in the context of Roman empire. They judged the merits of this parable in a way that reinforced the empirical political reality of their day. “Put those wretched people to a wretched death” seems appropriate, justified, and fair even when they presume the householder to be God and the vineyard is creation fully ready for occupation. Those who work the land anticipate paying tribute to their lord. We are tempted to hear the parable as the chief priests and the pharisees heard it many years ago substituting sharecropping or paying rent in lieu of tribute.

But how are we to hear and understand this parable today?

Parables give permission to perceive the possibility of a potential world, the world we do not know yet, but could. Parables present the possibility of taking responsibility, making penance, and reparations for past destructive living patterns. But, if people are not able to imagine a world beyond the contextual box they are living in, then portentous potentiality is implausible if not impossible.

As Jesus was speaking to the institutional power brokers of his time, so Jesus continues to speak to the institutional power brokers of our time. So, we need to place ourselves in the context of this parable. Maybe Jesus is speaking to our church leadership: our bishops, our pastors, and our councils, and maybe Jesus is speaking to our local, state, and national governance. Maybe Jesus is speaking of the Vineyard in which we live.

In this parable we hear, in my translation, “When the landowner sent his slaves to receive the fruit of the vineyard, the workers of the land beat, killed, and stoned them. When the landowner sent more slaves, they did the same. When the landowner sent his son, the workers of the land saw a way to keep all the fruits of the vineyard to themselves and so they threw the son of the landowner out of the vineyard and killed him. What will the lord of the vineyard do when he comes?”

This is the place where the opportunity for penance is possible. Instead of perceiving themselves as part and parcel of the problem, recognizing their compulsion for hoarding, piling up the produce of the vineyard and withholding it from the people God presents to receive the fruits of the vineyard, the workers of the land abuse, kill, and shoot those deserving of provident provisioning.

God has been sending many to the hedges of our (congregational) vineyards, and we continue to find ways of “beating, killing, and stoning” those who would partake of our cornucopia. Power wishes to preserve power and is judged by its decision. If you think that the workers of the land deserve to be thrown out of the vineyard, then the vineyard will be taken away from you and given to people who will share the fruits of the vineyard with those God sends.

But if you can imagine that the vineyard is an opportunity to share the providing of God’s profligate planting, then another ending presents itself. “And to the workers of the land in the vineyard, God sent the poor and they were rebuffed as not being industrious enough to share in the bounty of the land. God sent the broken families crying, ‘Black Lives Matter’, and the workers of the vineyard responded with, ‘Blue Lives Matter’ and provided military might to the police forces to silence the protest. God sent the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, and they killed them in their gathering places and legislated laws that took away their rights. God sent people living with disabilities, and they made laws that appeared to recognize their needs but did not include a process to enforce them or prosecute. God sent many more people to the margins of the hedge seeking the bounty of God’s vineyard, and the purveyors of power prevented them from entering the vineyard by imprisoning them, paroling them to lives of penury, and deporting them. God presented the people who had first propagated this paradisical vineyard, and the purveyors of power pranked them and impoverished them and pronounced them less deserving and profligate, undeserving of the vineyard’s providence. And by their judgments they were judged.”

The first hearers of this parable had the opportunity to repent and repair their relationship with God’s people but chose a punitive punishment leading to prompt expulsion. Later in Matthew we will hear Jesus tell Peter (the disciple) that those who live by the sword will also die by the sword. In this parable we are presented with a like presumption.

Instead of punitive posturing wielded by the powerful over the powerless, maybe we should try penance and hear those words of pardon, “And again, after supper, Jesus took the cup, filled with the fruits of the vineyard, gave thanks, and blessed it, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed for you and all people for the forgiveness of sins. Share this in remembrance of me.’”

We have not been given the vineyard with rent to pay but an abundance to share. We have the power to change the pronounced judgment. Share the bounty of the vineyard. It’s good news! Thanks be to God!

Your pal, Nicodemus

Editor, Theologian, Counsellor, and Mouse