A World Communion Sunday Sermon

Matthew 21: 33-46 

Let me begin this sermon by letting you know that I think this is one of the most depressing parables of the Bible.  Yes we know that Jesus’ parables are meant to disturb rather than comfort, but come on Jesus, what’s up this story.  The landlord has lost his harvest, his slaves and his son.  The tenants have lost their lives.  Nothing is gained, in the end everyone has lost.   As always the first step of Biblical interpretation is to understand the context from which this story comes.  In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells this parable the day after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, what we now celebrate as Palm Sunday.  He has just stormed the temple by overturning the tables of the money changers and driving out all who were selling and buying in the temple.  The temple leaders, the chief priests and the elders hear of Jesus’ mayhem and also see that the crowds turning against the established leadership.  It’s time to stop Jesus and his ragtag group of followers before all hell breaks loose.  So the chief priests and the elders look for Jesus and find him in the temple teaching.  They confront him by asking “By what authority are you doing these things and who gave you this authority.” (21:23b) and Jesus answers them in his usual fashion, he tells them a series parables which include this disturbing parable of the wicked tenants.

We remember that Jesus’ audience was very diverse, rich, poor, man, woman, etc. etc.  So each person hears this story in a different way.  The poor farmers in his audience who have toiled in the vineyards under their absentee landlords would have hung on every word that Jesus said thinking that he was on their side.  As they hear about the tenants killing the slaves sent over by the landlord they cannot help but cheer.  “That’s showing them Jesus…send them away packing.”  But when Jesus asked “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do with those tenants?” and they hear the answer, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to the other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” The peasants wonder “Where is the good news for me in this story?”

Then there are the landowners who are only doing business like their fathers had done before them, and their father’s fathers had done.  They may acknowledge that the conditions that their tenants live under maybe harsh but that is of no concern to them, the landowners feel they have earned their place of power and comfort through their hard work rather than from their place of privilege.  To think otherwise would mean giving up many of the comforts they enjoy.  Yes, they can identify with the landlord in Jesus’ story but then they also feel Jesus pulling them towards hearing the plight of the peasant farmers. 

However it is the elders and the chief priests who are most disturbed by this parable.  They are good people living what they had been taught to believe to be a righteous life, where they work hard to eat the right foods, associate with the right people and keep the purity rules to the letter of the law. However they hear Jesus telling them that they’ve been doing it wrong. They see Jesus claiming to have the authority of God, yet they see him continually breaks the purity laws that the church leaders had been taught their whole life to follow.  And most offensively they see Jesus eating with and relating to people who are flagrant sinners and of the utmost impurity, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the lepers.  The religious authorities gasp at the end of the parable because they know that they are the evil tenants that are to be tossed out of the vineyard. 

We remember that every word and image in Jesus’ parables stands for something other than what is actually said.   In this parable the land of Israel is the vineyard, the landowner is God, the slaves that the landowner sends out are the prophets and that the son in the story, sent by the land owner is Jesus.  Each person in the audience hears condemnation as Jesus says, “Have you never read the scriptures.  The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing… The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” 

As I stated earlier, it would seem that nothing good has come of this story, that in the end everyone has lost because of fear, greed and violence.  But then we remember that in this story Jesus directs us toward the God’s kingdom to come. “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.”(21:43)  The powers and principalities of the world may live by rules of domination, hierarchy, greed for wealth and conquering others but God’s way lives by love and justice![i]  Jesus is the cornerstone and his life and ministry was all about living into God’s love and justice.  He taught us how to live in right relationship with all of God’s creation.  That fruits produced in the kingdom of God is all of creation having what they need in order to live whole sustainable lives.  It will be those who are good stewards of the abundance which God has given the world that will prosper in God’s kingdom and it will be those who do not heed to God’s ways that will lose their very lives to the forces of fear and greed.

How are we to take this story in light the economic distress we are facing at this time?  Our economy as we know it has imploded upon itself because of greed.  The market conditions go up and down like a roller coaster because of fear and as a result many are unemployed.  And one of the outcomes is the increase violence increases such as the hate crimes perpetrated in Concord a few weeks ago.  However, the good news is that God’s kingdom is going to come regardless of opposition even if we are part the forces that are opposing it.  The salvation of humankind is given to us freely not because we follow a set of rules, but just because God loves us.  It is the systems of domination that are judged by God.  Our call as people of faith is to be mindful of the in-breaking of God’s kingdom here on earth and to do everything we can to be the hands, feet and voice of God in bringing it to fulfillment.   When loving God and loving our neighbor become our bottom line we are able to let go of our fears and work towards a building a world where all who are afflicted are comforted, where all who hunger are fed, and all who hunger and thirst for righteousness are satisfied.  This my friends is the kingdom of God here on earth. 

Every time we gather around Christ’s table we share with each other the fruit’s of God’s kingdom, the bread of life and the cup of liberation.  And on this World Communion Sunday we remember that all over the world, our Christian sisters and brothers are at Christ’s table as well.  From the prairies and pampas of the Americas, the dusty deserts of Africa and Asia, from the majestic mountains of Europe to the vast outback of Australia[ii], we all come to the table humbly expecting the fruitful harvest that God has graciously enabled us to bring forth.  God’s kingdom is here and it continues to come, may we as a community of faith make it our own.

May it be so.

Amen.                

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[i] Linda McKinnish Bridges, "Preaching the Parables in Matthew's Gospel in Ordinary Time: The Extraordinary Tales of God's World," Review & Expositor 104 (Spring 2007): 338

[ii] Ana and Tod Gobledale, Come for the Meal is Ready! World Communion Liturgy.  (Cleveland:  Local Church Ministries and Education Team, United Church of Christ, 2008), 2.