Isaiah 5:1-7
Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard:
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 watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.
And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
and people of Judah,
judge between me
and my vineyard.
What more was there to do for my vineyard
that I have not done in it?
When I expected it to yield grapes,
why did it yield wild grapes?
And now I will tell you
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
I will make it a waste;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it.
For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are his pleasant planting;
he expected justice,
but saw bloodshed;
righteousness,
but heard a cry!
Matthew 21:33-46
Jesus said, “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:
‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?
Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.
Reflection In the beginning God created heaven and earth, light and dark, water and dry land, every creature and living thing, capped off creation with human kind then blessed and charged man and woman to, ’Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over. (all creatures and creation) …’ And it was so.God saw everything that (God) had made, and indeed, it was very good.” (Gen 1.28-31) In God’s economy everything and everyone is taken care of, except, that does not seem to be the picture today.
Time and time again we get tangled in dried grapevines, trip out of the garden, fall face first into the dirt because we presume to be what we are not. Because we presume to be the purveyors of power and privilege (the proverbial landowners) rather than the benefactors of blessing, blessing given whether we deserve it or not. Recall the parable of workers paid equally whether they worked all day or only for one hour? (Matt 20.1-16) This tale annoys lots of folk because the landowner pays people who work one hour the same salary as people who work ten. Why? Because in God’s economy the issue is not what we earn or what we deserve. God’s is a blessing economy run on generosity and justice.
The way we participate in God’s blessing is not by presuming to be its originators. We, the people of God are meant to be the living breathing vessels through which God’s blessings flow, flow abundantly, flow without measure to bless as we are blessed, regardless of whether or not we think someone deserves the blessing.
After Jesus tells the parable of tenant’s misbegotten attempts to steal the vineyard from the landowner he assures the religious officials and all of us that the story does not end with the killing of the landowner’s son. It is just the beginning because every one of us who hears and heeds this story will receive our inheritance, God’s blessing. As people made in the image and likeness of God we are blessed to live according to God’s economy, producing “the (good) fruit of the kingdom.”
What are the good fruit of the kingdom? Us. As the prophet First Isaiah declares, For “…the people of Judah (the Israelite people of God living in exile in the Southern Kingdom) (the people) are God’s pleasant planting (even though they are in diaspora). We, the people of God are the “pleasant planting” or fruit of God’s kingdom. And, God expect(s) justice (from us), but (sees) bloodshed; righteousness, but hears a cry!” Like the tenants in the landowners vineyard we protest, “What are those people doing here? They have not worked, they do not deserve this produce. They are lazy. If we give some to them there will be less for us. Let’s seize, arrest, send them away.” Sound familiar?
And can you not hear Isaiah singing, “O, you, people of God, don’t you know you are God’s pleasant planting? God expects justice from you, not bloodshed, righteousness not protests.”
The earth in all its abundance is given to us not because we earn or deserve it, but because we are the pleasant planting of the vineyard, the people of God’s kingdom. But when we turn away from God and like the tenants in Jesus’ parable refuse to extend the blessing, seizing, beating even killing people who want a share, when we fail to respect our sisters and brothers who, also being made in the image and likeness of God and are rightful heirs of the blessing, we can be sure of one thing. We all suffer. We suffer because suffering is the natural consequence of tending God’s kingdom with greed and dishonesty rather than trustworthiness and generosity.
I have no idea why but we humans tend to spin a web around our social and political silos, to establish rarified groups that share a specific quality be it race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, economics, education, geographic location or political party. In so doing we lose the broad-based economy of God’s kingdom, the kingdom that from the beginning includes all of creation and calls it “very good.” Instead of claiming our inheritance, our identity as people of God with a sweeping base of alliance, “many people, one body,” we fracture into bundled troops fighting for our difference.
There is no question, people occupy a myriad of independent and intersecting subgroups of humanity, from race to age to political party. As long as we allow our attention, emotion and behavior to be driven by what divides us rather than what draws us together we deny our true and trustworthy identity as people of God and cut our selves out of the kingdom of blessing.
How do we end the marginalization of particular groups of people? I believe we do so by refusing to be distracted, divided and destroyed by dualistic arguments of who is in and who is out, who is deserving and who is not. We end the marginalization of particular groups of people by holding fast to the all inclusive alliance of God’s economy wherein everyone and everything is blessed to be a blessing, regardless of whether we deserve it or not.
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