Sharing Christ’s Love – “Ungrateful Tenants!”
Matthew 21:33-46
Rev. Dr. Todd Speed
Decatur Presbyterian Church
October 8, 2023
The parables of Jesus are metaphors or similes, often drawn from nature or common life in ancient Palestine. They engage our interest by their vividness or strangeness. As scholar CH Dodd wrote, Jesus had a way of leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about the precise application of the parable so as to tease the mind into active wondering.
(C.H. Dodd, The Parables of the Kingdom, 1961)
Jesus parables often begins with something commonplace, like a landowner and his vineyard, then Jesus will juxtaposes a second element, like the tenants being ungrateful and not paying their share of the produce.
Then Jesus will introduce a problem or something strange, something that includes a shock or surprise, such as the servants of the landowner being mistreated, and even killed by the tenants. This problem leads to the “dislocation” of those hear the story, encouraging deeper reflection about the meaning and purpose of the parable.
The audience for today’s parable of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew is the chief priests, the Pharisees, and the crowds. The chief priests were the landowners and would have identified with the vineyard owners, but Jesus makes a turn in the parable and ends up with the chief priests realizing that they are the violent tenants in the parable and not the landowner.
God is the landowner in the parable. The vineyard is Jerusalem and the nation of Israel. The chief priests and Pharisees are the ones who had been set up as stewards of the vineyard. In this parable, Jesus encourages his hearers to reflect on the nature of God. Is God a landowner who will execute revenge and kill the tenants?
What will be God’s response to the death of the Son? We answer this question based not on this one story, but on the whole of the gospel, but this particular parable forces us to consider a foreshadowing of the strangeness of the cross. What, in the end, will be the fate of Israel?
What will be the role of the disciples and the Church? What will happen to God’s beloved vineyard?
Hear the word of God from Matthew 21, verses 33-46.
Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it,
dug a winepress in it and built a watch tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one and killed another and stoned another. Again, he sent other slaves, more than the first and they treated them in the same way.
Finally, he sent his son to them saying, “They will respect my son.” But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir, come let us kill him and get his inheritance.”
So they seized him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes what will he do to those tenants?
They said to him, “They will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him produce at the harvest time.”
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” This was the Lord’s doing and it was amazing in our eyes?”
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. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls. When the chief priest and the Pharisees heard this parable, they realized he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds because the crowds regarded him as a prophet.
The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
This parable of judgment could be called the Parable of the Ungrateful Tenants. Or, it could be called the Parable of the Mistreated Messengers. Or, it could be called the Parable of the Suffering Son.
Years ago, one member of my Sunday School class titled this parable of judgment against the chief priests and Pharisees the “Parable of the Exciting Opportunity.”
Dr. Billy Sandifer, local dentist and optimist, one of the nicest persons you could ever meet. Billy chose to view this parable not as judgment upon the Church, but as exciting opportunity for the Church.
The keys to the vineyard of God’s garden have been passed along to today’s Church. The workers in the vineyard are now called to produce good fruits of the kingdom of God. God intends for the Church to produce a rich harvest of justice and righteousness, to follow God’s commands, to heed God’s messengers.
The Church has been given rich resources. We have been given protection from enemies. We have received guidance from prophets and priests and kings, and most of all, we have received the presence of God’s son, Jesus Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit.
The Church, this church, is set in a rich vineyard and we are intended to produce good fruit, the fruits of the kingdom of God – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, along with a strong mix of right living and just dealings in all that we do.
What an exciting opportunity that is!
Do you remember the movie Coach Carter? The film was about a high school basketball coach who made a real difference in the lives of some urban kids from Los Angeles. One young man on the team was named Timo. Timo was being pulled back and forth between drug dealing for his uncle and fulfilling his potential on the basketball court and in the high school classroom.
Throughout the movie, Coach Carter keeps asking Timo, “Timo, what is your deepest fear?” Coach Carter has seen potential in the young man, potential that was being stifled by his fear of and anxiety.
The young man’s life was teetering on the edge of chaos; Timo was standing at a crossroads. So Coach Carter kept pushing him, kept asking him, “Timo, what is your greatest fear?” Throughout the movie, the boy could never quite answer. He did not know how to respond.
At the crux of the movie, the basketball players’ grades were unacceptable. A number of them were failing their classes, so Coach Carter shuts down the gym mid-season. Coach Carter puts chains on the doors of the gym, requiring the boys to have acceptable grades bedore continuing to play basketball.
You can imagine how upset the parents and the community became. For the climax of the movie, there is a powerful scene in which all the parents gather together with community members in a meeting where they are going to fire the coach. What happens instead is that the young basketball players carry their school desks into the gym at practice time and sit down to do their homework.
Coach Carter was surprised, even impressed by his players’ commitment. The young man, Timo, stands up in the midst of the dissension and finally answers his Coach’s question so that everyone in the community can hear: “Coach, our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness which frightens us. Our playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people around us don’t feel insecure. We are all meant to shine as children do – not just some of us, everyone of us. As we let our own light shine, we will unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. Our liberation from fear will automatically liberate others.”
Timo went on to say, right in front of his drug-dealing uncle, and all the angry parents and community members, “Sir, I just want to say thank you.” Timo thanks Coach Carter for liberating the young man from his fear of success, from his fear of letting his light shine, from his fear of standing out and becoming all that he could be. In the end, Timo realized that Coach Carter had set him free; he had granted him permission to let his light shine.
Famous preacher, George Buttrick, wrote in his commentary on this parable that this parable speaks about human freedom. Most of us enjoy considerable freedom in our lives. Many of us enjoy a variety of opportunities that we could pursue. The vinedressers in this story were under no restraint. They were left in sole possession of the vineyard. They could live as free men and women.
The only condition of the lease was that they should pay in fruit produced. “Such is our freedom,” claims George Buttrick. It is not an unlimited freedom. The garden of our lives has boundaries, but within those boundaries there is a real freedom.
We are not free to choose our heredity, but we are free to make the best or worst of it. We are not free to choose our native talent, but we are free to double our talent or to bury it. We are not free to select the vineyard in which we reside, necessarily, but we are free within that vineyard’s capacity to build it, to ransom it, or to surrender it to a chaos of weeds.
Do we choose to work towards an abundant harvest, or do we choose to allow a chaos of weeds?
The question is one of self will – do we follow God’s will, God’s good intentions, or do we stray toward the self-serving, ungrateful attitude of the tenants in our parable?
When we stray from God’s ways and begin to follow our own ways, we will ultimately tend to become anxious and afraid.
The chief priests and Pharisees, for example, feared there would not be enough to go around. They were afraid that they would lose what they had. They had indulged themselves richly on the blessings they had received, but then feared they would lose control over those blessings, so they held tightly to their wealth and power, and refused to share.
When confronted with the chaos of life, we also tend to respond in fear. We desire security. We desire to indulge ourselves while we can. We desire to hang on to what little control over this life that we can muster.
As a result of fear, the prophet Elijah was driven into the wilderness. As a result of fear, the prophet Isaiah, if tradition be true, was sawn asunder. As a result of fear, the prophet Zechariah was stoned to death near the temple altar. As a result of fear, John the Baptist was beheaded and his head offered on a plate.
And, of course, as a result of fear, Jesus received the most brutal and painful form of execution imaginable. Fear and anxiety go along with following self will.
The opposite of fear is freedom.
The freedom we receive in Christ is the freedom to become who we were intended to become, the freedom to let our light shine, so to speak.
Consider those twelve ordinary men, fishermen and tax collectors alike, who were liberated by the grace of Jesus Christ. These no name disciples were handed the keys to the vineyard of God. They took up the tasks that had been taken away from the chief priests and elders. The keys were taken away from the powerful ones, the educated ones, the “blue bloods”, and they were given to ordinary men and women who, by the grace of God and power of the Holy Spirit, spread the good news of the gospel to every corner of the world.
Instead of hearing this parable as a word of judgment against ancient Jewish leaders, what if the Church heard this parable as a call to repentance? What if the Church heard this parable as a call to turn away from fearfulness and anxiety, to turn away from self will and from self-serving and from hoarding the vineyard’s resources and turn toward the will of God, toward letting our own light shine, toward focusing efforts on producing fruit for all?
Will the current “tenants” in God’s garden shrink from their potential or will they live up to their potential as members of God’s vineyard? The workers in God’s vineyard are all meant to shine – as children do – and to bear the fruits of God’s kingdom.
As Billy Sandifer would say, what an exciting opportunity!
Though this congregation has been around for nearly 200 years, in some ways we are still like that sixteen year old basketball player. Within the vineyard in which we find ourselves, we have been given the free will to choose the path before us.
Do we choose the scarcity mentality of or do we choose the abundance mentality of allowing our light to shine, so that we may give glory to God.
Do we hoard or do we share?
Will we listen carefully to God’s Word which always is calling us back to God’s ways, or will we ignore or even “cancel” the messengers of God?
The cross is a stark reminder of what happened when our spiritual forebears ignored God’s Word. The vineyard was taken from them because they were so afraid that they might lose what they had gained.
In the cross of Christ, we are set free, set free from selfishness sin and free for service. The work of the church is far from being accomplished; no doubt the weeds of chaos and of violence threaten us all.
May God liberate us once again from our fear, so that today’s church may bear much fruit.
Amen.
Rev. Dr. Todd Speed
Decatur Presbyterian Church
Decatur, Georgia
October 8, 2023
