Video version (Collect, readings and sermon)
What’s your harvest been like
this year, and what are you doing with it? Back at the beginning of lockdown,
many people seemed to be taking up gardening for the first time. There was
quite a run on compost and seeds. Growing things is a sign of hope for the
future, and profoundly good for the soul.
But here we are, at the end
of the season, with whatever harvest our little patch produced.
In my garden the Runner beans
and courgettes were fruitful, and I’ve had a bumper crop of tomatoes in the
green house, so the freezer is bursting at the seams.
One thing that nearly always
does well – and hasn’t disappointed this year – is our grapevine, which is
ironic, because I didn’t really plant it for the fruit. I just wanted something
to grow up a trellis as a windbreak, but within a couple of years it was
bearing wonderful grapes, and it would take over the world if I didn’t keep up
with the pruning. I sometimes make grape and apple jelly with the glut and suppose
we could produce some Chateau Le Bas wine, but we usually regard this
particular harvest as largely a gift to the birds.
Grapevines twine their way
through all three readings today, which isn’t surprising, because they were,
and still are, a very important crop in Israel. Often in the Bible the vine is
a metaphor for the nation, God’s people are likened to a vineyard he has
planted.
But as today’s readings
remind us, vine growing is not always straightforward.
Isaiah writes of a vineyard
that is in trouble. He is writing at the time of the cataclysm of the Exile in
Babylon, and the destruction of Jerusalem. God is heartbroken, he says, because
he loves the vineyard of Israel, and hoped for so much from it. But his love
has been thrown back in his face. He wanted his people to enjoy the fruits of
peace and joy, but it hasn’t turned out that way. “he expected justice, but
saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!” The vines he planted with
such hope have produced small, hard, bitter wild grapes, no use to anyone. Isaiah
goes on in the next few verses to describe the way people have heaped up
possessions for themselves – joining house to house, adding field to field –
leaving no room for anyone else to share in the goodness they have been given.
In the end, though, says God, we can only truly thrive when everyone thrives,
and has a fair share of the world’s resources. This vineyard has been left to
go to wrack and ruin, so wrack and ruin will claim it.
In the Gospel, Jesus speaks
to the religious elites of his time. He tells them a story about a vineyard which
had been let to tenant farmers. Their rent was a share of the produce. They
were just tenants – it was still the landowner’s property. But they refused.
They behaved as if it was theirs to do what they liked with. All those who he
sent to collect his fair share of the harvest were ill-treated and when he sent his son, they thought that if
they got rid of him, they would then inherit the vineyard themselves – how they
thought that was going to work isn’t at all clear. It’s pretty obvious they
would be the last people the landowner would choose to leave this land to. But
when we are consumed with greed, logic and common sense often go out of the
window! So, they killed the son….
At that point Jesus turns to
the religious leaders and says, “what do you think happened next? How would
you expect the landowner to react?” They are the ones who come up with what
they think would be the inevitable result – the tenants would face a miserable
death, and the vineyard would be given to others – that’s the kind of thing
that would have happened in their world. At this point they start to shift
uneasily from foot to foot, realising that this story was about them, people
who think somehow that their nation, their faith, the gifts they have been
given ,are theirs to possess and control. Prophets like Isaiah had warned –
like the slaves in the story – but they had taken no notice.
This is a story we have to be
careful with. Christians have sometimes read it as a condemnation of the Jewish
faith, and permission to regard themselves as the true heirs of God’s promise.
It has been used to justify anti-Semitism. But it’s really not saying that at
all – Jesus was Jewish and didn’t ever seem to intend to found a new religion.
This is a warning to anyone who thinks that they are entitled to own and
control the world, to own and control faith, even to own and control God, and
people of all faiths and none are more than capable of thinking and behaving
that way.
It’s a nonsense to think it’s
possible, though. All that we have, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the
life we live is a gift to us, from a power that is infinitely greater than we
are. We are dependent on the earth, and
on the God who gave it, not the other way around. We are tenants, not owners,
called to produce fruit, and to share that fruit, but always remembering who it
was that made it possible. When we forget that, it brings disaster on all of us
– economic disaster, ecological disaster, and spiritual disaster too, because
we cut ourselves off from our true source of life.
So, what’s your harvest been
like this year – not just the tomatoes and beans, but the fruit of the Spirit
of God working in you, the Spirit that brings love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self- control? What have you
been given? What have you been entrusted with to nurture and to share? And what
will you do with it now?
I’m going to hand over to
James Langstaff, the Bishop of Rochester, to talk about one initiative, the
Poverty and Hope project, which seeks to spread the goodness of God’s harvest
among some of those who need it most.
Amen
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