I have a cousin who grows grapes. Sadly, for me, and also for the grapes, he doesn’t grow grapes in a vineyard in France or Italy or Israel – and he doesn’t make wine with them. He grows grapes in his back garden in Hillingdon – North West London – and he makes jam with them. As you probably know, there are very few places in the UK where you can really grow grapes, although that might change with climate change, and his grapes are SOUR. Once you’ve experienced them you really don’t want to try them a second time. Except in jam.
In this country, we think of grapes as relatively exotic, but in a country like Israel, they’re commonplace. This is why the image of the vine or the vineyard is so often used in the Bible. In our Psalm this evening, Israel is the vine which God brought out of Egypt and planted in the promised land. In our first reading, Israel is God’s vineyard. He cultivates it and protects it, plants the best vines and waits for the grapes. Grapes are apparently as easy to grow as raspberries, which come up all over our garden. But God’s vineyard doesn’t produce the proper fruit – only wild grapes or possibly thorns – the Hebrew word is obscure at this point. The message is that God is disappointed because of the lack of justice and righteousness among His people.
In our second reading, Jesus tells a parable about a vineyard. It’s one of three, often called ‘Parables of the Passion’ which Jesus gives after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The procession into the city and the cleansing of the Temple have provoked the anger of the Jewish authorities, and these parables are part of the ensuing debate. It’s important to notice that Jesus’ criticism is not directed against the Jewish people as a whole, but against their leaders, the Pharisees and Chief Priests. They’re seen to be in a long line of people who have rejected and abused the prophets sent by God and who will now reject even the Son of God. The tenants of the vineyard are behaving as if they own it. Although they claim to be loyal to the Torah they fail to give God his due by refusing to believe in his present activity in the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus. They have rebelled against God and will be replaced. For Matthew the vineyard represents, not the nation of Israel, but the kingdom of God (Matthew 21: 43). This will be taken away from the current tenants and given instead to a people who produce the fruits of the kingdom, that is, the church. However, for Matthew this doesn’t mean the Gentile church, but one made up of both Jews and Gentiles which transcends the old divisions between the two. This parable isn’t saying simplistically that God has rejected the Jews.
Along with Jesus’ provocative actions, the parable seems to have been one of the things which precipitated his arrest, but it may be more helpful for us today to think about it from a different angle.
This story is generally called ‘The Parable of the Wicked Tenants’. But it might equally be called ‘The Parable of the Foolish or Doting Landlord’. Against reason, this landlord, having had his first batch of slaves killed and beaten, then sends more slaves, with the same result. Finally, hoping that his son may be respected, he sends him. This seems like a crazy risk to take and only results in tragedy. The son is killed. The landlord’s action only makes any kind of sense in the context of the Old Testament picture of the vineyard which we saw in our first reading. Here it represented God’s deeply loved people. His heart is involved here as well as his finances. The landlord of Jesus’ parable is prepared to risk all, far more than is reasonable. There’s an echo here of the kind of love exhibited by the Father in the story of the Prodigal Son who rushes out to meet his son, barely allowing him to make his apology before he’s restored to his place in the household. It’s like a brief snapshot of the depth and extent of the love of God for human beings. God who sent his prophets down the ages and who now sends the one who most clearly resembles Him, His own Son. This is a God who is vulnerable.
The events of Passiontide lead us inexorably on towards the complete vulnerability of Christ on the Cross. Our Passion Play last week was a moving and vivid reminder of this as we followed Christ’s final journey, carrying the Cross. George Herbert’s long poem The Sacrifice takes us to the foot of the Cross as Christ speaks to us. He speaks as God, who has risked everything by being made flesh for us. His words echo the anthem which we have just heard.
OH all ye, who passe by, whose eyes and minde
To worldly things are sharp, but to me blinde;
To me, who took eyes that I might you finde:
Was ever grief like mine?
Jesus is silent before Herod:
I answer nothing, but with patience prove
If stonie hearts will melt with gentle love.
But who does hawk at eagles with a dove?
Was ever grief like mine?
No one in their right mind would try to use a dove as a hunting bird to catch an eagle. But Christ behaves like a dove when confronted by Herod.
And Herbert also uses the image of the vineyard. Here the hoped-for grapes have become the crown of thorns:
Then on my head a crown of thorns I wear:
For these are all the grapes Sion doth bear,
Though I my vine planted and watred there:
Was ever grief like mine?
Never was grief like that of our God, the landlord who gives His own Son, only to have him killed. Every stanza of Herbert’s poem shows us the paradox of the all-powerful God choosing, out of love, to risk all for us. God’s reward for caring for the vineyard is the thorns which Jesus wears on His head. Here is the love which does ‘hawk at eagles with a dove’. Here is the love we are shown at Passiontide.
Amen.