Homily

Just a few reminders about some of the details in today's parable: The owner planted a vineyard and he built a hedge around it to protect the grapes from being eaten by animals. He dug a hole for the winepress and he set up a small building, a little tower that could serve as a watch post and a shelter for those who might be working in the vineyard. People who lived in the first century A.D. in Palestine and the area would have been familiar with men who were absentee landlords, men who owned farmland and vineyards and hired tenant farmers to take care of growing and harvesting the crops. The landlord-owners would give these sharecroppers a certain percentage of the harvest but they, as owners, would take the biggest share of the profits, of course—greed on a pre-arranged deal.

Jesus, in telling this parable, is almost certainly thinking of the 5th Chapter of Isaiah where he writes, "My beloved 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 carved out a wine vat in it. Isaiah then makes it clear that "the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel." And no matter how much effort the Lord puts into the vineyard it only produces wild grapes, so the Lord decides He will destroy it.

In the parable, the tenant farmers think, in a stupid way, that if they kill the owner's son, somehow they will be able to gain control over the whole piece of property. It's a rather dumb plan. Do they think the owner will just walk away because they have killed his son? When Jesus asks the chief priests and elders, whom He is talking with, what the owner will do, they understand that he will bring justice down on the heads of the murderous tenants.

Jesus tells this parable in light of His own coming. The Lord God has sent His servants, the prophets, to Israel over and over again throughout history, but they are always treated shamefully and in the end they are usually killed. Now in this parable Jesus predicts how He Himself will be killed by those who work in the vineyard. The chief priests and the elders and Pharisees, in reply to Jesus' question, blurt out the judgment that they will soon bring down on their own heads. And in the couple of verses right after today's Gospel reading Jesus says in Matthew 21: 43-46,

"Therefore I say to you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from them and given to a nation bearing fruit." When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they knew that He was speaking about them. And they sought to arrest Him but were afraid of the crowds, since they regarded Him as a prophet."

So what is in the minds of the Jewish leaders? Are they interested in the message of Jesus? Are they willing to think about His teaching and learn from Him? Do they wonder if He could be sent by God as a prophet for them, especially since the people consider Him to be a prophet? Shouldn't they see the miraculous cures and signs He has accomplished as a proof of His divine mission? For most of the Jewish leadership the answers to these questions are no, no, no, and no. They simply want Jesus dead because 1) He is more popular with the people than they are, and, even more importantly, 2) Jesus denounces them as leaders because they do not lead the people to follow the true commandments of God and they have in their desire for power and prosperity placed themselves and their own ideas and teachings above the Word of God. Since Jesus threatens their position, they have to get rid of Him. They have to get rid of Him.

And so, dear friends, as we look around in our society today, do we ever find leaders, people in prominent positions, those who have the eyes and ears of the media, do we ever find people who believe that in order to hold power they have to get rid of Jesus? Now of course they can't get rid of Jesus by killing Him—that's already been done.

And they generally are not going to say one bad word about Jesus Himself because that would seem crude. Their method is to get rid of Jesus by getting rid of those who carry His teaching within their hearts, and who follow His Gospel of peace. They can't get rid of the owner of the vineyard directly, so they will get rid of His servant. They can't get rid of the servants by killing them, because there are so many of them it would take forever. Plus who then would vote for them, applaud their works, praise their accomplishments; follow them as leaders? No, don't kill the servants. Instead treat them as inferior, backward, out of touch, unenlightened, divisive and hostile. Repeatedly proclaim that they have no compassion or feeling for the hardship and suffering of people, certainly not as you do. When Jesus' servants work for peace, you claim they make war on others. When they ask to be heard, you try to shout them down. When they claim a right to practice their faith in freedom, you say they are bigots and bigots have no rights. When they speak from a rich tradition of Christian scholarship in ethics and morality, you simply quote an editorial from the New York Times and an actor's speech at a United Nations' committee as a sufficient reply. When they say that genuine freedom is only about the freedom to do what is right, you respond that American freedom is the freedom to pretty much do whatever you want, you'll find that definition to be very attractive to those who follow you, as bit by bit, the resolve and the courage of some of the followers of Jesus begins to break down. As, bit by bit, many start to question whether or not "all" of that Christian teaching of 2,000 years is actually good and true. Maybe it's better just for me to decide, at least on this thing or that thing, you know. I still follow Jesus; I just follow Him the way I decide to follow Him.

Nope. You can't kill Jesus. But you can try to kill His Gospel by targeting His servants. Just a few days after Jesus told the parable the people who thought He was a prophet changed their minds at the urging of the priests and elders, and called for Barabbas to be released instead of Jesus. How easy it can be sometimes to sway people. And they cried out, as many leaders in our society do today, if not by their exact words, certainly by their actions, "We have no king but Caesar!" (And we can always get another Caesar!)

Those who promise all good things in this world offer only temporary rewards which even then can never be guaranteed. Let us not be swayed in our devotion to serve in our Master's vineyard, and work as His faithful servants, for we will indeed receive from Him our promised share of eternal glory at harvest time. And if we must struggle to uphold His Gospel in a society where so many would rather have Barabbas, let's do it with courage, dignity and under the power of grace which only our Master can provide, for He is the only Lord forever and ever Amen.