What fruits are we cultivating in the vineyards leased to us?

Jesus’s authority has been challenged by the Pharisees and Sadducees before today’s reading in the Gospel according to Matthew – they’ve questioned his commensality with sinners (tax collectors and the like) and his interpretations of legal codes and religious laws; chided him for encouraging the hungry to eat and healing the sick on the Sabbath; criticized him for not being more strict with his disciples; and have even demanded miraculous signs from him while also accusing him of using satanic powers to perform his miracles.

And, in Matthew’s telling, echoing the prophetic observations of John the Baptist, Jesus is pointedly critical of the powerful religious legalists and the ruling priestly class.  Jesus has warned his disciples to beware of the corrupt and misleading ways of the Pharisees and Sadducees and has even been as explicit as calling the chief legalists and temple priests an evil and hypocritical, poisonous snakes (den of vipers) who are at risk of being cut down like trees that are failing to bear good fruit.

Today’s reading from Matthew’s writing is another of Jesus’s critiques of the religious and legal rulers – a stern message that we can still heed today in the fields we are called to tend to.

In our Gospel readings from Matthew this season, Jesus has been using many parables to teach his followers about the true nature of the godly kingdom.  He has been preaching throughout the region to all who would listen – Jew and Gentile.  In Matthew’s account, shortly after Jesus has offered the parable about the landowner who paid all the laborers invited into his vineyard the same wage, we’re told that Jesus leads his disciples to Jerusalem and provocatively enters the city on a donkey, humbly mocking the regal and royal processions of the Romans and the elite Jews who he believed colluded in the same oppressive regimes.  While in the holy temple itself, Jesus has angrily driven out the money changers who were accumulating wealth from profit-minded trade cloaked under religious rationalizations.  It’s the morning after this dramatic scene and Jesus has returned to the temple again and is confronted the chief priests and elders.  He really lets them have it…

Last week we heard Jesus tell them that repentant prostitutes and tax collectors (read: sinners) will be entering the kingdom of God ahead of them.  Next week, he’ll be warning everyone that “many are called, but few are chosen.”  In this week’s Gospel lesson, we’re hearing Jesus use parable and prophetic allegory to warn everyone that the kingdom will be taken from the wicked and disloyal tenants and they will be crushed by the very authority that they have rejected.

Statue of Jesus Christ in Vineyard, Kaysersberg, Haut-Rhin, Alsace, France

The parable we heard today is rendered in Matthew, Mark, and Luke with only slight variation in symbolism and emphasis.  This tale of evil and greedy ‘husbandmen’ or tenant farmers draws inspiration from the prophet Isaiah’s vineyard love-song (Isaiah 5:1-7), in which God chooses to destroy his beloved vineyard because despite God’s careful care and feeding, it has only yielded the sour fruit of injustice.  However, whereas in Isaiah’s tale, it’s the entire vineyard that has grown stale and corrupt, Jesus is telling us that it is some of the laborers, who should have known better, who have taken advantage of their positions and become corrupt with pretense, entitlement, and greed.  Is Jesus’s parable, God remains faithful to the vast vineyard, even continuing to send prophets and innocents, including God’s own son, to the tenants, inviting them to change their ways.  Alas, the tenants refuse to change their ways and murder the prophetic messengers, including God’s own son, with selfish and covetous intent in their hearts.  Jesus says that owner will take the vineyard from the evil doers and give it new laborers to produce fruits for harvest time.   Jesus makes it very clear that he’s telling the self-righteous and smug listeners that the kingdom will be taken from them and given to others who have not rejected the cornerstone of the new covenant.

Of the ten divine commandments our Israelite ancestors were given, most of them addressed how they should be neighborly, emphasizing loyalty, fidelity, and honesty. The longest one explicitly says shouldn’t covet what isn’t yours.  Jesus summarizes these commandments and emphasized that first you should love God and secondly you should love your neighbor as yourself (Matt 19:16-19; 22: 36-40).  In the Gospel according to John, Jesus adds, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-25).

Let’s consider that it might be this additional commandment of Christ, the cornerstone of the new covenant that some of our ancestors rejected (Psalm 118:22-23, Isaiah 28:16), that leads us to participate in the restoration of God’s vineyard that has been leased to us.  Through the gift of the Holy Spirit at baptism, we’ve given the opportunity and responsibility for producing fruits of the new kingdom.

Our earlier Christian ancestors might have heard today’s parable as justification for the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E..  Yes, the message of this parable still has relevance and meaning for us today, over 1,900 years later.

Some questions for discussion this morning…

What are the vineyards today?

(examples our fields of relationships: friendships, families, churches, neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, nations, global village)

What evidence do we observe (see/hear/feel) that suggests some of us as tenant farmers have become corrupt?  What do you suppose is at the heart of this corruption?  What is the root cause?

(E.g., sinful, self-centeredness and covetousness.  E.g., Galatians 5:19-21: “Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.”)

What are the fruits that God, the true landowner, expects to find in these vineyards?

(E.g., Galatians 5:22-23: “By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love [agape], joy, peace, patience [longsuffering], kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and [temperance] self-control.”)

How are we to help cultivate and harvest these fruits? 

(E.g., references the 10 commandments and Jesus’s additional commandment – centering ourselves in God and being a neighbor to others as Jesus has been toward us)

Close your eyes and imagine one of the fields you’ve been leased in life.  Who is there?  Is the vineyard bearing the fruit the landowner expects?  Why / why not?  What ought you as a tenant farmer to do about that?  Pray about this during the week.

As we continue to allow the Holy Spirit to guide us this week in consideration of how to cultivate the best fruits in the vineyards we’re tending to, perhaps we can use as a prayer this paraphrase of the final verses of the excerpt we heard from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, which he wrote while imprisoned and uncertain of his own earthly fate:

I'm not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don't get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I've got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I'm off and running, and I'm not turning back. (Philippian 3:12-14, The Message)