The Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost Exodus 20: 1- 4, 7-9, 12 – 20

Sunday, October 5, 2008 Philippians 3: 4b-14

The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 21: 33 – 46

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.

Matthew 21: 45

“The owners of the land came onto the land, or more often a spokesman of the owners came,” writes John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath. “They came in closed cars, and they felt the dry earth with their fingers, and sometimes they drove big earth augurs into the ground for soil tests. The tenants, from their sun-beaten dooryards, watched uneasily when the closed cars drove along the fields. And at last the owner men drove into the dooryards and sat in their cars to talk out of the windows. The tenant men stood beside the cars for a while, and then squatted on their hams and found sticks with which to mark the dust.”

Back in the 1930’s in the Midwest, the land was dried up and worn out, no longer able to turn a profit and the tenant farmers would have to go. “Some of the owner men were kind,” Steinbeck continues, “because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves.” At the mercy of the landowner, when the ravages of wind and drought turned once green field into arid dust bowls and the landowners could no longer turn a profit, the tenant farmers were forced to leave.

In our reading from the gospel of Matthew this morning we meet a landowner who has leased a vineyard to tenant farmers. When the landowner sends his slaves to collect the fruit, they are beaten, killed and stoned. Not even the landowner’s son escapes the wrath of the tenant farmers. The son, like the slaves, is killed.

The parable is a story of God’s dealings with Israel, God’s beloved vineyard and a condemnation of the religious leadership of Israel that now seeks the death of Jesus. Like Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea and others, Israel’s leaders will again refuse to listen to those who bring to them a word from God. Israel’s leaders refuse to acknowledge that they are tenant farmers in God’s vineyard. Israel’s leaders would like to make the vineyard their own. Jesus tells them and us, the vineyard belongs to God.

A first century Palestinian audience would not need Steinbeck to tell them about the realities of tenant farming. New Testament scholars tell us that a good bit of Palestinian land at that time was held by foreign landlords. As a result, some Jews were bent upon revolution and overthrowing foreign oppression. These Jews would have wanted nothing better than to take their land back by any means. At the other extreme were the religious leaders who sought an uneasy peace with imperial Rome, even if that meant failing to be true to their covenant promises.

Jesus disappointed both groups. Jesus refused to take up arms against Rome and Jesus refused to acquiesce to Rome’s demands. Jesus refused to give to Rome any power at all. For Jesus, God, not Caesar was Lord.

Israel was faced with what might be construed as an impossible situation. A small nation, Israel was not powerful enough to oppose Roman domination. On the other hand, the more they refused to honor the Roman Emperor as “God” the more likely Rome would take measures against them, which eventually happened when Rome destroyed the Temple in 66 A.D. Some sought revolution; others sought accommodation; both gave Rome a power over Israel that belonged to God alone.

The lot of a tenant farmer is precarious for sure. A tenant farmer is beholden to another. And most of us, for sure, would not opt to join Steinbeck’s fictitious Joad family as they sought work and a new life in California. They, like us, were faced with powers they could not control and were forced to move on. But not all powers and principalities care whether we live or die. Only one power is worthy of our worship.

This week, if nothing else, put us all on notice that the power of the free market system is limited. Bank failures, home foreclosures and bailout debates left many of us wondering, some of us in despair, and a few desperate. The god of economics is real but not all powerful. And this week that god did not make good on his promises.

Perhaps the worst part of this economic tragedy is that what we thought we knew about the economic system somehow turned out to be false. The god of the free market system turned against us and we don’t know why.

And so Steinbeck prophetically writes: “If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank – or the Company – needs – wants –insists – must have –as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time.”

Monsters, machines and masters could care less about who works for them. You and I are interchangeable and indifferent to these gods. These gods shed no tears when one of us is plowed under, putting another in their place as readily as changing a tire. Late this week, a man in Florida put a gun in his mouth and blew his brains out because the god of economics had not delivered and he perceived his life to be ruined.

We know maybe this week more than most that we are tenants working on someone else’s land. This week, the world in which we live was reminded that economics is powerful. But if economics is lord and this week is illustrative, we have much to fear. Not too long ago, our world was shaken by terrorists and violence seemed to be lord. If the world is ruled by violence, we have much to fear. When the parable we read this morning was first heard, Rome ruled the world and the power of Rome was feared. Rome and Rome’s glory is now history.

God is the owner of a vineyard and we are God’s tenants. God has created us to bring forth fruit from a vineyard we did not create. This week the world got a little more anxious, a little less secure, a little less trusting that this world is meant to be a vineyard and not a shopping mall. This week the world has a right to wonder “Who is our landlord?” What will we say to this world? What do we believe? And how will we care for a world that is very sure they live under someone’s lordship but is not always sure who that someone is. You and I will affirm this morning that God is Lord. And we will leave hear with an invitation to bear witness to the world of that truth in word and deed.

Claimants to the throne of lordship of our lives will be legion. Always was, always will be. The lord of our lives might be money or fame or success or simply a good reputation. The lord of our lives might be something more altruistic like taking care of our children or our spouse or our parents. We worship a lord who said: “For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother;” “let the dead bury their own dead;” “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s” – in other words, we worship a Lord who trumps all other claims without regard.

Steinbeck ends his great novel with an incredibly moving scene. Rose of Sharon, the Joad’s family youngest child suckles a dying man. She gives what she has so that someone else may live. The scene is repulsive. The breasts of a young woman are meant for an infant not a grown man. But the man is dying of starvation and Rose of Sharon has milk. In the midst of death, Rose of Sharon offers life and when she does she lives no longer in a dust bowl but the vineyard of the Lord.