The Rev. Peter Sipple | October 8, 2023

These thoughts about living together in society were pulled together before yesterday’s tragic events in Israel.  There is even more reason now to pray that neighbors in the Middle East can find the means to peaceful coexistence. 

One way we experience the Good News of Jesus Christ comes in the form of parables.  They demonstrate Jesus’ exhortation to live moral lives and to live morally with one another.  Jesus’s examples encourage us to emulate the behavior of the Good Samaritan, the father of the prodigal son, the publican in the Temple.  The sum of these teachings we refer to as Christian ethics:  they identify the standards governing how we should behave as individuals.  Today’s readings focus on the ethical standards that govern how individuals should behave within society.

Ethics refer to standards provided by an external source.  You and I believe that our beliefs and actions are guided by Christian ethics.  Morals refer to our individual principles relating to right and wrong.  This distinction between ethics and morality becomes clearer when we raise questions such as “how should I act?” and “what should I do?” Ethical questions such as these then get particularized into: “how do I deal with another person, given existing circumstances? how should we live together?”  These questions challenge us, because our world comprises a complex network of cultures and traditions that result in a diverse moral collage, with some universal truths easily identifiable and others far less so.   But we are nevertheless left with this central issue: “how should we live together?

As children we learn about both ethical standards and broader societal norms: first from our parents and extended family, then in schools and neighborhoods, and now, increasingly through social media, for better or for worse.  Margaret and I have found it challenging, as grandparents, to refrain from teaching our grandkids the norms and values we learned as children.  As Margaret reminds me every so often, try not to pre-empt their parents, since now it’s their job!

Some stories in the Gospels deal with the way Christians are meant to live in community.  They raise this question: If you’re going to call yourselves Christian, what difference will the Gospel make to the way you conduct your corporate lives?  How do we behave as a family? Neighborhood? Parish? Company or industry? City? Country?  Today’s lessons provide one answer.  The metaphor of the vineyard as community goes back to Isaiah.  In fact, in today’s reading in Matthew, Jesus recalls the passage from Isaiah, almost literally.  How does Isaiah portray God relating to the vineyard?   God loves it, and tends it caringly, the way you do your garden.  You nurture it, chasing away intruders, putting up protective fencing, adding fertilizer, watering and pulling weeds.  Many of us have devoted ourselves to restoring and beautifying flower beds, the lawns and trees around our property and/or in community spaces.  We all do so not just as stewards but as people who love the earth and all it has to offer us.

BUT: in Isaiah’s rendering, the vineyard, in response to this God-like loving care, produces wild grapes!  Now wild grapes may sound OK, but they may not taste good.  In fact, some are poisonous and thus useless for making wine.  The vintner’s constant care-taking of the vines yields only bad fruit!  How does that make the vine-grower feel?  Angry.  In Isaiah, the vineyard is torn down and let go to weeds and thorns.  No rain.

Then Isaiah completes the analogy: the vineyard stands for the House of Israel: God expected justice but saw bloodshed.  Righteousness, but heard people crying.  Here it’s the people of Israel who are held to account for their behavior.  As a community, supposed to be faithful and therefore right-living, they are failing. They have turned wild and useless.  Here, wildness may be a metaphor for those who disregard the laws and customs of society—that is, social ethics. They have only bitterness to contribute to the “good wine” that is valued as a social norm.  Isaiah sees Israel in conflict with itself, in a political revolt all too familiar in the State of Israel today, and even closer to home.

Using the same metaphor, Jesus creates an even more dramatic event: he wants to show how the tenants (those who have leased his Kingdom) are behaving, and wow! It’s pretty bad, isn’t it?  Their behavior has resulted in wildness, craziness, and immoral, even murderous, behavior.  This community has lost all sight of its ethical standards.  They live exactly opposite and counter to Jesus’ (the landowner’s) moral teaching.  They may say they live in his vineyard, but their behavior demonstrates their immorality.

You and I are generally pretty clear about how Jesus asks us to live our individual lives; we try to live up to the Gospel’s teaching, beginning with the two great commandments.  But we may be less confident and courageous about relating the Gospel to our role in larger corporate groups.  What is our responsibility to see that that the community of which we are a part is behaving ethically?   What can we do?  Consider these three possibilities:

First, we can try, collectively, to remain good tenants of the vineyard that God has prepared for us.  By doing so we represent the values found in the Social Gospel.  That term refers to a specific movement within Christianity that applies Christian morality to social problems, especially issues of social justice such as economic inequality, poverty, crime, racism, and homelessness.  Though the issues have changed some, our understanding of Christ’s teaching has not.  Living in society, we are called as Christians to uphold shared standards: decency, civility, generosity, compassion, love of neighbor, welcoming the stranger, and care for the outcast.  We accept these societal norms as standards of moral behavior that are signs of our belonging, badges certifying membership in this society.  As David Brooks observed in a New York Times opinion piece recently: “Humans are fallen beings, and the crust of civilization is thin.  We are able to live sweetly because we have constructed a moral and social order which is fragile and requires constant tending.”

Brooks’ observation leads to a second possibility:  In addition to membership, we are called to speak up, and better yet act, when we feel that the group we’re a part of is behaving unethically.  Doing so calls for courage.  We may upset others, but acting on our faith, wearing it on our sleeves, demands courage.   We need only to look to Dr. King in this country and Dietrich Bonhoeffer who challenged the horrors of Nazi Germany.  Thoroughly informed by the Christian Gospel, both men lost their lives upholding their moral convictions.  Thank God we do not have to risk death to make our adherence to the social Gospel known to others.

Finally, we can help sustain the agents within society that are helping to create healthy vineyards.  We can do so through our financial support.  We can call attention to their work in local newspapers, in written comments to friends.  And we can join their associations in membership, adding our names to those advancing their good work and goals for a just, moral society. 

And so, as Christians and as human beings, we have it within us to help nourish a healthy vineyard, to preserve and sustain Christian communities, and to acknowledge when we and others fall short of normative and agreed-upon ethical standards.  For the vineyard is of God’s making, and God loves it.  We can assist with God’s loving work as we keep the vineyard morally healthy and strive for its betterment.

AMEN