Matthew 21:33-47 Other Tenants
Sermon October 5, 2008: People's United Church of Christ, Dover, DE: The Rev. Dan Griggs
I knew a man several years ago who got one of those rare opportunities to go to the top of his field. He was a good man, in his late fifties, a good manager who had never received much recognition because he didn't have an MBA. He was a deacon in his church and a top contributor. He was still married to his first wife after more than forty years, and they had several grown children. One day a business associate invited him to a meeting, and in the meeting a group of investors (not a Wall Street company, private investors) asked him to become the president of a new company. His job would be to organize an insurance company and get it going. He went home excited, energized, flying high. They put their house on the market, and started looking for a place to live in Harrisburg—which is where the new company would be headquartered. It was like a "new birth" for a fifty-eight year old man who just three months before had thought he was starting to wind down his working years. He felt like Henny Youngman's wife, who writes her diary a week ahead of time.[1]
This is the feeling the tenants have in Jesus' parable of the vineyard. The farmer had just planted. It was electric with the feeling of hope, opportunity, like a spring morning. I think the way Jesus originally told this parable it was really a parable—it had one point; but Matthew has turned it into an allegory: the farmer represents God, the vineyard is God's people, the tenants are the priests of the temple in Jerusalem—you see, Matthew has placed this parable within Jesus' debate with the priests during his last week of ministry. Matthew is trying to tell us something about God, Israel and us. But let's start at the beginning: on the day of planting everybody is hopeful, and this hope is for the whole world—that God's vineyard might produce the sweet wine of peace, justice, faith and truth. But will it?
Back to the corporation president in Harrisburg: you can't start a big company all by yourself, so he brought in other managers—vice president, treasurer, controller, product developer, marketing vice president; and all these people had a share in the progress of the company. There was a lot of new investment money available, and stock options. So the work began. By the end of the first year the state charter had been obtained, the stock was selling well, and the insurance policy plans were in place. But one day the vice president's wife showed up at the office wearing an expensive fur. She said, "It's a gift from friends," and wouldn't talk about it anymore. The controller was spending too much time with his secretary after hours. The treasurer and three of the directors were buying up large amounts of the stock at a discount, which reduced the amount of new capital coming in.
At the first stockholders meeting there was still great optimism in all the reports and projections, but soon afterward my friend the president discovered that the treasury was empty. The company had gone broke without ever selling its first insurance policy. They might have to go into receivership. And as he walked from office to office he saw that several of the top people he had been depending on were gone. Four of them had bought out the stock and used it as collateral for their own land company to buy a large development in another state, and both companies had failed—there was a hint that organized crime was involved in the deal. One honest, optimistic, hard-working president and a few middle management people were all that was left. What could he do?
When Jesus told this story about the vineyard and the tenants, the solution the owner hit on was to send his son to straighten things out; and the tenants killed him, hoping to buy the father out. And Jesus asked his hearers what the judgment should be for the tenants. The people listening to Jesus' parable gave a pretty rough answer: the owner should execute the evil tenants and bring in new tenants who would pay the farmer his dividends.
I said that Matthew turned the parable into an allegory. Matthew wrote his Gospel for Jewish Christians about 85 AD. These Jewish Christians had been locked into a life-long conflict with the synagogue—with the Jews who had not converted, and who were in the majority. Some of the Jewish Christians had died as martyrs at the hand of their fellow Jews. The disagreements had multiplied from the time of Jesus' crucifixion right up to the writing of the Gospel—more than fifty years, and by this time the chasm between the synagogue and the church was too wide to bridge. Matthew writes about the unconverted Jews as the tenants: they had not paid the farmer, God, his dividend the way their contract (the Law of Moses) required. And the answer to the question "What should the farmer do?" reflects the feelings of conflict and distance: get rid of the first tenants and bring in faithful tenants—Gentile Christians.
Now listen, this is not an interpretation for all ages. When the Gospel of Matthew was written, the church was a small minority being persecuted by a majority: the Jews had an understanding with the imperial government in Rome—Rome would not require the Jews to offer sacrifices to Caesar as a god, if the Jews would offer the sacrifice of prayers to the biblical God in behalf of Caesar. When the synagogue expelled the Christians, the Christians had no defense against arrest and conviction for refusing to worship Caesar; so to Matthew it felt like the Jews and the Romans were working together to destroy the church. It was out of that specific minority context that Matthew used Jesus' parable as an allegory against the synagogue—it was a minority complaint. It has been a very long time since the church was a minority to the synagogue. For most of the history of Christianity it has been the other way around: the Jews have been a minority among a vast ocean of Christianity. For most of this history Christians haven't been any more gracious to Jews than Matthew said the first century Jews were to them. So it's a misuse of scripture to take a passage like this parable and say it supports the persecution of the Jews. Neither Matthew nor Jesus intended anything like anti-Semitism to become the Christian norm.
In fact, if we look at this allegory with the categories of majority and minority, I think this stern judgment is now not about Jews at all, but about us Gentile Christians: we are now the tenants whose duty it is to produce and give God his due. So this Gospel Lesson speaks of judgment on the basis of faithful management of the vineyard. How well have we done?
The Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church have been missionary churches all along, and there are Catholic and Orthodox churches all over the world. We Protestants weren't even thinking about missionary work until about two hundred years ago, but in this two hundred years Protestant denominations have become very active sending missionaries out. The Congregational Churches of Massachusetts sent the first missionaries to Hawaii, and now there are 110 UCC churches in the Hawaiian Islands. About twenty-five years ago, the mainline Protestant churches agreed to a new missionary plan: each denomination would relate to specific countries and stay out of other countries. So we have mission workers in Japan, India, Indonesia, Venezuela, Ecuador, the Congo and several other countries; whereas the Presbyterian Church USA has mission workers in different countries than ours.
But there are also new churches being started by people in their own countries—Brazil, Puerto Rico, Chile, South Africa, Zimbabwe. Christianity is growing faster in South America and Africa than it is in Europe and North America. And that means we have fellow Christians, sisters and brothers in the faith of Jesus Christ, everywhere.
On this World Communion Sunday we are beginning to realize that we North American Christians need to move over and welcome the rest. We celebrate the world-embrace of the Cross, even if there is now more diversity among Christians than there has ever been before: our languages, hymns, preaching styles, church life, forms of baptism, ways of celebrating the Lord's Supper—all different from each other; and yet, we are brothers and sisters, and we still meet them all at Christ's high table of memory and hope.
And meeting them here, we bring to God together the dividend of praise and service in the world. World Communion Sunday is about our shared vineyard and our shared responsibility. When you lift the Bread to your lips today, give thanks for all those who eat with us. When you tip the Cup into your mouth, give praise to the God who is doing a new thing right now in the Southern Hemisphere. And as you contemplate the meaning of this meal, recommit yourself to oppose evils such as anti-Semitism, because he died and rose again for the redemption of the world.
AMEN
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