"Tend this Vine" | The Rev. Heidi Thorsen | October 4, 2020

Proper 22, Year A | October 4, 2020

Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:7-14
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46

May I speak in the name of God, who is to us Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The vineyards of Northern California are on fire. That is the news that I heard earlier this week. In some ways this news hardly feels like news any more. Over the past month it seems that there is always a fire burning in California, the state that I grew up in. I remember fires growing up. I remember how once every few years the sky would cloud over with smoke and the sun would burn red. I remember taking a short walk from my own house to look out to the foothills with binoculars, watching a rim of fire burning on the ridge. And yet nothing - nothing from my childhood is even close to what we have seen over the past few years and months.

In order to really understand what is going on in California, and across the West Coast, I had to look at pictures. And this week, it was pictures of vineyards on fire. Rows of grapevines glowing orange against a deep orange sky. Wooden supports, smoldering. Sparks flying.

These are the images I had in mind as I was preparing for this week’s sermon, reflecting on how our texts from Isaiah, the Psalm, and our reading from the Gospel of Matthew are all about vines and vineyards. In each of these readings there is a threat to the flourishing of the vineyard. And yet the exact circumstances and symbolism shifts across these readings.

First, the reading from Isaiah. In this reading the vineyard represents the people of Israel, particularly those living in the southern Kingdom of Judah. At this time in Israel’s history, around the 8th century before Christ, the North Kingdom of Israel had split off from the southern kingdom of Judah. It was a time of division, and crisis. The people of Judah watched as the Northern Kingdom was completely destroyed by invaders. Then the people of Judah faced their own reckoning when Assyrian armies laid siege to Jerusalem. At the very last moment the Assyrian armies turned back, saving a remnant of God’s chosen people. 

The words of the prophet Isaiah in our reading today are both a prophecy, and an explanation of the pain and unrest that the people of Israel were experiencing. Isaiah explains that the people of Israel are suffering because they are like a vineyard, which did not produce good fruit but instead produced wild grapes. In other words, the people of Israel brought this destruction upon themselves. And yet Isaiah still calls this prophecy a “love song-concerning [God’s] vineyard” - because this destruction is not the end of the story. Instead the story of Israel is a story of resilience and survival; a story of promises fulfilled and expanded beyond what humans ever imagined. Our Psalm for today provides a glimpse of this promise, with a description of a vine that grows out of Egypt and extends throughout the land. “Turn now, O God of hosts, look down from heaven;” the psalmist pleads, “behold, and tend this vine.”

These images of a vineyard on the brink of destruction in Isaiah and the Psalms remind me of the picture of the vineyard burning in California. These are snapshots of desolation. A depiction of a world in crisis. We know that the story continues for the people of Israel. There is life after death; there is hope beyond this moment on the brink of destruction. And yet this life, this hope was not possible without change - without repentance. That is the message of the prophets: bear fruit worthy of repentance. We might ask what fruit God is calling forth in us - what repentance, what action - when we consider the pictures of the vineyards in California burning. In fact, we need to ask these questions. “Turn now, O God of hosts, look down from heaven; behold and tend this vine,” the Psalmist writes. And yet we have to realize that God has also given us vines to tend, and a world to care for - a world that is showing signs of crisis through wildfires, hurricanes, tornados, and rising sea levels. Remember this: we, too, have a vineyard to tend.

This, perhaps, takes us to our gospel passage for today - the Parable of the Wicked tenants. In this story, the symbolism of vine and vineyard shifts. We are no longer asked to identify with the vineyard. Instead, we are invited to identify with the tenants - those who care for the vineyard. In this story, a landowner leases out a vineyard to several tenants. It seems like the tenants have done a good job producing good fruit, literally, because when the landowner sends several servants to collect the fruits of the harvest, the tenants suddenly decide that they want to keep the proceeds for themselves. They beat, kill, and stone this first group of servants with hardly a thought. The landowner sends more servants, and the tenants do the same. Finally, the landowner takes a different approach and decides to send his own son. “They will respect my son,” the landowner says to himself. Instead, when the tenants see the son they plot amongst themselves and say, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” And then they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 

In the Gospel of Matthew this parable is a kind of prophecy of the death of Jesus. God has sent servants to the vineyard - prophets and teachers who are rejected. Finally God sends Jesus, God’s own son, and Jesus too is killed. What I find so striking about this parable is how it resists seeming like a crisis. The vineyard is not on fire. The Assyrian army is not banging on the gates. And yet, people are dying - one wave of servants after another in a way that is so terrifyingly casual. So appallingly normal. This parable reminds me of the final words of T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men”: “This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.”

Now, there is one way of reading this parable that distances it from ourselves: and that is the specific interpretation that the tenants in this parable represent the Pharisees. Of course this interpretation is accurate. At the end of today’s gospel reading the Pharisees themselves feel convicted, because “they realized that [Jesus] was speaking about them.” And yet if we lean too much on this one interpretation, we run the risk blaming Jewish religion for the death of Jesus - a conclusion which is both historically and spiritually inaccurate. It lets us, today, off the hook. Instead, I think a deeper, richer way of reading this parable is to see ourselves in the position of the tenants - because each of us, in our own way, are tenants of God’s vineyard.

In this reading the vineyard represents the kingdom of God. God enlists us to help tend this vineyard - and what a privilege that is. To grow and tend and work together to bring forth a harvest. And yet, things go awry. This time there is no outside threat - no fire or Assyrian armies. This time there is no external, cosmic symptom of sin. All we get is the sin itself: the selfishness of humankind. We, the tenants, put our own needs before the needs of others. And in doing so we betray our God, our creator, and God’s vision of a vineyard with good fruit for all.

I think it’s important for us to be able to see ourselves in this role of tenant. I think it’s important because that’s exactly what we are on this earth. We don’t own the planet and its resources. We don’t own the New Haven Green. And while we might hold the deed to our church building, ultimately everything that we claim to own on the face of this earth belonged to someone else before us - and everything on the face of this earth ultimately belongs to God. We are tenants. Renters. Sojourners. Honored guests with a job to do. Or, in other words, we are stewards. And this is an important word to remember as we approach our annual stewardship appeal this year. During this season of stewardship we consider what we are able to give back to the church - of our time, of our resources, of our money. And we give - not out of guilt or habit (or at least, I hope not). Rather we give out of a sense of love and responsibility and participation in this particular vineyard that God has given us to tend.

We continue to care for our vineyard in times of crisis. When the flames draw near our vineyard, we bring out the buckets and put out the flames. When a disease like Covid-19 threatens our community, we develop new ways of living together; we develop new ways of worshiping together. In times of political and social unrest, we vote. I am convinced that we can overcome all of these things - the pandemic, political division, a climate that is changing towards the point of no return. That is, I am convinced that we can overcome all of these things if we don’t fall into the kind of sin that we see in the parable of the wicked tenants in our reading from the Gospel of Matthew: the sin of selfishness. Putting our own needs before others; grasping for an inheritance that is meant to be shared; valuing the survival of our institutions over the survival of our souls - this is the kind of selfishness that will tear us apart. 

We believe in a God who has shown us another way. A way of selflessness. A way of self-emptying that makes us more truly ourselves than we ever were before. And it’s important to say that this selflessness does negate our own identity. On the contrary it sets us free to be truly ourselves. As the apostle Paul writes in the letter the Philippians, which we read today: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection… not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

The way of selflessness requires us to pay attention to the world. It requires us to notice when people are hurting long before the threat arrives on our own doorstep. It requires us to love this world, that God has made us stewards of. The way of selflessness invites us to live as Jesus lived. To consider in everything we do - how we show up in public places, how we work, how we rest, how we give, how we vote - what would Jesus do?

We are not the owners of this vineyard. We are the tenants. We live, and work, and laugh, and pray on this earth by the grace of God. Let us make the most of this gift that we have been given. Care for others. Care for yourselves. And care for this world that God has made for us. I’d like to conclude with the words of the Psalmist, with a slight variation:

“Turn now, O people God, and look at the earth around you;

Behold and tend this vine;

Preserve what God’s right hand has planted.”

Amen.