Proper 22 (2nd of October)

The prophet Isaiah tells a compelling story in our reading today.  The context would have been familiar to anyone in Isaiah’s day, because the growing of grapes was an important economic activity in the southern country of Judah.  And he begins in the style of a well-known genre, the love song.  The vineyard was a common metaphor in love poetry for the beloved woman.  And so what sounds strange to our ears would have created ready expectation for the original hearers.  “Let me sing for my beloved a love song concerning his vineyard”.

But the song really does seem to be about a vineyard.  If you have seen the vineyards of California, you would probably recognize this setting.  It is on a hillside that is well drained and grows lush vegetation.  In this area, there is a great deal of limestone, which creates very fertile soil for growing grapes.  But it also breaks off in larger pieces throughout the soil, so one must carefully dig out all the rocks from a new vineyard.  Remember, this is before the invention of the steel plowshare.

So the man lovingly and carefully cultivates his hillside vineyard.  He digs it all up to loosen the soil and prepare it for a crop.  He hauls off all the rocks that would prevent his vines from rooting and growing healthily.  He piles up the rocks in a wall around the vineyard, to protect it from animals.  He works at finding the best vines to plant in his new vineyard.  He spares no expense or effort in preparing the vineyard to produce the best.  There is nothing that he should do that he does not do.

After all that, it takes two years before a new vineyard will produce a crop, so he goes to work on the other improvements that will make the vineyard more pleasant and productive.  He takes the extra stones that didn’t go into the wall, and he builds a watchtower with them.  Now he can protect the vineyard from people as well as animals.  And what’s the whole point of a vineyard?  To produce wine.  So he digs out a winepress, which would have been two separate vats dug out of the side of the hill.  One to press the grapes in and one to catch the juice that runs off.

The man does all this work, because he eagerly expects the vineyard to produce lots of good grapes.  He’s done everything he should to get a good crop and spared no expense.  And so he eagerly awaits the produce after two years.  But of course the vineyard does not produce a good crop.  It produces only sour and bitter grapes, which are worthless.

And Isaiah, speaking in the vinedresser’s voice, asks the people of God to judge the situation.  “O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, between me and my vineyard.  What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done for it?”  The people who originally heard this sermon might actually have answered him.  Whether they did or not, the answer would have been clear to them all, because they knew how grapes are grown.  There was nothing more to be done.  The vineyard was hopeless.  And so the owner will destroy it.

Then Isaiah turns the tables on his hearers.  Israel is to the Lord as the vineyard is to its owner.  The nation of God’s people is worthless and hopeless, in spite of the covenant love and care that God has lavished on it.  It does not produce the fruit of justice and righteousness.  Instead there is violence and oppression.  And God will destroy it.

In St. Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus takes up this parable and reworks it with a twist.  His hearers would have known the story from Isaiah and also the later consequences of Israel’s infidelity.  So when Jesus begins his story, his hearers would have thought, “Hey, I know this one.  Yeah, the nation of Judah was destroyed in the Babylonian captivity.  But then God brought us back.  He hasn’t reestablished the nation yet, but he will.”

But Jesus immediately introduces his new twist to the story.  Instead of an evil vineyard, he tells of evil tenants.  The tenants are to care for the vineyard and send the master’s share of the fruit to him at the harvest.  But they refuse, and they beat and kill the servants who are sent to collect the master’s portion.  They even kill his son in order to take his inheritance and keep the vineyard for their own.

And Jesus, like Isaiah, turns the parable against his listeners.  Instead of the vineyard itself, his hearers are the infidel tenants.  The leaders of Israel have not tended the people of Israel in such a way as to produce the fruit of righteousness among God’s people.  And so Jesus says, “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it.”

We here are the people of God.  We are the vineyard, and we are the kingdom of God.  In the interplay of all these images, one thing is abundantly clear.  While God will be entirely faithful to his covenant, if we ignore or resist him, we will eventually cut ourselves off from the blessing of that covenant.

We who follow Christ have entered into the new covenant in his blood, which he sealed in the connection between the last supper and the power of the cross.  But, as St. Paul reminds us, many of us still “live as enemies of the cross of Christ.”  Living in the new covenant is like living in the old covenant in this one particular:  It is always intended to produce in us the fruit of righteousness.  And if it doesn’t, it isn’t God’s fault.  We can still effectively cut off our relationship with God, not by accident, but if we actively resist him.

If we don’t, then God is still actively working in his vineyard to produce fruit.  So are we producing any?  Are we becoming more patient?  Are we becoming more kind and good?  Are we learning self-control, eliminating those behaviors we know are not of God?  Does our community exhibit gentleness, joy, and peace that are in contrast to the world outside our walls?  Are we really trustworthy?  Do we truly seek what is best for others before our own desires?

This is not pie-in-the-sky dreaming.  I am not a Pollyanna or even an optimist.  Ask my family.  I am actually a cynic.  But I believe that what God says is true.  It always has been.  And so I trust that it always will be.  When God tells us that he wishes to produce the fruit of righteousness in us and that he will spare no expense or effort to make it so, I believe him.  And so I trust that he will continue to cultivate the lives of anyone who allows him to do it.  And that means that we all ought to be able to answer those questions I just asked in the affirmative.

Or do we corrupt the good gifts that God has given us?  Is our god the belly?  Do we elevate the gift of our appropriate appetites to an idolatrous level, worshipping and servicing them to the neglect of the God who gave them to us?  All of us sometimes do things we are ashamed of.  But do we take those things and pretend that they are virtues or rights?  Do we wallow and glory in the fulfillment of our pride, our envy, our lust, our gluttony?  Do we have our minds set on earthly things?  If so, then our end is destruction, no matter how much God loves us and wants us to be whole.

Otherwise, we will press on toward the goal of righteousness.  We will work at learning God’s will and doing it.  We will not reject the righteousness we have already attained by following, however imperfectly, the way of the cross.  We will remember that our allegiance is not to this world or to anything in it, but to the commonwealth of heaven.  And in the end, our Lord will succeed in translating us into glory like his own.

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