October 6, 2002

It is entirely appropriate that each year among American Scandinavians there should be remembrance of Leifr Eiricsson. Son of Eric the Red, the colonizer of Greenland, Leifr was born in Iceland but spent his youth in Greenland. In the year 999 he visited Norway and was converted to Christianity. The following year he was commissioned by King Olaf Tryggvason to bring Christianity to Greenland. In this evangelizing effort he was successful. Leifr also sailed farther west and discovered what he called "Vinland." He chose that name because he found grapes growing there. Though Leifr Eiricsson’s roots are in Norway, all of Scandinavia is proud to claim him. I am happy to have been invited as a representative of the Swedes to share in this service today.

This 20^th Sunday after Pentecost we are approaching the end of another church year. We are also coming to the end of Jesus’ ministry, as it is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. As we know, Jesus’ ministry concluded with his passion and crucifixion. Especially when he came from Galilee to Jerusalem he encountered the hostility of the temple authorities and the Pharisees, and in parables he responded to this hostility. One of these is the story of the Wicked Tenants.

At first reading the story seems almost incredible. It’s hard to imagine tenants behaving so outrageously, or an absentee landowner dealing with his renters as does this landowner. One would have expected the tenants to have been brought before the bar of justice after the first deplorable incident. Not only doesn’t this happen, but the vineyard owner seems incredibly naïve. He gives his wicked tenants a second and a third opportunity to repeat their violent refusal to pay him what is due, and then he commits the crowning folly of sending them his son, with the wishful thought, "They will respect my son." We are almost tempted to say that the vineyard owner deserved the treatment he got. "Fool me once, shame on you. . . . Fool me twice, shame on me."

Could anything like this have happened in the Palestine of Jesus’ time? We do know that there were absentee landlords who lived outside of Palestine, leasing their farms to tenant farmers, and that there was much resentment against such absentee ownership. Since it may not have been easy for these owners to collect their share of the harvest each year, some tenants may have succeeded for a time in withholding the rent that was due. If years had passed they could have been emboldened by such success. When the owner’s son finally came, the tenants may have falsely concluded that the vineyard owner was dead and that the son was the sole heir. If he were out of the way, there would be no one to inherit the vineyard. Actually there was in Palestine at that time a law according to which under specified circumstances an inheritance could be regarded as ownerless property, the prior right belonging to the claimant who came first.

Jesus may have wanted his hearers to imagine a scenario of this kind. He may also have intended that the story should be understood as an allegory. It is usually a mistake to interpret Jesus’ parables in this way. One should look for one meaning that the parable is focused to tell, rather than reading many meanings into the details of the story. This parable, however, may be an exception to that rule. In the background, familiar to Jesus’ hearers, is Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard, which was today’s first reading: "My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes."

The wild grapes were bloodshed in the community of the people of God instead of justice, cries of distress instead of righteousness. The song tells us how the vineyard owner in his disappointment intends to respond. "I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste." It is at this point that the parable of the Wicked Tenants differs from the Song of the Vineyard, for in Jesus’ parable a distinction is made between the tenants and the vineyard. The tenants are to be removed and punished, but the vineyard will not be destroyed. New more responsible tenants will take the place of the wicked tenants.

If for Isaiah the house of Israel and the people of Judah were the vineyard, today the vineyard is the people of God wherever they are to be found. It is not so easy to draw the boundaries of this vineyard. It extends throughout the whole world. It includes not only the church but also the civil society and the economic order. Functioning as tenants in this vineyard are leaders in the church, in the state, in the business community. During recent weeks we have read of the serious wrongdoings of many of them.

In a modern interpretation of this parable in what role do we cast ourselves? Are we the vineyard that God wants to save, or are we more like the wicked tenants? We must remember that Jesus distinguishes between vineyard and tenants. If we would prefer to regard ourselves as the vineyard, all of us to a greater or lesser degree have responsibilities as tenants, as leaders. We are pastors, teachers, legislators. We are physicians, nurses, attorneys. We are engineers. We are engineers, business persons, journalists. In addition to all this in a democracy we are all citizens.

There were no democracies in Jesus’ time. Such a form of government did not exist either in Luther’s time. The thought that the whole population should share in a nation’s government would have been very foreign to Luther. But this is the situation now for us. We are responsible not only for what we do in our daily work, but also for how we vote in an election, not least in a country that seeks to extend its influence throughout the whole world. As individuals we are part of the vineyard that God intends to save and preserve. At the same time we have a part in determining whether the vineyard produces wild grapes or good fruit. This means that it isn’t so easy any more to distinguish between the vineyard and the tenants. We are at the same time those who should be punished and those God intends to save. How God solves this problem is the mystery of the atonement.

We may not say that we can continue in sin order that grace may abound. At a meeting of some pastors recently there was discussion of what sins there should be preaching about today. People must naturally be warned against indecent sexual behavior, abuse of alcohol and drugs. But whether we think of ourselves as leaders or as followers, we need to be aware of our social responsibilities, our participation in what happens in the whole vineyard, of our possible sins of both commission and omission.

Today’s parable tell us that God intends to save his vineyard, his people. All those who share in any way in the leadership of God’s people will be held responsible for what they do or fail to do. If leaders must be replaced, somehow God will find other tenants, other leaders for the people of God, who will give him the produce he expects to receive from his vineyard at the proper times. That is the gospel, the good news in this parable.

Finally there is the psalm verse, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone." In 1975-76 the hill of Calvary was uncovered, exposing what had been a stone quarry from the eighth or seventh century before Christ. There some stones had been chosen and others rejected. Later the quarry had been abandoned and by the first century A.D. it had become a refuse dump and a place for executions and burials. In that place one who had been rejected became through his death on the cross our Savior, the cornerstone of our faith. That too is the gospel for this day. Let us rejoice in proclaiming it!

Amen.

The Norwegian Lutheran Memorial Church ·  924 E. 21st St, Minneapolis, MN 55404-2952 ·  (612)874-0716