Matthew 21:33-46
An inside joke of mainline preachers is referring to the agony of Year A of the lectionary. The lectionary, followed by many mainline Christian communities, is the set of biblical passages we read in worship. The Revised Common Lectionary is three years long: Year A, Year B, Year C, with one gospel assigned to each year plus a few stories from the gospel of John thrown in. In Year A, we primarily read the gospel of Matthew, a gospel in which Jesus ends many teachings, parables, and allegories with the weeping and gnashing of teeth, with violence promised, with outer darkness and perplexing exclusion. When we preachers gather for Bible study each week, we read the Year A gospel passage, and then proclaim: The gospel of our Lord? And we laugh and sigh and then sit in silence for a while pondering what we will say about Matthew’s Jesus. At this past week’s Bible study, we preachers literally did this upon reading the allegory of the retaliatory landowner, the violent tenants, and the murdered slaves and son.
In the allegory, the landowner entrusts his land to farmers, called “tenants.” At harvest time, the landowner sends slaves to collect the rent in the form of produce. Instead of handing over the requisite produce, the tenants kill the slaves. Again, the landowner sends slaves, and again, the tenants kill them. Finally, the landowner sends his son thinking the tenants will honor him, but they don’t. They kill the son as well. Jesus then asks the chief priests and Pharisees who are listening, “When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They respond: “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”
Jesus tells this allegory to the chief priests and Pharisees while sitting in the temple in Jerusalem, a place where they hold power and authority. Jesus directs the allegory to them, so clearly that Matthew even tells us that the chief priests and Pharisees realize Jesus is speaking of them, tenants who dishonor the owner. Upon hearing his stinging allegory, the chief priests and Pharisees want to arrest Jesus but don’t for fear of the crowds. The reason they want to arrest him is that Jesus’ allegory is about religious leadership, about those who hold power in religious institutions, about those who steward the gifts of God—but fail to bear the fruits of the kingdom.
Jesus’ allegory certainly makes me stop and think. Here I am, one given authority to forgive sin on behalf of God, one given authority to speak God’s word, one given authority to administer the holiest of mysteries in bread and wine. I am a religious leader, like the chief priests and Pharisees. And indeed, God has called many of us within the congregation to positions of leadership. This allegory is for us; it reveals what can go wrong when we forget that we are stewards and not owners, when we forget that any authority or power we exercise was given to us by God—and can be taken back by God. Jesus’ allegory calls to mind the ways the church at large throughout the ages has contributed to violence and hatred—against people of other religions, against women, against queer folks, against people of color, among others. I invite you to confess with me the sin of the church: We, the church, have gone our own way and hurt the people of God. Lord, have mercy.
Because we have gone our own way, thanks be to God that the church and the mission of God are not ours to control! Just as the tenants do not own the land they work, we, the people of God, do not control the work of God, the mission of God, the blowing of the Holy Spirit. The church is God’s. And when we fail to pray, seek, and follow God’s will as our second biblical guiding principle states, we start to run off the rails. When we hold too tightly to our rigid ways of thinking and doing, opening ourselves to what God is doing becomes challenging.
Fourteen years ago, I went to serve a congregation in a small town in Iowa. Fresh from seminary where our professors taught us the correct ways of doing things and fresh from a family system with many rules and boundaries, I came to the congregation with strong opinions about many things but especially worship. In that congregation, confirmation students robed up every Sunday to light candles and serve communion, and as part of their duties as acolytes, they joined the procession at the beginning of worship. At my lowest point of my tight hold on correct worship procedure, I remember telling the senior pastor to instruct the acolyte to process in a certain way. She either forgot to instruct the confirmation student or instructed her incorrectly…or perhaps the confirmation student just went her own way. Regardless, horrified, I watched the confirmation student enter the worship space with her torch lit ready to light the altar candles and then walk the wrong way. A moment after my horror flashed across my face in plain view of the congregation, including the confirmation student, I realized my hold on correct worship procedure was too tight. Who cares if a teenager in a small Iowa town comes to church, serves as a worship leader, and then walks the wrong way? That the teenager came to church at all is a definite win, serving as a worship leader just icing on the cake.
While I learned many things from the senior pastor, my colleague Victoria, this was probably the most important: We do not have to hold onto our beliefs, our opinions, our correct procedures so tightly. We can hold our faith and the ministry of the church lightly—in order to make space for the Spirit of God to guide us. As I look back on that Sunday morning procession, I imagine God celebrating the presence of a dearly loved young person in worship, thoroughly unperturbed by a wrong turn at the front of the worship space. Our tight hold on any belief or opinion or procedure can shut down new possibilities that God presents, new life that God provides, a new way of being church to which God might call us. It’s God’s church, after all, not ours. Our beliefs and opinions and procedures aid us, certainly, in doing our very best, but when they impede the work of the Holy Spirit among us, a light hold on them allows us to let go when necessary.
Jesus’ allegory this morning doesn’t contain much good news. The chief priests and Pharisees exercise a tight hold on their religion, and apparently, it brings them to ruin. They don’t understand that they are simply stewards of God’s gifts, not owners. The sneaky good news in this cautionary tale is that, despite whatever we tenants do to thwart the collection of the harvest, whatever we the church do to stop the mission of God, the land, the church is not ours. This is God’s church, and we are simply stewards—with palms and hearts open. Thanks be to God! Amen.