For some sixty years now, the first Sunday in October has been designated World Communion Sunday. It began in the aftermath of the World War II, as a way to bring Christians who had fought against one another together again and witness to a unity transcending borders and nationality. It is a time to be reminded that we are linked together with brothers and sisters of all colors and languages and circumstances, a witness still so very much needed in the world today.
It would be nice if the lectionary gave us words about unity or peace or the essential oneness of humanity. Instead we are given this very unsettling story, a parable reported in Matthew, Mark AND Luke. In it, a landowner goes to a lot of trouble to create a beautiful vineyard with all the amenities, and then leases out it to tenants. At the end of the growing season, he sends his messengers to collect the rent, but they are not treated kindly — in fact they are beaten, killed, and stoned. He sends in reinforcements, who meet with the same response. Finally, he sends his own son, thinking he will be recognized and respected, come with authority, but this only further provokes the workers, who figure that if they do in the son, they can take over the vineyard for themselves. Finally the owner himself has to come in, take charge, and "put those wretches to a miserable death," and then try again with new tenants.
And the moral to the story is: the riches of God's realm are in your hands, but if you do not make the most of it and give God a good return on God's investment, then the same thing will happen to you. If I were a hellfire and brimstone kind of preacher, I could have a lot of fun with that!
But of course that would not sound like me, and more importantly, it doesn't really sound like Jesus! And it's not just that there's so much violence in this story. As I like to point out, Jesus was not really in the business of giving ultimatums or of offering morals to his stories. He usually said something with a sharp or biting edge to it, and then left it to the listeners to figure out what was meant, and apply it to their own lives.
Scholars suggest that this story as written is really a reworking of an original Jesus-parable. Matthew edited it to fit the situation a generation or two after Jesus, and has changed it from a parable to an allegory. The difference is that a parable is pretty straight forward, self-contained, while an allegory always points beyond itself. People and events in allegories are representative of something else. As the Christians in Matthew's time would interpret it, the vineyard is Israel, that special nation created by God with the same care with which the owner created the vineyard. It was placed in the hands of the chosen people, the Hebrews, to tend and care for. To keep them accountable, God sent prophets, but they were largely rejected. Many were beaten and stoned and killed. Finally, God sent his own beloved son, Jesus, who met a similar fate. He was seized (in a garden) and thrown out (a reference to his being crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem), and killed. And so in the end, they lost their country. It was, in fact, shortly before Matthew compiled his Gospel that Jerusalem fell, and Israel ceased to exist as a nation. Those for whom Matthew was writing -- largely Christians of Jewish background -- would see a clear picture here of their own history: they'd messed up what they'd been given, they'd rejected God's overtures in the prophets and in the messiah -- and now they'd have to pay the price as God was giving it all to someone else. "The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom."
Well, that's not all that far from what the hellfire and brimstone preacher might say -- reject Jesus and the same thing will happen to you! And if you strip away the fundamentalist and anti-Semitic trappings, there is still a basic message here which even I have preached many times: use it or lose it. Fail to nurture and develop and use the gifts you have for good purposes, and there will be consequences, not pleasant! Fail to make the most of your talents -- whatever they may be -- and pretty soon you won't have them anymore. Use them for evil ends rather than virtuous ones, and you will suffer in the long run. Fail to follow a life characterized by the values of Jesus, by caring, forgiveness, generosity, unselfishness, and pretty soon you will be as miserable as those tenants disinherited from the vineyard. It's a simple fact of life.
But wouldn’t it be great to get back to Jesus and his original story? And remember, he told parables, not allegories. He didn't moralize. He just told a simple story, often based on agricultural or social realities and let his listeners figure out how to apply it.
As I said, most scholars think that Matthew embellished on an earlier version of the story, in order to make his point, as any good preacher would be expected to do. What that original story might have been was pretty much a mystery until relatively recently. But in 1945 an Egyptian peasant was digging on a hillside and accidentally cracked open a jar that contained some well-preserved papyrus documents, including one dating back to the first century which has come to be known as the Gospel of Thomas, and which some scholars now even refer to as "the fifth Gospel." The Gospel of Thomas does not tell the story of Jesus' life, but is essentially a collection of his sayings, about half of which have parallels in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And among them is one that would seem to be a more original version of this story of the landlord and the tenants.
Jesus said, "A (certain) person owned a vineyard and leased it to some farmers, so that they might work it and he might collect the crop from them. He sent his slaves that the farmers might give him the vineyard's crop. They grabbed him, beat him, and almost killed him, and the slave returned and told his master. His master said, Perhaps he did not know them. He sent another slave and the farmers beat that one as well. Then the master sent his son, and said, Perhaps they will show my son some respect. Because the farmers knew that he was the heir to the vineyard, they grabbed him and killed him. Whoever has ears should listen."
Now you can see how Matthew would take this and think of Israel's own history, how the farmers were the Jewish people, or at least the Pharisees, and how the son they rejected was the Messiah. He added the ending and the moral. It's always appropriate to take a story and apply it. If the shoe fits.....
But what do you suppose it meant when Jesus originally told it? What did it mean before it was edited and changed from a parable into an allegory?
It would basically appear to be a lament over the terrible effects of greed. The workers simply do not wish to pay what they owe for their use of vineyard. They want to keep it all for themselves. And a lot of people get beaten up or wind up dead.
But I wonder if the workers are the only ones to blame here. I'm not going to attempt to make heroes out of them, but reputable scholars suggest that the owner of the vineyard may also have a problem. I am told, by people who understand such things, that while we have read the parable to begin "a (certain) person owned a vineyard," in the original Greek the word we read as "certain" is somewhat ambiguous, and could also mean "good" (a good person owned a vineyard), or it could be a different Greek word that would make the landowner a "creditor" or "usurer," in other words, a loan shark. And this may be the more likely reading. The landowner is not God. In fact, he's not even good.
For in Palestine at the time there was a huge class of landless peasants, dreaming of the day when they might attain their own land, as well as a lot of absentee landlords, wealthy barons who let their land out to others so they could work off a debt; or to poor peasant workers who couldn't afford land of their own, and were charged exorbitant fees for the use of the land, sometimes more than the land would produce, especially if it had been a bad year. In our own recent history one thinks of slaves who worked the fields to make their masters rich, or the migrant workers that John Steinbeck wrote about (and who still risk everything to cross our borders and do the jobs that we won’t) They were doomed to toil on someone else's land for their entire lives, because the rent demanded by the land owner was so high, and the charges for simple amenities such as a clapboard shack and an outhouse and barely potable water would eat up what little profits were left, that this would keep them in perpetual debt. Such injustice has existed far back in history, and you can understand the frustration and hatred harbored by the the tenants. Eventually, some people trapped in that situation turn to violence. Sounds rather contemporary, doesn’t it?
So there was a bit of an uprising here in this parable, and quite understandably, but there are no real heroes. The absentee landlord is rewarded for his greed by the death of his son; the tenant's desire to hold on to all their produce leads to their getting thrown off the land altogether, losing everything. There are no winners in this story. All are ruined by their greed and selfishness.
Now you may wonder why Jesus would tell such a story, in which there are no heroes, but such stories are often a reflection of life as it is, and they do get a hearing. After all, in real life, the lines between evil and good are often blurred. As in many of Jesus' parables, there is some good in the worst of us, and the best of us are quite flawed. Jesus’ parables are a reflection of life, and they do not always make you feel good.
What they do is make you think, and reflect upon the futility of making greed, or revenge, or power, or self-centeredness the guiding principles of your life. Apply it like Matthew did – but not in the exact same way. Make it a parable not about 1st century Israel, but about us. And this parable of the wicked workers (and not-so-nice landowner) goes farther and says: in then end, try as we might, we do not really own anything. We're all just tenants in this life. The earth is the Lord's, not ours, and we're here to take care of it, and use it wisely and benevolently and fruitfully, but when we abuse it or use it selfishly, we will surely lose it, through pollution or global warming. Our children are not ours, but only lent us for a while. The Church is not ours, but a stewardship passed on from previous generations, and today we are challenged to find ways to “connect with Westmoreland”, to get involved in the work of the church, which is not the same as “church work” – that is, to be good stewards of this vineyard here on the circle.
And as we gather the World Communion Sunday with Christians the world over, we are reminded that we do not own this Table, on which the gifts of God, from field and vineyard, are spread. It is not ours to say who is welcome, that only those who believe as we do may dine with us, only the morally pure or those professing a theologically correct faith or the right politics may commune. No, it is the Lord's Table, and all are welcome here.
In the end, for all our differences, we all share this good earth. We are not alone. We're all in this together. My neighbor's pain is my pain, my neighbor's need is my need. We are to take what we have been given, and make the most of it, not for our own comfort and pleasure, but to share with others, and thus honor the One who is Creator and Sustainer of all. Or as Jesus said, be "a people that produces the fruits of God's realm."
