October 5, 2008 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Isaiah 5: 1-7 + Psalm 80 + Philippians 4: 6-9 + Matthew 21:33-43
Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell this parable. Only Matthew concludes with the proposal that the Kingdom might be taken away and given to a people who will produce fruit. It is a twist on the parable that ought to hit us all between the eyes. We have grown up in this culture with the assumption that the Kingdom of God, Heaven like everything else is always available to us if we just work hard enough and long enough. “On demand” television is just the latest toy that continues to suggest to us the false truth that we can have anything we want whenever we want it. The consequence of this thinking is our sense of entitlement. It is rampant in our nation and our generations, and even in our church. So, we tramp through the Earth’s resources, claiming its juiciest fruits for ourselves. We take the largest portion of everything there is, and if we’re not number one we sink into depression and set out to change it at all cost. It’s always struck me that there is nothing wrong with being number one unless you can’t stand being number two. At that point you have and you are a problem.
In Native American culture, people come into their own and into respect not by what they own or amass in wealth, but by what they give. Keeping wealth moving is the way gifts remain sacred. A free-market society reverses the picture: getting rather than giving is the mark of a substantial person; at that point Entitlement reigns.
Entitlement is the problem in this parable, and there is a stern warning in the Matthew version that Entitlement leads to disaster.
The chief priests and elders are asked to judge what the owner should do, and you know what they say. Their problem is they think like owners. Not for a minute do they think like tenants,
and with that they go wrong.
Saint Paul was learning to live as a tenant in the vineyard, and his relationship and his letter to the Philippians comes out of that lifestyle. When he suggests to them that they should “keep in doing what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me” he is not saying: “Look at me.” Look how good I am.”
He is proposing that they must become what he has become: an example. They must set example of what it means to be a steward in the vineyard of the Lord. This is the heavy burden, the weighty responsibility we have as followers of Christ. We are to provide an example for others. Parents, it is what you must become for your children: examples of what is true, what is honorable, what is just, what is pure, what is lovely, what is gracious, and what is excellent. What you learned and received is what you must pass on. This is what produces good fruit.
You may not be more concerned about your child’s career than you are about their soul. You may not be more concerned about their ability to play sports than you are about their ability to pray. You may not be more concerned about their friends than you are about their friendship with Christ. You may not be more concerned about their attendance at school than their attendance at this feast. Example is what we must provide. We must give example to each other by the charity of our talk and our judgments. We must give example to each other by how we give not by what we keep.
Paul singles out for the Philippians and for us the qualities that are the fruits of this vineyard. They are not the stuff we buy or want. They are not found at the Mall or on line. They are not what we wear, what we drive, or how we look. They are not prestige, power, influence, or success measured by wealth. They are gentleness, peace, concern for justice and an absence of worry.
A people who wish for the peace of God can only find it and live in it when they have embraced the life of stewardship and see themselves as tenants in this vineyard: tenants from whom the master expects some fruits. We have no reason to expect anything except the master’s return and a time to give an account of our stewardship here. The fruit will come from the example we have given, and the example we have led.