Year A
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:7-14
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46

May the words of my mouth… O God… speak your Truth…

It’s true… you can find something in scripture… to justify just about anything… in almost any situation… wives be obedient to your husbands… has been used to justify domestic abuse… you shall not lie with a male as with a woman… has been used to justify not only heterosexism and homophobia… but the murder of LGBT children of God… and slaves obey your masters… has been used to justify slavery…

But scripture isn’t meant to be read using a microscope… but using a macroscope… not focusing in on just one or two verses to support your position… but to see one integrated message of grace… forgiveness… and love… some of the words are meant to be read to discern the meaning which lies beneath them… distilling the truths which are woven throughout… and which transcend any specific culture and any specific time period…

UCC Minister John Gage writes… I believe the will of God isn’t the moment-by-moment itinerary on the cruise ship… it’s the direction that ship is supposed to be going… always toward justice… peace… and compassion… more abundant living for all creation… God works despite our sin and shortcomings… and outright evil… not in them… like a grandmother… making a new quilt from all our raggedy pieces…

On September 13… Peter asks Jesus how many times he ought to forgive… as many as seven times… in the translation we heard… Jesus says seventy-seven times… but in another translation Jesus says seven times seventy… which would be four-hundred-ninety times… and we heard the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant… the man who was forgiven much but who would forgive little…

On September 20… we heard the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard… the one in which a landowner went out throughout the day and hired laborers… and when quitting time came… he paid everyone the same…

Last Sunday… we heard about the son who said “Yes!” but did No… and the one who said “No!” but eventually said Yes… about authority and obedience…

Today’s Gospel continues these themes of authority… and power… and wealth… and killing others to take and keep it… in today’s Parable of the Wicked Tenants… there’s quite a cast of characters who engage Jesus about its meaning… if the religious leadership identifies with the landowner… and let’s give them the benefit of the doubt… they’re doing the best they can to care for Israel… then they’re the ones who have been wronged by the tenants… but the moment they realize… as in Isaiah’s parable to which Jesus refers… that God is the landowner… and they… the religious leaders… are the bad guys… who kill the Son… then things get really tense really fast… and this is a much more obvious indictment of the leaders than we’ve seen before… not of Judaism itself… but of how the current administration is interpreting the law…

And let’s remember… this Gospel was written after Jesus’ death… and what’s being described happened two days after Palm Sunday… on Tuesday… in two more days… on Maundy Thursday… Jesus will be arrested and taken before the religious leaders… and on Friday… he will be crucified… and so today’s exchange grows out of the demand by the religious leaders… and Pilate… to know by what authority Jesus does and says… all that he does and says…

And Jesus asks them… Now when the owner of the vineyard comes… what will he do to those tenants… Jesus never answers the question himself… he lets them answer… he doesn’t affirm or deny what they say… but it reminds me of the passage in 2Samuel 12… when Nathan questions David about ensuring the death of Bathsheba’s husband Uriah… and David indicts himself… as the religious leadership has just done…

In the passage from Isaiah… after the landowner planted the vineyard with choice vines… and put a fence around it… and dug a wine press in it… not to mention the watchtower… he expected it to yield cultivated grapes… but it yielded wild grapes… and I wonder… what do those wild grapes represent…

This past week… Bp. Satterlee said that in our context… we might understand these confrontations to be conversations between Jesus and the church… and just as the tenants mistakenly think the vineyard belongs to them… Jesus is suggesting that the church today… when and while it may meet our needs… and satisfy our preferences… and affirm our views… while it does these things… the church does not belongs to us… and during this pandemic… when people gather in the sanctuary… and don’t wear masks… and sit too close… and sing loudly… they may well contract COVID-19… as they did at City Church in Rockford over the last week or so… so much so… that this past Monday… Pastor Doug Bergsma said they had to go back to online worship…

We continue to live in a tenuous time… as I think I wrote recently… it’s as though someone turned out all the lights… and we’re stumbling around in the dark… trying to find the familiar paths which still work for us… and where we need to forge new paths… and Bp. Satterlee said if we think that talking about racism… or human rights… or voting rights… or the environment… or wearing masks… is too political… the reign of God will go elsewhere… because in this time… when we feel off-balance and are not getting what we want… the Good News… is that we have a chance to embrace the fact that we don’t own the vineyard… we are the tenants… and God will do… what God will do… with the church and the world… and bring love… life… forgiveness… hope… and peace to those who seek and are open to it… it may be a struggle to gain and own that awareness… we may need to discover new ways of being… and we may not totally get the life we want… but we may just get the life God wants…

But as we move towards that life… we must continue to ask ourselves… and each other about the kind of grapes that are being planted in this country… and who’s planting them… and what’s being harvested… and discern whether they’re cultivated grapes that God has planted… or wild grapes which clamor for our attention… but really need to be trampled down…

And even Martin Luther… in some of his writing… said it is not God… but Satan… the has’satan… the accuser… who rummages through our garbage looking for already forgiven sins… and then rubbing our noses in them and saying… this is who you really are… but it is a lie… and when more of us realize that it’s a lie… than believe it… we can start to be not afraid… because it is possible to talk to someone without any lies… without any sarcasm… or deceptions… or exaggerations or any of the things that people use to confuse the truth… and people confuse the truth because they’re afraid of continually being shamed…

We got word Friday morning that the President and First Lady… and many others in that orbit… tested positive for COVID-19… and while we don’t know how mild or severe any one person’s symptoms may become… we do know that as far back as February… the president characterized the pandemic as a hoax and as fake news… I wonder if in hindsight… those statements now seem more like wild grapes than cultivated ones… because it’s what the has’satan says that’s fake news… and what God says and does in Christ… that’s the real Good News… that’s the wide… macroscopic vision we need to seek… and maintain…

We got word Friday morning that the President and First Lady… and many others in that orbit… tested positive for COVID-19… and while we don’t know how mild or severe any one person’s symptoms may become… we do know that as far back as February… the president characterized the pandemic as a hoax and as fake news… I wonder if in hindsight… those statements now seem more like wild grapes than cultivated ones… because it’s what the has’satan says that’s fake news… and what God says and does in Christ… that’s the real Good News… that’s the wide… macroscopic vision we need to seek… and maintain… this is what we ask you God… in your Holy name… Amen.