Vineyard & Cornerstone

Pentecost 18 Proper 22 October 8, 2017

We thank God who makes himself known to us in Jesus Christ, We thank God for Jesus’s life, and death, and resurrection, and for his gift of his Holy Spirit. We thank God for the witness of family and friends and fellow church members in whose lives we see the fruit of the Spirit of God. We thank God for the opportunities he gives us to love and serve him. We thank God for the vineyard, and we thank him for the cornerstone of right living. We thank God.

The last week of Jesus’ ministry before his Crucifixion and Resurrection was a time of controversy and conflict with the leaders of the people. Our bible readings for 3 weeks of October and 2 weeks of November tell of this controversy and conflict. Today we hear two parables, one about a vineyard and the other about a stone.

We read the first parable about the vineyard in three gospels – today in St. Matthew, in St. Mark 12, in St. Luke 20, in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, and also in early Muslim writings. Roughly a century after this gospel was written, Irenaeus began the tradition of understanding the vineyard parable as an allegory. God planted and prepared the vineyard is God. The people of Israel, and particularly the leaders of the people, are the tenants.  The prophets came to collect the harvest and were beaten, killed, and stoned. Jesus is the son who was killed and cast out. The destruction of the Temple in 70 AD shows that the wicked tenants have been removed, and replaced by the Gentile church.

This understanding of the parable has some problems. First, parable says the owner of the vineyard, “leased it to tenants and went to another country.” But “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.”  (Psalm 24:1)  The Lord God has never gone “into another country.” That is the error of deism. No, God continues to be present, sustaining and maintaining the world he has created. On the 7^th day God rested. He did not go away on vacation. Genesis tells us the Lord God walked in the garden in the cool of the evening. He spoke to Adam and Eve. He continues to speak to us in Scripture and by the Holy Spirit. God continues active in our world and in our lives.

A second problem with the allegory is that the new tenants in the vineyard have only partly given the owner the “produce at the harvest time.” The produce of the vineyard is spelled out by St. Paul in Galatians 5:22, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” We enjoy some of that spiritual fruit in our lives and in the life of the church.  We offer some fruit, by God’s grace. At the offertory this morning we will ask God’s blessing on the fruits of the labor of the quilt makers in our congregation.

But we also fail to give all the “produce at the harvest time.” Last Sunday’s murders in Las Vegas and the other offences we see against God’s love and peace show us that we do not at all times and all places respond as we should.  

A third problem with the allegory is the bad fruit it has produced.  The idea that the people of Israel are the wicked tenants, the wretches to be put to death, has been misinterpreted as a proof text for antisemitism, for hatred of Jews. Antisemitism is no longer respectable, but a century ago it was. Only after the Holocaust and World War II did the church recognize antisemitism as a sin. Only in 1948 did the U.S. Supreme Court rule that restrictive covenants forbidding sale of property to Jews, blacks, or Asians could not be enforced at law. God loves all his creation and offers his love to all people. As the song says, “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight; Jesus loves the little children of the world.” The vineyard is a sign of God’s love, but not our judgment.    

In the second parable about the cornerstone Jesus quotes from Psalm 118 – the last of the psalms sung at the Passover celebration – the Passover for which the people were preparing in this last week of Jesus’ earthly life. We place a cornerstone in a building because its right angle is necessary for the building to be square and secure. Jesus’ hearers remembered Isaiah 28:16, “Therefore thus says the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tested stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation . . . and I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plummet.” When Peter and John were tried by the chief priest for preaching Jesus’ resurrection in the Temple, Peter said (Acts 4:11-12) This Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone.’ There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

We thank God who makes himself known to us in Jesus Christ, We thank God for Jesus’s life, and death, and resurrection, and for his gift of his Holy Spirit. We thank God for the witness of family and friends and fellow church members in whose lives we see the fruit of the Spirit of God. We thank God for the opportunities he gives us to love and serve him. We thank God for the vineyard, and we thank him for the cornerstone of right living. We thank God. Amen.