The Law, a Prophet, and a Vineyard

October 4, 2020

St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois

Exodus 20:1-20; Matthew 21:33-46[1]

The Israelites, set free from slavery in Egypt, begin to establish a new culture. In the wilderness they discover their identity as God’s people.  Having set the people free, God gives them the means to remain free.  The law, beginning with the Ten Commandments, sets this people apart as the people of God – the Lord God who brought them out of slavery to freedom.  And the people of God worship and honor God by obeying God’s laws.

The law is not meant to be a punishment, a burden, or an obstacle to freedom.  True freedom requires responsibility.  Freedom without responsibility, without limits, is the mob rule, freedom for the strong and the powerful, but slavery for the weak and defenseless.

In order to be a free people, we must be at peace with one another, able to trust one another, responsible for the well-being of one another.  And God, by giving the commandments, by setting the boundaries, has provided the means for the people to remain free.  If the people worship God, resist temptation, and take responsibility for one another, they will prosper and remain a free people.  The law would shape the life and identity of the people of God, and be a force that would preserve it against every threat. Through the giving of the commandments God fulfills a promise made earlier in Exodus: “I will take you as my people, and I will be your God.”[1]

God is in a relationship with the people, not unlike the relationship parents have with children. God sets the rules, not so that we can’t have any fun, or have to check off a list of good behavior in order for God to love us. Rather, God show us love in giving the law as the means to have a good and happy relationship with one another and with God. In this sense obedience becomes a loving, grateful response to all that God has done and continues to do. God has given us the commandments to help us to be good people, good neighbors, good citizens even. Without the rules, all of our relationships – with our neighbors, with God, even with our selves – are endangered.

Long before this list of rules, God gave us some work to do. What was the first job that God gave human beings? God made us the gardeners in Eden, and after that bad business about disobedience, we became farmers. Most people throughout history have been farmers or have belonged to agrarian societies. So, it was natural that when Jesus came along, he used agrarian imagery such as the vineyard in our story to talk about the Kingdom of God. Jesus taught people about God’s desires for us using stories that connected with the experiences of the people, so in this story Jesus puts us in a vineyard.

If you work in the vineyard, you are expected to do your job, care for the growth of the vines, and provide the owner with the harvest. You’re also expected to remember that it’s not your vineyard. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, seeing all that the wicked tenants have done, what will the owner do to those tenants?

In Matthew’s story, the answer they gave to Jesus was, “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” (v. 41). Who is Jesus talking to? There is the crowd, of course, and the disciples, but they seem to be mostly spectators. It is the chief priests and scribes who answer Jesus’ question. And his response turns the tables on them.

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’?[2]

“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” (vs. 42-43). Matthew ends this passage by telling us that “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” (v. 45).

The parable is a test of leadership. Whose vineyard is it? God planted the vineyard. God is the owner. As the people most responsible for leading the Jewish people at that time, the chief priests are the tenants. The grapes, by the way, are the people to be tended and harvested for the Kingdom of God. We expect good tenants to pay the rent, to do the work that is expected, and to turn over the harvest to the owner. But these are wicked tenants. As one commentary on Matthew’s Gospel tells us, the wicked tenants are those who (1) do not want to give fruit to the owner (or perhaps are unwilling to produce the proper fruit); (2) reject the owner’s authority; and (3) work for themselves.[3]

By rejecting the authority of the messengers, the tenants reject the authority of the owner as well. The tenants see these messengers as a threat to their own prosperity. They have it pretty good in the vineyard, and they’ve worked hard. They expect to keep the profit for themselves. I mean, who needs the owner, right? We’ll just kill his son, the heir, and then the vineyard will be ours! The owner, he’s never around. Who needs him?

The fruit of the vineyard is the grapes, and in this story, we might see ourselves as the grapes meant to be harvested. The wicked tenants want to keep the harvest for themselves. In other words, they want to keep the people, God’s people, for their own purposes. Those in authority want to exploit us. They have taken the first commandment and put themselves in the place of God. How do you think that turned out?

The warning that Jesus gives to the chief priests is that “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom” (v. 43). At the time that Matthew wrote his Gospel, war had swept through Jerusalem and the Temple had been destroyed. The priests of the Temple, with all their power and authority, essentially disappeared from history. Those who had tended the vines and had the responsibility of leading the people were gone.

Leadership of God’s people moved from the Temple in Jerusalem to synagogues and churches. The high priests and Pharisees were replaced by rabbis and ministers. There are new tenants in the vineyard, new caretakers, and we hope that they produce the fruits of the kingdom.

If we pull this analogy up to the current time, those we have put in power are not always the best caretakers. There are those who make a big deal of noise about laws and rules like the Ten Commandments, but only as they apply to people other than themselves. There are those who put on a big show of working for the owner of the vineyard while intending to keep the harvest for themselves. There are those who have forgotten, if they ever really knew, that we are all in relationship with each other, and the well-being of each of us matters for the well-being of all of us.

Perhaps the grapes should reclaim the vineyard. The grapes know how important it is to stick together, to hold each other up, to be thankful for the sun and the rain. I think it is important, no matter who the tenants are, for the grapes to remember who the vineyard belongs to. Whether you fancy yourself a Pinot Noir, a Chardonnay, or a Riesling, we’re all just grapes, and we all need the vine.

The vine is what connects us all. Jesus said, “I am the vine.”[4] Christ is the vine that holds together the grapes; whether we are Catholic, Baptist, Orthodox, Lutheran, Reformed, or Congregational, we are united as the Church of Jesus Christ. Other vines grow with us, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and many others; and they also need responsible care from the tenants.

We must recognize that there are rules that must be kept, laws that hold the authority of commandments, which allow us to live in peace with one another. We must also recognize the purpose of the laws, which is to set us free from slavery, to give us the freedom to live in respectful relationship with one another, with our planet, and in good relationship with God.

There are special celebrations happening around this time of year in many religions. For Protestant churches such as ours, this is World Communion Sunday. On this day Christians around the world will celebrate the Last Supper of Jesus, symbolically seeking unity with one another. Now, more than ever, it is time to seek peace with one another, peace with the earth, and peace with our Creator. May God’s vineyard bear much fruit for the Kingdom. Amen.

---

[1] Exodus 6:7.

[2] Psalm 118:22.

[3] Daniel Patte, The Gospel According to Matthew: A Structural Commentary on Matthew's Faith, pp. 298-299.

[4] John 15:5.

Faithful Witness

October 27, 2019
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois

Exodus 20:2, 16; Matthew 15:10-20

In Exodus, the Hebrew people, set free from the Egyptians, begin to establish a new culture, and discover their identity as God’s people. Having set the people free, God gives them the means to remain free. The law, beginning with the Ten Commandments, sets this people apart as the people of God – the Lord God who brought them out of slavery to freedom. And the people of God worship and honor God by obeying God’s laws.

The law is not a punishment, a burden, or an obstacle to freedom. True freedom requires responsibility. Freedom without responsibility, without limits, is anarchy. And anarchy is the mob rule, freedom for the strong and the powerful, but slavery for the weak and defenseless.

In order to be a free people, we must be at peace with one another, able to trust one another, responsible for the well-being of one another. And God, by giving the commandments, by setting the boundaries, has provided the means for the people to remain free. If the people worship God, resist temptation, and take responsibility for one another, they will prosper and remain a free people. God fulfills the promise made earlier in Exodus: “I will take you as my people, and I will be your God.”[1]

The commandment to not bear false witness is a particular command that protects society by creating a space for truth to be told. In ancient Israel, witnesses to a crime – who incidentally also brought the charges – had to testify before a court of elders. At least two witnesses were required, as stated in Deuteronomy: “Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained.”[2] If a witness was found to be lying, the punishment was the same as that given to the accused. This was when “an eye for an eye” was the rule of law. If one was accused of a crime that was punishable by death, the lying witness would have been put to death. This harsh reality ensured that the court of elders was a place where truth would be told.

Truth, indivisible from trust, is the foundation of community. The Old Testament scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann says this commandment is “a recognition that community life is not possible unless there is an arena in which there is public confidence that social reality will be reliably described and reported.”[3] In order for society to function, there must be a place and time where we can trust that the truth will be told.

The commandment that we shall not bear false witness gets at the heart of our capacity to ruin ourselves and others by lies and deceit. Another theologian, the Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, once wrote: “The capacity to speak… is the primary way through which we human beings express ourselves, and nothing reveals more deeply the biblical insight into the sinfulness and brokenness of human life than our verbal means of self-expression.”[4] Speech can express both truth and falsehood.

Our words are powerful. They can do tremendous good – think of the words written by Lincoln in The Emancipation Proclamation. But our words can also do tremendous harm. Mein Kampf led to the rise of Nazism in Germany. The thoughts in our minds and the feelings in our hearts come forth in our words, and they make an impact on the world around us.

In the Gospel According to Matthew, we hear about the power of our words to do harm. “Then [Jesus] called the crowd to him and said to them, ‘Listen and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles… What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person.’”[5]

Bearing false witness means to lie, to give false testimony, to mislead. It is speaking with the intent to deceive. Another form of lying – slander and gossip – also bear false witness, leading us to believe in stories that are fiction born in the heart of those who would harm. False witness breaks our relationships with others, and damages our integrity.

There is a story that tells of a man who spread gossip and lies about a neighbor. When she heard the stories, the victim confronted her accuser with the truth. The man apologized and asked if there was anything that he could do to right the terrible wrong that he had done. The woman walked into the bedroom and took a feather pillow from the bed. Taking out a knife, she cut open the pillow, and then, going to a window on the second floor, dumped the feathers into the breeze so they blew in every direction. “Yes,” she said. “There is something you can do. You can go out now and gather up all of those feathers and put them back inside this pillow.” The man protested, “That is impossible. I could never recover each of those tiny feathers.” “Yes, it is impossible,” the woman agreed. “It is just as impossible as it is for you to take back all the hurt and the pain that your malicious rumor and lies have caused to me. You cannot recover the suspicion that you have sown. The damage to my character can never be undone.”[6]

When we bear false witness against our neighbor, we deny our responsibility for our neighbor, we deny our duty to God, and we destroy ourselves as we become untrustworthy. The trust that holds the community together is broken, and without trust, we can no longer be a people. Bearing false witness brings us into the state of sin: separated from God, separated from one another, and separated from our own integrity.

We must do more than not lie. We must face the challenge of being witnesses to truth, creating a society where truth can be told, where our words are reliable, where we can trust one another. Jesus spoke in the Sermon on the Mount about the Ten Commandments. “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you, do not swear at all… Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”[7] Jesus requires a level of truthfulness from his disciples that goes beyond taking an oath not to lie. It is a life of truth; a life lived with faithfulness toward God and responsibility toward others. The followers of Jesus were to be trustworthy, true, and faithful, a community of God’s people bound, not by oaths, but by love, trust, and responsibility for one another.

As Christians, we are challenged to do more than not bear false witness. We have a special call to be faithful witnesses. We are the people who witness to the work and words of Jesus Christ. We are the evangelists who are tasked with sharing the good news.

Evangelism is a word that tends to make us cringe. When I hear that word, I usually think of people who want to convert me to Christianity – at least their version of it – and my blood-pressure rises. But I’m not talking about proselytizing. I’m not talking about standing on a street corner shouting that judgment day is coming and we’re all going to hell unless we believe on Jesus. I’m talking about the evangelism of speaking our truth, the truth of how God is moving in us, and through us, and around us.

Now, let me stop to say that we must take care that we do not fall into the trap of thinking that our view of reality, of truth, of faith, of God, of what it means to be Christian, is the only way of seeing things. We don’t have a universal perspective. Bishop Spong warns us:

Words can point to God, but words can never capture God. Creeds can be formed to contain truths but creeds can never be formed that will exhaust the truth. God is bigger than the human frame of reference which tries to talk about him. God is bigger than any of the words of any human being about [her]. No matter how hallowed by the ages, no matter how thin or how gilt-edged the pages which we say contain the holy words, God is beyond the understanding of the Bible. God is beyond the understanding of our holy traditions, beyond the creeds, beyond the Church itself. No human system of thought can ever be ultimate. God, alone, is ultimate. Anything less than God will be destructive the minute we elevate it to the level of ultimacy.[8]

As witnesses to Jesus, we are evangelists. However, the evangelism I’m talking about does not make the claim that any of us hold the absolute truth for all time. God is, after all, still speaking. The evangelism that I’m talking about means being a faithful witness to the living Christ that is at work in our own lives. It means bearing truthful witness, speaking the truth, even though it may be hard, even though we may pay a price for it.

Evangelism means not hiding the values upon which we base our lives and our actions, but standing up for them. It means becoming representatives of Christ, ambassadors of God to the world. It means seeing other people, every person, no matter how strange or different, as a neighbor. It means loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves. It means being true to ourselves and our vocation. It means bearing faithful witness to our own identity as Christians, as the people of God.

Let the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

---

[1] Exodus 6:7.  The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.

[2] Deuteronomy 19:15.

[3] Walter Brueggemann. “The Book of Exodus” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, volume I (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994).

[4] John Shelby Spong. “The Human Tongue – A Call to Responsibility” in The Living Commandments (New York: Seabury Press, 1977).

[5] Matthew 15:10-20 (selected).

[6] This story, from the Jewish tradition, I altered from Spong in The Living Commandments.

[7] Matthew 5:33-37 (selected).

[8] Spong.