His Vineyard
Proper 22
Fr. Tim Nunez
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
Today’s Gospel picks up right where we left off last week. Jesus has made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, as we celebrate on Palm Sunday. This is now what we call Holy Week. His conflict with Jewish religious and civil authorities is building toward his trial and crucifixion. Jesus is still at the temple. He’s speaking directly to the chief priests, scribes and elders of Israel. They have challenged him and challenged his authority to even teach there. This is the second vineyard parable in a row, right after the one about the two brothers we heard last week.
This parable unfolds in terms that are very familiar to these leaders. Jesus uses imagery directly from Isaiah in the passage we just heard. Israel is the vineyard; a metaphor used many times in the Old Testament. The story has a very clear moral flow. Of course, the tenants must honor their covenant with the landowner to produce a good crop and give him his share of the produce. Of course, their treatment of his servants is horribly wrong, and their treatment of his son is outrageous. Of course, the master will punish these wretches and get new tenants.
And the leaders’ place in the story is clear. They know that they are the tenants working on behalf of the Lord. The analogy of the servants to the prophets is also clear. The servants represent the prophets whom Israel's leaders repeatedly rejected. The son is Jesus himself. The parable moves beyond a warning about poor leadership to a declaration of what is about to happen in Jerusalem. The leaders are not merely neglecting God's messengers. They are preparing to reject and kill God's Son.
Then Jesus carries it a step further. When he speaks about the “very stone the builders rejected” he is quoting Psalm 118. Turn in your prayer books to page 762. Read with me in unison verses 19-24.
This is a Psalm of David. Remember that David was the least of Jesse’s seven sons. When the prophet Samuel went to see Jesse, no one expected David to become Israel’s king, and their greatest earthly king. He was not even presented by his father for consideration. He was just the boy watching the sheep. Likewise, these leaders cannot grasp that this Jesus would be the Messiah. Jesus is telling them, before the crucifixion, that their judgment of him will not be God's judgment. What they intend as his defeat will become the means of God's victory.
The psalm speaks of entering the gates of righteousness to worship the Lord. And here, in the Temple itself, stands Jesus, the one whom God has chosen and vindicated. The leaders responsible for guarding the worship of Israel cannot recognize the very one to whom their scriptures point. There is no mystery. He tells them, “The Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruit of the kingdom.”
The third image Jesus casts is of that cornerstone being so strong that anything else will break upon it and it will crush anything upon which it falls. This is a direct reference to the second chapter of Daniel. King Nebuchadnezzar asks Daniel to interpret a dream of a giant image, like a statue. Its head was fine gold, its chest and arms silver, its belly and thighs of bronze and its feet mixed with iron and clay. Then comes a stone that crushes the iron and clay feet and all of it comes crashing down.
Daniel interpreted the dream as four succeeding kingdoms. Gold is more precious than silver, and silver than bronze, and bronze than iron - each material less precious but stronger than the one that preceded it.
We pick up Daniel 2:44-45 (page 739 in your pew Bibles):
And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever, just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall be after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.”
Traditionally, these kingdoms are understood as Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The image of iron mixed with clay is particularly striking: an empire like Rome may possess enormous military strength and yet remain internally divided and unstable.
These images, prophetic images from Isaiah, David, and Daniel, were crystal clear to the chief priests, scribes and elders. They knew Jesus was talking about them. He’s reminding them of leaders’ errors of the past and the eternal call of God to faithfulness. Instead of heeding this very scripturally framed warning, instead of pausing and reflecting on their own attitudes and actions, they wanted to arrest him. Soon, they will arrest him and soon they will have him crucified.
The Lord worked through the unlikeliest child of Jesse to raise up Israel’s greatest king. The kingdoms of the earth all have feet of clay. They will not stand when the Word of God strikes their foundation and topples them to ruin. Do not be surprised that the Lord manifested himself in the humility of Jesus. He is the cornerstone.
What does all of this have to do with us? God’s prophetic Word, that applied in Isiah’s time, in David’s time, in Daniel’s time and in Jesus’ own time, applies today. Last week's parable asked whether we would actually do the Father's will, rather than merely say that we would. This week's parable asks what we will produce with everything the Father has entrusted to us. Together, they remind us that faithfulness is not simply what we profess. It is what our lives produce.
This parable remains a clear caution that we must be faithful stewards of all that we have under our control. This includes all of our resources as well as responsibilities, authority and influence we may have in life, be it our families, our work or our standing in the community and organizations – including our beloved church. This builds upon and sharpens the caution we heard last week about staying focused on Christ and his mission, not preservation of buildings and the organization for its own sake.
Further, this is a direct call to stewardship of ourselves. We spend our lives earning so much, wages, respect, education and so on. There is nothing wrong with striving to do the best we can in everything and anything, unless the striving becomes the thing, our thing – to the exclusions of God.
God requires us to stop, take some sabbath time, to remember who we are and whose we are. God requires us to remember that we did not create ourselves. Whatever our talents and strengths may be, we may make the most of them (or not), but we did not create them. Nor are they accidents of nature. God formed us from the dust, the elements, and breathed life into us. So, not only are we stewards of everything we have, we are first stewards of ourselves.
Paul drives this point home beautifully in this morning’s passage from Philippians. Paul was a very gifted man. He was born and raised to worship the one true God. He had a brilliant mind which he put to the highest and best use he could envision, becoming expert in the scriptures and their application to life. He had a tremendous drive and he followed the rules. Smart. Energetic. Focused – but in the wrong direction.
Once he encountered the risen Jesus, he says he regarded all of that as loss. His achievements had minimal value – compared to the value of knowing Christ. That’s a comparison. Those items had value but needed direction.
Following Jesus, all of his great knowledge of the scriptures made him perfectly positioned to understand and explain them in the light of Jesus having been raised from the dead. His theology has been foundational for Christianity ever since.
His great zeal was put to work planting churches and training leaders. He became the archetype for mission. His methods and counsel remain fundamental to church planting and formation.
Once he met Jesus, Paul grew to regard himself as a steward over the mind, body, spirit and time that God gave him, and never forgot that he belonged to Jesus.
Think about that as you plan your calendar for the week. Whose are you, your own or his? Nothing changes until we do.
AMEN!