Proper 22, Year A, 2011

Matthew 21:33-46

The Rev. Ronald N. Johnson

The Matthew’s Gospel this morning continues the theme of the last several Sundays.  Once again, we have a vineyard parable, using this metaphor to tell us more about the Kingdom of God.  If you’ve been with us, in church, for the last several Sundays, you know that Jesus often used parables to teach about the Kingdom of God, or God’s Realm.  In the vineyard parables, the vineyard is always God’s Kingdom, God’s Realm, God’s providence if you will.  The vineyard owner is God himself, and the stories tell us, in parable form, something about what the Kingdom of God is like.

The parable, this morning, in its original context, tells that God was about to bring to his Kingdom a new people, a people who are truly lovers of God and obedient to God, because they are disciples of Jesus Christ.  God was on the threshold of replacing the old order with the new, and the new order was to be in and through Jesus Christ.  In today’s parable, Jesus tells of a landowner that prepared a fine vineyard, complete with watchtower and winepress, and sent workers to make the vineyard productive for him.  When the time came, when the fruit was ripe, the landowner, the vineyard owner, sent his emissaries to collect the yield.  Understand that this story rang true and near at hand to the Pharisees to whom Jesus spoke.  Absentee ownership of vineyards was common place in Palestine during the first century AD.  In the parable, Jesus goes on to say that when the owner’s representatives arrived, they were treated shamefully – more than shamefully.  The workers beat, stoned, even killed the owner’s agents.  In desperation, the landowner sent his son, thinking that surely they would respect his son.  But, they killed the son so that they could have the inheritance.

After Jesus told this story, he asked the Pharisees, “What will the landowner do when he, himself, comes to the vineyard?  The Pharisees answered, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”  The Pharisees answered well, because in the mind of Jesus, as the Lord made very clear, the Jews were the first tenants of the vineyard, and the vineyard was God’s Realm, God’s Kingdom.  In rejecting Jesus, the Jews rejected God the Father’s Son.  For doing that, Jesus said, they must pay a price.  The price to be paid was the fall from God’s grace.  The imagery, here, is the Creation story and the Garden of Eden.  As Adam and Eve fell from grace, because of disobedience, so do the children of Abraham.  And, in Christian theology, Jesus becomes the new Adam.  In Jesus there is a rebirth for humanity.  In Jesus humanity can once again live in God’s Garden, God’s vineyard.  God’s Kingdom of the Chosen endures, but the new tenants are the disciples of Jesus Christ.

This was a heavy message, a difficult one for the religious leaders of Israel to hear.  We understand that the Pharisees were shocked and angered.  The Pharisees were the religious scholars of our Lord’s days on earth.  They were the masters of God’s Law. They were the religious leaders of the Jews. They thought that they knew perfectly the will of Almighty God, but Jesus said that their worship was an empty worship, their obedience to the minutia of the law little more than meaningless, because their hearts were not in it. They should have known the will of the Father and been perfect in obedience.  But they would not listen to the good news that Jesus is Lord.  The price paid was severe.

We can leave the Gospel passage for this morning right here, for what I have told you is the prophetic message that our Lord delivered to the Pharisees. What I have told you is the meaning of the parable in its original context.  But, I think that the message applies just as much to the Church today as it did to the Jews of our Lord’s day.  It is a message that we as Christians must hear, because it deals with a disease of the soul to which we are all susceptible.  That disease is spiritual complacency.   It is very easy for us to become complacent.

We are here to worship God, offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God and then go out from here to do the work of God. God calls us, in Christ, to embrace the covenant of baptism and to live out that covenant which is a covenant of discipleship.  If we are dead in Christ’s death and born anew in his resurrection, through our baptism, then we are called to discipleship.  As disciples, we become the stewards of the God’s Kingdom, just as the vineyard workers in the parable were the stewards of the vineyard.  We become the means in which the good news of the Kingdom is spread.  We become Christ’s ambassadors, his emissaries, doing his work in the world to bring his Kingdom on earth, his Kingdom in chronological time to the fullness of God’s glory.  As disciples, we make his Kingdom a little more complete each day.  We do it by truly living out his new commandment that we love one another as he loved us, by taking up the Cross and following Him.

God’s Kingdom is a kingdom of disciples.  It is a Kingdom whose citizens understand the wisdom of the prophet Mica, who said, “What does the Lord require of thee, but to love mercy, do justice and walk humbly with your God.  All are called to the Kingdom of God. All of humanity is called to Christian discipleship.  All are called to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. God invites everyone to salvation. Not everyone accepts the invitation.  Amen.