Relentless

“Working in the Vineyard.” Image by World Bank Photo Collection via Flickr licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Pastor Joe Skogmo

St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Lowry, MN

Pentecost 18 | 10.08.2017 | Matthew 21:33-46

What is going on?

What is going on in this world!?

I studied media extensively as a political science major at Augsburg so I understand the left-wing, right-wing, and mainstream media’s “if it bleeds it leads’ bias, but seriously, what is going on!?

I was texting a friend of mine this week, Pastor Adam Butler, who is in Paynesville. We like to lament with one another and here is a bit of our last conversation:

Me: Can you believe the news about Pr. Maggie Cummings? Unreal. So tragic.

Adam: …Life is so fragile, man….Why? Why does that happen?…Did you see that Amanda Schultz’s [a classmate of ours] husband died recently, too? Just out of nowhere…the world is exhausting lately.

Me: I mean seriously…Hurricanes Harvey. Irma. Jose. Maria. Political division. Earthquakes. Income inequality. Wildfires. Environmental convulsion. Church decline. Pr. Maggie. Pr. Amanda. White supremacy. Nazis with torches. Student debt. Housing debt. Credit debt. National debt. Wars. Homophobia. Zika virus. Super bacteria. Cancer. ISIS. Ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Sex trafficking in Pope County. Opioid epidemic. Meth epidemic. And now one of the worst mass shootings in American history…

What is going on?

And today’s parable…okay…so this parable, I get it, at least I think I get it. I never know. Jesus tells what is known as The Parable of the Wicked Tenants. There is a vineyard owner who has tenants taking care of his crop while he’s gone. When harvest comes, the vineyard owner sends servants to collect the produce, but these wicked tenants, who were tasked with taking care of the vineyard, seize the first servant and beat him. The other servant—they kill him. The third servant—they stone him. So the owner, in response, sends MORE servants. Of course, they’re treated “the same way” (21:36). Some beaten. Some killed. Some stoned. And then, almost foolishly, in commitment to his vineyard the owner sends his son. “The tenants saw the son…said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come let us kill him and get his inheritance’” (v. 38). What’s happening in this vineyard is chaos! Ruthless carnage after carnage.

After telling the parable Jesus asks, “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? And these “Jewish authorities” who are listening to the parable respond and “inadvertently condemn themselves”[1] as they reply: “He will put those wretches to a miserable death…[!]” (v. 40-41)…and then it finally dawns on them that Jesus “was speaking about them” (v. 45.).

They realized Jesus was talking about them because the parable is an allegory—meaning that details in the parable represent something else.[2] The vineyard is very common metaphor in the Old Testament for God’s people. The vineyard owner represents God. The greedy tenants are the people’s leaders. The servants whom the vineyard owner sent perhaps represent those whom God has sent in history but have been rejected (Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, all rejected). And then, the son of the vineyard owner is Jesus.

Like I said, I think I get it and I could preach on the moral lesson of the story that might be Jesus saying to the people in power: “Listen, you had a vineyard to uphold and take care of and bear good fruit, but you haven’t. You haven’t led Israel faithfully!” And I thought about perhaps applying that to our building addition of all things, to think of it as the vineyard that we’ve been given to uphold, care for, and from which bear fruits of the kingdom. I also thought about preaching how the idea from the authorities to put the wicked tenants to death is “exactly what the cross doesn’t do.”[3]

Now none of that would be untrue. But given where I started this sermon I could not help but think of the vineyard and its tenants as representative of our ruthlessly brutal world in the last few weeks and beyond. People keep killing each other. People keep dying too soon. People keep getting hurt. People keep suffering. Like in the parable, our reality right now seems consumed with repeated blows, repeated bad news, and no resolve. And I am searching for God in all of this and wondering what is being revealed about God in this parable that can speak to our current station.

And I think there is something powerful being revealed about God in this parable.

Despite the repeated devastation the vineyard owner stays relentlessly committed. Despite the constant rejection and that the vineyard is sick and twisted, and people are murdering each other, the vineyard owner keeps on sending…and maybe that is our hope. God will keep showing up. God keeps sending Godself into the breach.

Now I’m not an expert-Shakespeare-guy, but I know this line from Henry V, and regarding God’s commitment, it’s almost as if I hear God saying it through this parable and into our broken world: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”

I am not sure I’m perfectly satisfied with this. I still want the cycle of violence and death to stop. But I guess Jesus never promises us that in this life, and in this parable is perhaps acknowledging the continual struggle with the evils of our existence. But I do encourage us all to take a bit of comfort in what is revealed here—into the violence and the chaos, God keeps sending Godself…to suffer with us, to show love, teach love, and to urge that we bear and collect good fruit. In effect, is that not our worship today – grieving a painful world, yet celebrating that God is still active in it?

God is relentless. Tragedy upon tragedy will happen in a broken world and we will lament, “How long, O God” (Psalm 13), and God will again and again say of his commitment to showing up in the vineyard: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”

And that divine commitment permits us a different response in the face of chaos. God’s relentless commitment permits us to be still (Psalm 46:10) – to hope, and even to rise up to action and service in confidence because God is constantly entering in. Amen.

     [1] Walter Brueggemann, Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV—Year A (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 513.

     [2] Cf. Stanley J. Grenz, Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms (InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, Illinois, 1999), 8.

     [3] Rolf Jacobson Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Sermon Brainwave, Podcast #376, http://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=544.