A sermon for October 8th, Year A Proper 22, Matthew 21:33-46, Exodus 20

The chief priests and the Pharisees realized that Jesus was telling parables about them.

Notice that it’s parables – plural – that they cite. Last week and this, we hear Jesus talking of vineyards. Throughout the stories of scripture, God’s vineyard is the chosen people, the beloved ones with whom God has covenanted throughout all generations. Last week’s image was domestic, pastoral; a father and his sons and the family vineyard. This one is broader. It involves larger economics, even international scope, greater distance between the landowner and the workers, and a lot more violence. 

How quick we are to repay violence with violence! We elders and betters, chief priests and Pharisees, we stand together with our biblical counterparts and pass righteous judgement on those wicked tenants. They will get what’s coming to them, we mutter, with satisfaction.

The problem is that what God has coming is mercy. See what God did to Paul, that arch-Pharisee, persecutor of the church, blameless Benjaminite! God struck him down and raised him up to be among the chief of the apostles. No, the cornerstone of the kingdom of heaven is mercy, and it crushes our dreams of vengeance and wrecks our fantasies of karma.

The vineyard endures. The landowner will not simply give it up and give it away, because it is beloved of God. The landowner will not allow the bloodthirsty violence of the tenants to sour the land, because it is beloved of God. My God, we could use some assurance of that now, as violence and terror erupt once more in the holy lands, and innocent blood again cries out. 

Yet as hopeless as it seems in the moment of crisis, in the parable, in the parable at least, the landowner reclaims the vineyard, and restores its cycle of fruiting and harvest, because God loves to surprise us with new life.

The constant between these two parables is the vineyard, the symbol of God’s loving care and tending to God’s people. In both stories, others are invited into that loving care with, let’s call them, mixed results. 

The commandments are clear: no lying, no stealing, absolutely no murdering, no coveting of what is rightfully another’s – and it all belongs to God. Honour your father and your mother, our God who asks us to labour in the vineyard.

But the commandments are about more than prohibition. They are our invitation to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, mind, strength, and life, and our neighbours, those images of God, as are we.

They are an invitation to participate in tending the vineyard.

Do you remember how, in the stories of the beginning, God set the humans in a garden, and bid them tend it, care for it, and all of the creatures within it? We were made for love, for tending, and for tenderness.

As in the parables, we are called to labour domestically, within our homes and families and circles of close companionship. We will honour today those who care for God’s creatures by ensuring that they have a home, somewhere to rest, somewhere to trust that when God created them, God saw that they were good, because this, too, is the work of the vineyard.

We are called to labour, not because the vineyard belongs to us, not greedily to grasp its fruits, but because we have been called to tend and grow the vines.

How will we do that? We do it by resisting violence in our communities, by refusing to allow the vineyard to be soured by bloodshed, by working for peace. I was so pleased Friday evening that the High School football team got to have their senior night with a home game. Those who would give up on the vineyard, let its walls fall and its vines run to brambles, perhaps they have not heard that the landowner has not let go of his claim on this land.

We do it by praying fervently for the peace of Jerusalem, as the psalm calls us to do, and by holding our leaders accountable for protecting the innocent and preserving the lives of civilians and children, in the midst of war. 

Since before the law was inscribed on stone tablets, God has planted and tended and protected and saved God’s people. It is unthinkable that God would let them go to seed now.

Martin Luther, the great reformationist, wrote in his Small Catechism that the commandments given to Moses and the people are both small and domestic and of eternal consequence in their call and their impact. Commenting on the commandment against murder, Luther concludes that this applies equally to harm, hurt, anything that might “destroy, shorten, or embitter” our neighbour’s life.^[i]

Can you imagine taking such care of those set before us as tender vines as to avoid so much as to cause them grief or worry, which Luther says will undermine their health? In fact, he writes, we keep this commandment not merely by refraining from murder, but by being merciful, compassionate, kind, patient, and forgiving. Tending the vineyard means not only refraining from killing the vines, but actively nurturing them so that they can fulfill their potential, become all that God planted them to be, and produce good fruit.

In the story Jesus tells today to the elders and the chief priests and the Pharisees, preaching from the middle of Holy Week from the shade of the palms and the shadow of the Cross, there is too much trouble, too much violence, too much strife. We feel it. We know it.

But there is more to follow. There will be another season for the vineyard. There will be another seating of the cornerstone. There will be another chance. Because this is a parable, not a prophecy; a caution, not a prediction. As Moses tells his people, do not be afraid. 

Because the fruit that grows from the vines of the kingdom of heaven are mercy, forgiveness, the very love of God. And God will not give up God’s beloved vineyard for anything less.

^[i] Luther’s Small Catechism, annotated by Edward W. A. Koehler ((Concordia Theological Press, 1946-1981), 75-80,