We have been working our way through the Gospel of Matthew. Last week, we heard the first portion of today’s reading. During Jesus’ final week on earth prior to the Crucifixion, he cleansed the Temple of money changers and animal sellers. A few days later, he returned to the Temple to preach and teach. The Temple authorities and religious leaders questioned Jesus – who gave him the authority to preach and teach? Jesus answered by sharing a few parables that exposed that he was sent from God. This morning, we focus on the second parable Jesus shared in the Temple that day. Listen to Jesus’ words as they were recorded in The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 21, verses 33 through 46:
Scripture Reading Matthew 21: 33-46
33 “Listen
to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a
wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he
rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place.
34 When
the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to
collect his fruit.
35 “The
tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a
third.
36 Then
he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants
treated them the same way.
37 Last
of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.
38 “But
when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the
heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’
39 So
they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
40 “Therefore,
when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
41 “He
will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will
rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the
crop at harvest time.”
42 Jesus
said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:
“‘The stone
the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’[a]?
43 “Therefore
I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given
to a people who will produce its fruit.
44 Anyone
who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will
be crushed.”[b]
45 When
the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was
talking about them.
46 They
looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the
people held that he was a prophet.
Prayer for Understanding
Father
as I speak, may you speak & may Jesus be glorified. Amen.
Message
Wisdom for the Way
The late Reverend Doctor Kenneth Bailey
spent over 40 years studying and teaching in the Middle East. He was renowned for his studies of how Jesus’
life and the early church were shaped by the cultural world view of the people
who have resided in the Middle East and Mediterranean region for eons. Christendom lost a great scholar and teacher
when Rev. Bailey passed away in 2016.
Rev. Bailey was a great cultural
interpreter. He told a story about King
Hussein of Jordan that took place in the 1950s.
Apparently, the King was told a group of young offices were meeting to
plan a coup to dethrone him. The
officers were meeting in the large military barracks outside Amman. The messenger who came to the King to shed
light on the coup wanted to know if the officers should be arrested or just
killed on the spot.
The king responded by ordering a small helicopter, flying to the
roof of the barracks, and telling the pilot to leave if he heard gunfire. The king went downstairs and entered the room
where the officers were meeting. After
he entered the room, King Hussein told the men that if they did what they were
planning, there would be a civil war.
Chaos would ensue and many, many people would be killed. Instead of causing all of the bloodshed, the
king suggested the officers shoot him….then only one person would die. The officers were startled by the king’s
leadership – they all knelt, kissed him, and re-swore loyalty to him. The coup was averted.
In today’s story, Jesus told a parable about a “king” who tried
to avert a coup. In the parable, Jesus
tells of a wealthy landowner who planted a vineyard. After he bought the land, the landowner
planted grape vines, built a watchtower to guard the plants from predators, and
dug a winepress – the landowner set up the land so that tenant farmers could
work on his behalf to tend to the grape plants, protect the fruit from harm,
and convert it into wine. The owner
rented the vineyard to farmers with an expectation that he would be paid for
the use of the grapes and their harvest.
But, being an absentee landlord did not work out very well for
the land owner. He first sent his
servants to collect the “rent” from the farmers. The tenants beat up one of the servants,
killed one of them, and stoned the third.
No rent was collected.
The owner of the land then sent his son. He expected his son to be respected and the
tenants to finally pay the rent. But,
instead of respecting the son of the landowner, the tenants did the worst thing
– they killed him.
So, the owner of the vineyard had to go himself to collect the
rent – and he wasn’t happy with his murderous, thieving tenants.
When Jesus told this parable, the Temple officials and religious
leaders knew he was talking about them.
Jesus spoke these words during the last week of his life. The religious leaders who reigned in
Jerusalem were looking for excuses to arrest Jesus. His words and actions were a threat to them
and were also a threat to the uneasy peace the religious leaders were trying to
uphold with the Roman authorities. The
leaders of the Temple worried about maintaining their power, and they also
worried about protecting all they held dear from their Roman overlords. If Jewish rabble-rousers agitated the crowds
and upset the populace, the residents of Jerusalem were at risk from the Roman
soldiers cracking down on them. A few
decades after Jesus’ death, the Roman officials destroyed Jerusalem and tore
down the Temple as a way to keep order and diminish the “Jewish” threat to
Roman control.
But, Jesus’ parable clearly described our Christian “take” on
what God was doing in the world…..Like the landlord sending his servants to
collect his rent, God had sent Prophets to try to convince the people of Earth
to serve God. The prophets were ignored
and even killed, as was the case with John the Baptist. Then the landlord sent this own son to try to
convince the people of the world to honor and serve God, and like Jesus, he was
killed. In this parable, Jesus predicted
the fate that would befall him – he knew the religious authorities were
plotting to have him killed. Finally,
the Landlord would have to come to the vineyard to put things to right – after
Jesus’ death, God shared his own self with us through the coming of the Holy
Spirit on Pentecost. God’s Holy Spirit,
the essence of God that is anointing each of us, is here to guide and support
us.
God could have reacted
to Jesus’ death harshly. God could have punished
everyone like we imagine the fictional angry landlord punished his tenants. But, instead of coming to earth ANGRY, God
came with love. First, God resurrected Jesus
to show that God’s love is indestructible.
Jesus made sure his followers knew they had work to do after he ascended
to Heaven. It was their job to spread
the Gospel to others. Then, God sent God’s
Holy Spirit to uplift and help us, so guide us and empower us, to help us to do
what is right and just. Instead of
coming in Anger, God came to us in love.
Today’s parable is a reminder of us to do better than the
murderous tenants and the religious leaders who plotted to kill Jesus. We are called upon to accept the
prophets. We are called upon to not only
accept Jesus’ teachings, but to live them out.
We are called upon to embrace the work of the Holy Spirit in our
lives. We are called to turn to God and
ask God to anoint us and fill our hearts with God’s love, justice, and mercy.
Friends, we are living in strange times. Every day, we wake up to news stories that seem
almost unbelievable. The election has
created partisan conflict. The protests
have exposed that many people in our country feel extreme frustration at
inequalities and the way discrimination impacts our lives. The virus scares us and increases our fear of
one another. People are scrambling to do
their professional work at home or in shifting environments. Our kids are under immense pressure to either
attend school through distance learning or in school settings that are in
restrictive environments. We are under
stress, feel lonely and isolated, and crave normal. As people of faith, we need to call upon our
Gracious God to help us…to help the people of our country…to help the people of
our world. And, we are also called upon
to extend God’s love and grace to each other.
Let us work to listen without judging first. Let us work to make personal choices that are
help keep other people safe. Let us work
to extend kindnesses to one another, to help our neighbors who are facing
hardships, and to love first and ask questions later.
Let’s work to embrace Jesus’ teachings of protecting and caring
for the people who are not as healthy as us and as wealthy as us. Let us work to embrace Jesus’ teachings to
love our neighbors. Let us work to reach
out to each other with love and kindness as our priority. It is our job as Christians to work to make
our world a reflection of the Kingdom of God.
May it be so. Amen.
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