Isaiah 5: 1-7
Matthew 21: 33-46
One of my favourite places for a weekend away is the Barossa Valley. It was settled in the 19th century by German Lutherans fleeing religious persecution. South Australia had styled itself as a free-thinking colony, in which there was freedom of religion.
These days just over an hour’s drive from Adelaide, 150 years ago it was a a couple of days journey, a world away and the German immigrants founded their little piece of heaven as they established a new life and worked the land.
It was a hard life, but people bonded together as they built a new home in a new land. Everywhere they built Lutheran churches which predominate the Barossa still, and also they brought with them skills in tilling the land, planting vines, growing grapes and making them into fine wines, some of the world’s best.
But it doesn’t happen without the threat of disease, natural disaster and the need for plain hard work.
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Isaiah chapter 5 is a love-song from GOD to Israel. It pictures a vineyard tended carefully with the hope of getting great fruit in season. The winegrower has pruned, fertilised, protected constantly and the day came to taste the grapes – and to his dismay, the fruit was bitter and sour. All that work had come to nothing .. it was a disaster.
The metaphor is used to conjure up Israel as a nation which had been formed, pruned and cultivated through GOD’s covenant – but was not producing the fruits of justice, love and peacemaking.
One commentator says “ the vineyard image … is deeply ironic … the love-song imagery sets up the audience to hear words of love, but words of judgement soon fill the room” (TE Fretheim).
Keep in mind that Israel always haves an ambivalent relationship with GOD. During the good times the nation is proud of its covenant faith, but it doesn’t take much in the way of challenging circumstances fro that confident faith to fall away, and the pressure of circumstances compel the leaders of Israel to keep in step with other nations, rather than maintaining covenant fidelity.
As Isaiah begins his message of hope and judgement during a period which rocked the identity of Israel one of the first words he preaches is that GOD “expected justice, but saw bloodshed, righteousness, but heard a cry.” (v 7)
A friend rang me earlier this week and told of a disagreement with a family member concerning the Government’s treatment of refugees, and other matters. She had said that she felt ashamed to be an Australian, which provoked strong response by the family member who wanted her to be more temperate in her views.
Isaiah, who didn’t speak from a position of power or privilege, was the word who spoke truth in GOD’s name and acted as the conscience of the nation.
* * * *
Matthew chapter 21 takes this love-song and reworks it for a new situation. There is a remarkable amount of cross-threading in the Bible, between Old & New Testaments. It really doesn’t matter if you understand this parable to be the words of Jesus, or the imaginative work of Matthew interpreting Jesus for his community.
Either way, it’s a difficult parable which has been interpreted in some very dangerous ways, especially those who take it as a rejection of Judaism. More of that in a moment.
In the Bible, as in so many things, everything depends on context. When we are reading an ancient text, pulling it out of context there are implicit dangers. Here the danger is that we read it through “Christian” spectacles and take it as antisemitic.
So, let’s go back a couple of steps … Matthew 21 begins with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, and going into the Temple and driving out those many out with corded whip. Later he went back to the Temple and he was questioned about his authority, his (divine) rights by the priests and elders. He refused to give a straight answer and instead told two parables.
The first concerned a father asking two sons to work in the vineyard. One says yes, but doesn’t , the other demurs but later does. Jesus says on the basis of this response that “tax collectors and prostitutes” will enter GOD’s kingdom ahead of the religious leaders. How offensive, both then and now!
The second is the parable we heard today ( also told in somewhat different ways by Mark & Luke) which seems to be far more allegorical than most of his parables. It seems as if Jesus? Matthew ? takes the ancient song and rewrites it for a new audience.
This is a very familiar action musically. For example, I collect versions of Leonard Cohen’s famous song “hallelujah”, I have about 20 ‘takes’ on his famous song, and each finds a new way to take this song which biased loosely on the story of King David & Bathsheba – love & lust, worship and sacrifice – and give it a new audience.
In the parable the tenants abuse and beat the master’s slaves, ( perhaps he is thinking of the abuse prophets such as Jeremiah and Amos received – though we don’t know much about how the prophets’ were received.) The he sends his son who is thrown out of the vineyard and killed.
Of course, this is a reference to Jesus’ fate – outside the city walls – but I think it is wrong if we read implicit anti-semitism into it – for that terrible expression of Christendom developed much later as an aftermath of the Crusades and the victimisation of the Jews.
The fact that this parable is told ( in somewhat different ways) by Matthew, Mark & Luke suggest that it was very important in the early Christian communities, as they sought to understand Jesus’ role in GOD’s purposes.
Jesus is presented as telling the parable and then asking a his critics a question. He doesn’t defend his actions, or explain them – he simply asks what do you think will happen? And when they respond turns once again to to a scripture text from Psalms about a rejected stone. This is the idea of finding a stone which serves as the key support for the whole building.
The psalmist begins by urging people to give thanks for the eternal love of GOD, and then the mood of the psalm is about suffering and distress – and how GOD is with him in the most difficult of circumstances.
In the New Testament Jesus is the living stone, the foundation stone, the keystone for the Church. One of his disciples, Peter, writes “Come to the LORD, the living stone rejected by people as worthless but chosen by God as valuable. Come as living stones, and let yourselves be used in building the spiritual temple..” (1 Peter 2: 4-5)
Jesus ends this citation by returning to the vineyard image, and warns that the Kingdom of God is only can be taken away – it has one purpose only to produce good fruit – justice, peace-making, reconciliation, care for the stranger and sojourner, feeding the hungry and oppressed.
These activities and relationships don’t just happen. They take time, careful cultivation, keeping an eye out for threats and danger, being willing to serve in many varied circumstances in the name and for the sake of the One, who in John’s Gospel says, “I am vine and you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will bear a great deal of fruit … my Father’s glory is shown by your bearing a lot of fruit; and in this way you become my disciples.”
May we allow the fruit of the Spirit to flourish,
David Carter
5/10/14