‘Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning
his vineyard.”
The people who first heard
the prophet Isaiah’s words probably thought they knew what they were in for. It
was the classic way to begin a romantic folk song, and it sounded as if it was
going to be a good one, a tale of romance, of passion, of good wine and sweet
juicy grapes. The vineyard isn’t just a vineyard here. It is a symbol of a
relationship.
It started off well. He had a
‘vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug
it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a
watch-tower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it.’ This was a
vineyard that had everything going for it; a good position and a caring,
hard-working owner who didn’t stint on the preparations. There was nothing
hasty or slapdash about what he did. He planted the best vines. He protected
his vineyard.
But despite all the careful
preparation, all the love that had been poured into this vineyard, all the hope
of its owner, everything went wrong.
‘I expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild
grapes’ It reminds me a bit of the English folk song ‘The water is wide’ - ‘I leaned my back up
against a tree/ thinking it was a trusty oak/ but first it bent and then it
broke/ and so did my false love to me.’ Different plant; same sense of
bitter disappointment.
In Isaiah’s prophecy things go
very rapidly downhill. There is nothing for it but to leave the vineyard to
decay. The walls are broken down. It’s overrun by weeds. Even the rain won’t
fall on it; it will soon become a desert.
By this stage, Isaiah’s
hearers are probably starting to get the message. This isn’t some folk ballad
about a human love story that’s gone wrong. It is a picture of God’s love affair
with his people Israel. They are the vine. He’d planted them in a rich and
productive land after their long slavery in Egypt. He’d given them everything
they needed to thrive and bear good fruit, but they’d refused to live in the
way he’d shown them. ‘He expected
justice, but he saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!’
Isaiah was writing just as
calamity was falling on Jerusalem. The Babylonian armies were breaking down its
walls. Like the vineyard in the prophecy it would soon be overrun, and left to
rot and ruin. ‘Why is this happening?’ said the people. ‘Here’s your answer,’ says Isaiah. God had done his bit, but they’d
never really lived as citizens of his kingdom, never really lived out the life
he called them to, a life of justice and peace. The nation had brought this disaster
on itself.
Six hundred years later,
Jesus launched into a story about a vineyard. He was standing in the Temple
talking to the chief priests and elders. They’d have been very familiar with
the imagery. Israel was often pictured as a vine or a vineyard in the Hebrew
Scriptures – we heard it in today’s Psalm too.
They would have known Isaiah’s prophecy well – he was the most popular
prophet at this time. They may have quoted the passage we heard to people
themselves as a terrible warning. ‘Look what happens when people ignore God’s
rules’ they might have said, wagging their fingers at the sinners around
them, the tax collectors and prostitutes, those who were down on their luck,
beyond the pale, condemned by respectable society.
So when they hear Jesus
talking about vines and vineyards, they wouldn’t have been surprised, but they
would have been suspicious. Where is he going with this story? They have good
reason to worry. A few days earlier Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem on a
donkey, acclaimed by the crowds, in a demonstration that had put the wind up
the settled elites. To make matters worse, he had just told this crowd of religious
professionals that tax- collectors and prostitutes would enter the Kingdom of
Heaven before they did. And as this story unfolds , it gradually dawns on them
that they aren’t the heroes in it; they are the villains, the ones who withhold
the vineyard’s produce from its rightful owner. Unlike Isaiah’s vineyard, this
one is fruitful, but the refuse to give the landlord his property. He sends his
messengers – the prophets – to try to set them straight, but they won’t listen,
and even stone them. Finally, says the story, he sends his son, but him they
kill.
Why do they kill him? How can
they behave this way? Well, perhaps there is a clue in the way that landlord
and tenants describe this final attempt to claim that grape harvest. Look at
how the story describes this final man who is sent to them. ‘Finally’ it says, ‘he sent his son to them, saying, “They will respect my son.”
But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir;
come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.”’
To the vineyard owner, this
man is a son, a person whose birth he greeted with joy, who he’d seen grow up,
who he’d nurtured and loved, who he had hopes and dreams for. His heart is tied
to him. He’s proud and happy when things go well for him, weeps when he is
hurt. That is what it is like to have a son.
But the tenants don’t see him
as the landlord’s son, even though they know he is. They see him solely as the
heir – that’s the word they use for him. Heir. That’s a word that’s simply
about inheritance, money, what is coming to you. He’s not a person to them, he’s
just an obstacle between them and the land they want for themselves. Calling
him the “heir” dehumanises him - treats him as no more than an economic unit. They have to dehumanise him in
order to kill him. To them he is no one’s son, no one’s brother, no one’s
husband or friend; they deny him his personhood, so that they can get rid of
him as they might a piece of rubbish.
That’s the way these chief
priests and elders will treat Jesus – he will be crucified within the week. He
can see it’s going to happen because it’s also the way he has seen them treat
others, making rules which exclude and demonise people without, as he says
elsewhere, “lifting a finger to help them”. They have pushed away those who
they judged to be unworthy, the poor, the disabled, widows, orphans, those
whose lives have taken a wrong turning. They have behaved as if God’s kingdom
is theirs to control, as if they’re the ones who can say who is in and who is
out of God’s favour. They have put themselves at the centre, secure within the
borders of their self-defined world. In the end, though, as Jesus starkly
warns, this will backfire. Their greed and self-protectiveness will bring
disaster not just on them, but on those around them too.
The world is not their
oyster. It is God’s kingdom. It is not theirs to own and to rule, to declare
who can come in and who must stay out. It is God’s. No wonder they start to
feel so uncomfortable.
But perhaps it should make us
uncomfortable too. We don’t have to be a first century chief priests to feel
like we are – or ought to be – the centre of our universes, to behave as if we’re
entitled to treat others as less than human, less worthy of attention and care.
We all do it some of the time.
At its extreme, it produces
the sense of entitlement which enables people to massacre others, to take away
their lives, as we saw in Las Vegas earlier this week. But in smaller ways, at
work, at home, in our communities and in our churches, we can all turn into
little empire builders, jealously protecting our turf, clinging onto what we
think is ours, elbowing aside anyone who
is inconvenient to us. We don’t usually do it out of calculated wickedness, but
because we feel insecure. If we don’t look out for number one, who will? But in
doing so we reveal our underlying suspicion that we’re really on our own in the
world. We may claim to believe that God loves us, that he’s there for us, but
do we live like it? If we did, we wouldn’t need to scrabble for a place in the
pecking order of the world, because we’d know we already have the safest place
possible, a place in the heart of God. We wouldn’t need to dehumanise others or
push them down in order to push ourselves up. We wouldn’t need to cling to
possessions, because we’d know that we were securely possessed by God, held in
his hands. We’d know, like St Paul that Christ Jesus had “made us his own”.
Jesus’ parable is, like most
of his parables, is, at its heart, about the kingdom of God, about what it
means to live as God’s people. God’s kingdom will be given, says Jesus, to
those who produce its fruits, the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. That doesn’t
mean it’s some sort of heavenly reward in the distant hereafter for good
behaviour now. The point he is making is that the Kingdom of God comes into
being as we live it, where we live it. Like the vine he likens it to, God’s
kingdom grows organically, naturally. As we love others, a new bud of that
Kingdom vine pushes out from the wood. As we act with integrity, a leaf
unfurls. As we build community in the places we are the fruit of the kingdom
ripens, bringing joy and refreshment to all around. But we can only enjoy that
kingdom, only fully participate in it, when we realise whose kingdom it is,
whose vineyard, whose vine. It’s not ours. We don’t make it with our anxious
labour. We can’t possess it or control it. We don’t have to patrol its borders
or protect it by our unremitting vigilance. It is God’s Kingdom, God’s vine,
God’s vineyard. He lovingly grows it in our midst, if we will let him,
generously gives it to us so that we can generously share its abundance with
all who want its life.
Amen
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