Christ Cathedral

Old Testament - Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80: 7-14
New Testament - Philippians 3:4b-14
Gospel - Matthew 21:33-46

"Turn now, O God of hosts, look down from heaven; behold and tend this vine; preserve what your right hand has planted."

In the spring each year, my grandfather plants a garden, and because he has been doing this for about half a century, he tends to get pretty good return for his effort. One year, however, a strange thing happened. He decided to plant some type of winter squash, a large yellow affair about 2 feet long and shaped like a football. The seeds were carefully placed in the mounds of dirt and compost, and soon the vines appeared and began putting on fruit. In less than a month, a number of long green squash were lying about the garden waiting for the water and sun that would fatten them up and ripen them into tasty yellow ovals just like the ones on the package.

But as the summer wore on, the thin, green squash showed no signs of turning yellow or filling out. Instead, they remained green and still getting longer. When some of them were over a yard long and developing stripes, it was clear that something had gone wrong. Grandpa had planted squash, but somehow they had cross pollinated with ornamental gourd, a close botanical cousin of the winter squash, but completely inedible and, for his purposes, useless.

One of the recurring images of the Bible is of God’s people as some kind of farm or vineyard, and what we learn from today’s readings is that God’s experience with his people is unfortunately rather like my grandfather’s experience with squash. God created the human race to praise him and to do his work on this earth. But for all the care that he gives his creation, it often does not yield the fruit that he has every right to expect. In today’s lesson’s we see a picture of a vineyard gone awry, and if we take the time to understand this picture, it can tell us a lot about ourselves and perhaps more importantly, about God.

The Old Testament texts for today compare the nation of Israel to a vineyard which was planted by God himself. Vineyards are interesting things, and in the Mediterranean, they are often found on hillsides and rocky places in which the soil is not good enough to grow other crops. The good land in the river valleys was better used for fruit trees and vegetable plots, and so the hillsides, the land that would not fetch a premium at a farm auction, ended up being used for grape vines which tend to be a little less picky about where they will grow. The problem was that the hills are rocky and putting them into production is not an easy matter, but it could be done.

Isaiah outlines the process of how it happened in today’s reading, "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." A man comes into possession of a hill that is overgrown with the bushy shrubs and weeds, but he can see the potential underneath. First, he removes the brush and the weeds. Then, he starts in on the rocks. Each rock is loosened by hand with a hoe or a spade, first one place and then another and the stones are piled either in the center or on the edges of the property. Those in the center become a watchtower and a wine press. At the edges, the stones are arranged to make a fence.

This kind of work could hardly happen overnight even with modern machinery. But in a world where the ox was the primary engine for agricultural endeavors, clearing even a modest vineyard was the work not of weeks or even months, but of years. Then the vines would be planted and grow for several years before they had become established and fairly productive. If this is how God works, it would seem that a vineyard planted by God could hardly fail, but the great tragedy is that it did fail.

If the vineyard is the picture of Israel, we know that that nation failed, but more broadly, if God is working to redeem the whole human race, we can see that the vineyard of God’s creation does not consistently produce desirable grapes-peace and love and charity are not the marks of the 21st century. In the place of these fruits, the wild grapes of selfishness, hostility, poverty, and even war have grown. Where there should be sweet fruit, fit either for the table or for the wine press, there is often the small, sour fruit of wild grapes. Birds may eat them, a hungry traveler may pluck a few of these grapes from a vine, but for the most part, the vineyard does not yield the expected fruit.

But there are times when a vineyard does produce fruit, and we know that in Jesus day, God’s vineyard, the nation of Israel, was doing comparatively well. There were times in Israel’s history when the vineyard had been left in disrepair, times which had caused the Psalmist to wonder why its wall was broken down, leaving it open to passers by and the beasts of the field. But in the time of Jesus, tiny Israel had a place in world politics far beyond what its size would suggest.

But even when the vineyard did well, Jesus was visibly disappointed with the fruit of his labor. And so he tells a parable that must have reminded his first hearers of the prophet Isaiah: "There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower." As the story goes, the owner left this property in the hand of some trusted associates who soon realized just how good they had it. They had the best vineyard in town, and when it came time to send the owner the profits, they got greedy, beating and killing the messengers who were sent to collect the rent, and finally killing the heir in a misguided attempt to take possession of the vineyard for themselves.

Needless to say, the religious power brokers against whom Jesus told this parable were less than thrilled. He had charged them, very publicly, with attempted theft, extortion, and murder. But more generally, he had told them that their possessive nature had led them to believe that their religion was about them and their success and not about God. The message was not well received, and just a few days later, Matthew tells us that these same leaders were at the forefront of those who persuaded the Romans to execute Jesus.

And so it seems that a vineyard, that is the people of God, can go wrong in two different ways. The first is akin to the problem my grandfather encountered with his garden. God can plant good seeds, but somehow these good seeds get cross-pollinated with some undesirable cousin and produce a hybrid. There is life and growth, but it is neither fruitful nor pleasant. We begin with something good, which becomes mixed up with undesirable influences and gets out of control. Our hospitality becomes drunkenness, our generosity becomes prodigality, our intelligence becomes skepticism.

On the other hand, there is the opposite problem of the kind of success that leads to possessiveness. In the very same way that the chief priests and Pharisees believed that they, and not God, were responsible for their success, it is easy for us to believe that our successes are the result of our own efforts. Whether we succeed in business, as parents, or as a church, it is tempting to regard our good fortune as the work of our own hands. But we must remember that we owe our very being to the goodness and graciousness of God, and therefore our success belongs to him as well. When we fail to acknowledge the gifts of God that make our lives pleasant, indeed that make our lives possible, we too can quickly fall into the trap Jesus describes in the parable.

Such a reading of today’s lessons might leave a person with the impression that no matter what we do, we will somehow go afoul of God’s will and once that happens, the game is over. The walls of our vineyard will be torn down, the fruit destroyed, and our lives consigned to misery. And in a sense that is true. A life which does not acknowledge God is destined to failure, but the question is when it will happen.

When my grandpa realized that his squash were in fact gourds, he took a shovel and went to dig them up. But he thought better of it and let them grow. At the end of the season, he had a collection of handsome gourds and a good story. He was patient, and only when the full course of time had run, did he dig up the vines and put an end to the undesirable growth of his garden. In a similar way, God’s judgment on the vineyard of his people is something that comes at the end of the growing season.

Thankfully, grapevines are not exactly like my grandfather’s squash gone wild. Good vines sometimes produce bad fruit, but the condition is not irreversible. Pruning, care, a change in the weather, all these things can make a difference in the sort of fruit that a vine produces. As we know from Isaiah, building a vineyard is a time consuming operation, and it may take years for God to remove the rocky obstacles in our own souls that prevent us from being fruitful and productive citizens of the kingdom of God. And even when God has more or less straightened us out, there is still a time of waiting before the fruit of that good work begins to come to fullness.

And so there is cause both for hope and concern if you look at your life and find that it is not producing the fruit of righteousness. There can be no doubt that God desires a particular sort of fruit from the human race. He desires our praise for his goodness, he wants us to treat each other as we would ourselves be treated, he wants us to care more about his kingdom than about money, or power, or sex or college sports or any other thing that can become the idol which leads us away from the knowledge and love of God. But we also know that God is patient and merciful, and if we need help, he is faithful to meet our every need.

"Turn now, O God of hosts, look down from heaven; behold and tend this vine; preserve what your right hand has planted."