A New Contract

Trinity 15 – 2 October 2011 at St Giles

Gospel Matthew 21.33-46

When the Gospel is announced the reader says
Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to N.
All Glory to you, O Lord.

Jesus told a parable: “There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.

“The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them in the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.

“But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

“Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

“He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:

“‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvellous in our eyes’?

“Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.”

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.

This is the Gospel of the Lord.
All Praise to you, O Christ.

Sermon

Most of us react badly to rules and regulations. Give us a set of rules, and we try to find ways round them. There’s a whole industry called tax avoidance, seeking ways to circumvent the rules, find legitimate ways to pay less, at least until the loophole is closed and a new one exploited.

Rules are negative. Tying us up in knots. Knots are like nots. They restrain. Hold us back. We strain to break free.

On the other hand, without rules society cannot function. That was the message of August’s riots. Faced by wholesale lawbreaking police are powerless. They can only meet force with force, which is usually counterproductive. Policing – indeed law itself depends for its success on consent, at least by the majority.

Is this the way the Israelites regarded the 10 Commandments? Would they have preferred to be free from rules? Wasn’t that what they had, before God’s law was handed down to them? I can’t compete with Charlton Heston, as he came down from the mountain surrounded by smoke and fire – wind blowing through his magnificent mane of hair – but I recall he encountered chaos not order, as the people revolted against God’s law and turned on their leaders thinking Moses would never return.

Life had not been good for the people since that celebration on the banks of the Sea of Reeds, after their escape from Pharaoh’s pursuing army. They had spent years testing God by their disobedient grumbling. They quarrelled with Moses. He was in despair. He has just about ‘had it’ with the people he was meant to lead from bondage into a land flowing with milk and honey. The people even longed to be back as cruelly oppressed slaves in Egypt, so short was their collective memory.

Against such a background, the 10 Commandments are not an oppressive set of rules but a revelation of freedom. God had a contract with the people. A covenant, as Scripture puts it. A contract means you have to behave in a certain way, but in return the other party has to fulfil their side of the bargain.

Already, in Exodus 19, God has told the people that if they agree to terms of the covenant, they will be for Him a treasured possession, a priestly kingdom and a holy nation (19:5-6). The 10 Commandments in chapter 20 specify how they are to behave. Hardly onerous, you may think, in return for such favourable treatment from God.

It comes down to this. Israel becomes a treasured possession for God in return for doing two things. Worshipping, loving, and honouring the One God; and treating each other and all creation with respect and consideration.

Most people would call that freedom, not oppression. But taken out of context – divorced from the contract – painted up on church walls by the altar – the 10 Commandments are reduced back to just a set of rules. And the Christian faith looks a lot less attractive to those outside.

Of course, the chief priests and elders didn’t see it that way. They challenged Jesus’ authority, and as he often did when faced with religious leaders, he told them a parable. The first was about two sons. The first was disobedient, then changed his mind. The second was obedient, but didn’t do what his father wanted.

If those challenging him didn’t get the message first time around, Jesus immediately told them another parable. This time it’s the Parable of the Tenants.

The parable begins with a situation that was business as usual in Roman-occupied Palestine. A landowner established a vineyard complete with a fence, a winepress, and even a watchtower. He then became an absentee landowner, returning to his own country as often happened in the far-flung territories of the Roman Empire.

Familiar territory to the chief priests and elders. They probably had vineyards of their own. They naturally thought the owner of the vineyard represented themselves. So they were outraged at the treatment meted out to their servants. They would not have sent in a second set of servants. They would certainly not have put their sons and heirs in harm’s way.

We, as Christians, see the parable very differently. God is the Owner. His servants are the Prophets. His Son is Jesus himself, who predicts his own death at their hands. Jesus is the stone the builders rejected, which becomes the cornerstone of God’s new order, his Kingdom.

The rules the tenants had to follow were hardly onerous. In fact, they were freedoms. They were given the freedom to run a beautiful vineyard. They only had to acknowledge its Creator, and give him his share of the harvest. That was the deal, but they couldn’t even do that.

We, of course, hope we represent the ‘other tenants’ to whom the vineyard is given. But we also have a contract. The Son is now in control of the vineyard.

If we fail, we ourselves could become like the old tenants and share their fate. They did not fail because of an argument about religious practices in the synagogue, but their collusion with the Roman empire, and their exploitation and abuse of their position as leaders of the people.

But are we pure in our dealings with the new covenant? Do we spend too long on politics in the church? Are we too fussy about how things should be done? Do we argue with each other about matters which are unimportant in the big scheme of things? Do we collude with society and meld into its ways? Are we visible as people set apart and called to mission, or do we blend in and fail to stand up for the truth? How active are we in our faith?

This is a puzzling parable. We think we understand it, but then another interpretation comes into view. It signals a new relationship between God and his people. The terms of the contract are new. It’s for us an unknown future, in which we are richly blessed but at the end judged. It would be all too easy to focus on the blessings, and forget the judgement.

That is, unless we constantly remind ourselves to be anchored in Christ, the cornerstone that supports and holds up the entire edifice, the Kingdom of God, of which in the end we hope to be a part. Amen