Harvesting good fruit

A Sermon preached on Sunday October 4 Harvest Festival at St. Augustine’s, WI

Isaiah 5:1-7, (Philippians 3:4b-14,) Matthew 21:33-46

Today we celebrate Harvest Festival, a special day when we give thanks to God for the harvest. We’re not farmers and I doubt that any of the produce on display was grown by you. But we all still live off real harvests, both local and global! And so, we too give thanks for the fruits of the earth in their season. However, today’s gospel reading describes a rather strange harvest in which such gratitude is sorely lacking! “When the harvest time had come, (the landlord) sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce,” we heard (Matthew 21:34) But all they collect is violence and murder. The tenants are not willing to share their produce nor pay any rent and want to take over the vineyard!

Isn’t it a little odd that the absentee landowner is painted as the good guy, and the tenants as the bad guys? In the Palestine of Jesus’ day, it was often the other way round, and not just then. This summer we spent a week in Dublin and while I was there, I bought a book about Irish history (reading history is something I enjoy, weird, I know). The book was called “Land Is All That Matters: The Struggle That Shaped Irish History”[1] and is all about the struggle, often violent, between impoverished and exploited Irish tenant farmers (mostly Catholic) and their rich absentee Anglo-Irish landlords (mostly Protestant). Just as in Jesus’ parable, the landlord’s agents were targeted: occasionally ostracised (most famously Captain Charles Boycott whose fate introduced the word to boycott into the English language), but also attacked, beaten and sometimes killed, something that also happened to any tenants who did not join the cause. Reading the book, I learned about a host of secret tenant defence societies with wonderful names such as the Whiteboys, Rightboys, Oakboys, Steelboys, Ribbonmen ….

The tenants in Jesus’ parable have no such name. And their struggle is not presented as anything positive. Jesus was in Jerusalem when he told this parable, and that is a place where you were more likely to find a landowner than a peasant, tenant farmer. Perhaps he wanted them to be drawn into the story. The chief priests and elders would have been able to own land, and to have others manage it for them while they were busy in Jerusalem. And so, they might well have seen themselves in the role of the landowner, and they would be ready and even eager to pronounce judgment on the wicked tenants. Of course, this is not the only time that a landowner plays a positive role in one of Jesus’ parables. Just two weeks ago we had a just and generous landlord in the parable of the labourers in the vineyard. And when Jesus started telling this parable, they would have been reminded of that other parable about a vineyard, in Isaiah (5:1-7) that we heard this morning. The scene is the same: a landlord plants a vineyard, with a watchtower and a wine press. In the Isaiah story the landlord is clearly God and the vineyard Israel, but there are no tenants, just a bad harvest of wild or sour grapes and drastic consequences!

But if the Jerusalem elite did identify themselves with the good landowner, they soon discover they are wrong as the story goes on. Once again God is the landowner, the vineyard is Israel and the tenants are the religious and political leaders entrusted with Israel’s care and nurture. The produce, just like in Isaiah’s parable is justice and righteousness, and that is still sorely lacking. Over time the landowner sends slaves or servants to collect that good harvest, but they, clearly standing for the prophets in Israel’s past, were rejected, beaten and even killed. A fate that finally even the landowner’s son and heir suffers: this is Jesus. In Matthew’s telling of the parable (we find it in Mark and Luke too) the connection between the son and Jesus is even clearer, with him first being thrown out of the vineyard, and then killed, just as Jesus was first taken out of the city and then crucified.

What will happen to the tenants when the landowner returns, Jesus asks? The chief priests and Pharisees answer: “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.” (21:41) Yes, Jesus confirms – but you are those tenants and “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” (21:43) Once again Jesus turns things upside down and reverses expectations. We interpret this parable to be an allegory of salvation history with the Church as the new, “other tenants” to whom the “vineyard” will be given after it is taken from those who have not managed it well. It is certainly a call for a change in the spiritual and moral leadership. Earlier in his Gospel (16:19; 18:18) Matthew has already made clear to whom the keys of the kingdom will be given and who will receive the power to bind and loose with divine authority: Peter and the disciples. What would be wrong, and what sadly also fuelled the Christian Church’s antisemitism, would be to interpret this story as about Christianity displacing Judaism as the sole source of salvation, for which the technical term is Supersessionism. God is and remains faithful to God’s chosen people; as followers of Christ we now share in the renewed Covenant and in God’s mission to transform the world.  

But before we relax and say this has nothing to do with us, and that’s all in the past. Look at how the focus shifts in the middle of the parable. Initially, especially with Isaiah 5:1-7 as a reference, it clearly refers to the land and people of Israel and to the question of who has the responsibility to care for and nurture them. But then Jesus shifts the focus to the kingdom of God, that is much more than one country or region in time. The kingdom is not a single, physical place, but refers to the realm of God, where justice and righteousness rule, something that Jesus inaugurated but is still not complete. The kingdom of God will be given to a people who produce the fruits of the kingdom, and as we know from the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount (5:1-12) those fruits are love, humility, justice, peace, righteousness, mercy and faith in a loving God. These fruits are both a sign that people are living their lives according to kingdom values, and the means by which that kingdom will grow. This parable is not just about some past event; it is an ongoing calling and warning. We are now the tenants of the vineyard that is both this world and the kingdom of God that Jesus called us to transform it into. An so, if the landowner were to send messengers today to receive the fruits of the kingdom, “what would we have to offer? How defensive would we feel when they asked?”[2]

I pray therefore that the produce we offer today at our Harvest Festival in gratitude for God’s providence may be a symbol for the true harvest that comes from living a life dedicated to the love of God and to the love of our neighbour.

Amen.

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[1] By Myles Dungan

[2] The Parables by Paul Gooder (Canterbury Press, 2020), p. 45

Justice and Generosity

A Sermon preached on Sunday September 20 at St. Augustine’s, WI

Jonah 3:10-4:11, Philippians 1:21-30, Matthew 20:1-16

In my function as president of the German Council of Churches, I recently co-signed a statement on the results of the elections in Saxony-Anhalt together with the chairs of the Council of the Protestant Church and the chair of the German RC Bishop’s Conference. And just yesterday, at the meeting of the CAECG (the body that brings together all the Anglican and Episcopal Churches in Germany) we also agreed on a statement expressing our concern about the election results. I’ve already received a couple of angry letters in my ACK function (sadly some with the sort of language that we already know from Facebook comments). The factual arguments in those responses were that Churches must stay out of politics: no we can’t, not if we take our responsibility as Christians seriously. That churches must respect democratic decisions: yes, we must, but we also believe in fundamental, inalienable and God-given rights that cannot be changed, even by a majority. Or that churches are all one-sided, with a socialist/green bias: we are not, though it is true that the church leadership, and the regular attendants tend to be a little more progressive than the more nominal members. But all sorts of opinions are held, it is important that we continue to accept them, and are always open to dialogue, now more than ever!

But especially for us as Anglican/Episcopal churches in Germany, the victory of a far-right party, that sees foreigners mainly as a problem to be solved, is of significant concern. Our congregations are mostly made up of people who have moved to Germany from around the world. Some have come to be with their families, some with their companies or to find work, some to study, and some as refugees. As Christians we believe that all human beings are made in God’s image and have an inherent value. Policies that aim to discriminate against groups of people based on their origin, status, religion, or disability are simply not consistent with the message of the Gospel.

The AfD, like similar parties in many of the countries we come from, is successful as it is able to tap into a deep well of worry and discontent, some very genuine – there are a lot of things to be worried about right now with war in Europe, and hybrid attacks in Germany (no comparison of course to the real and deadly attacks in and on Ukraine), AI as a possible job-killer and now according to some developers and even the CEO’s of AI companies a risk and danger to us all, and significant issues around the equitable distribution of wealth  and power (sadly often identical) and concrete economic issues around the cost of living in general and the cost, and availability of housing. But some discontent is manufactured, some exaggerated and used to sell simple solutions, most of which involve identifying a group of people or an institution supposedly responsible for the problem, scapegoating. These include the EU, the existing political parties – all of them, from left to right, a single cartel, the press and of course illegal immigrants or even all immigrants not coming from a supposedly common / shared culture.

There is nothing wrong with discontent as such. On the contrary, discontent shakes and wakes us, and causes us to make a difference. Discontent ensures that topics that might be neglected until they are too late are made public and dealt with, and yes that can include regulating and controlling immigration – in a humane manner. As Christians we can never really be content, because we know the world is not the way God intends it to be. We cannot be content with hatred and hypocrisy, we cannot be content with poverty, we cannot be content with war, we cannot be content with anything that denigrates and degrades our universal humanity. Discontent points us toward the essential work of discipleship.

But some kinds of discontent are harmful, both to those who feel it and to the society they are part of. And this is not new. Both our OT and Gospel readings today address discontent that is unhealthy, spiritually and physically. Jonah, the man who was always running away from God, is very discontented. He had been sent not to warn Nineveh of impending destruction, but to proclaim that destruction: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” he cries out. (Jonah 3:4) And now he is very unhappy because God – seeing the inhabitants’ willingness to repent and change their ways - is going to spare them: “But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. …. That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.” (4:1-2) That’s a strange thing to get angry about, but he is so angry that he even wants to die. Why, where’s the disadvantage? Is Jonah going to be destroyed because Nineveh is saved? No, he is not. He just does not think they deserved it, Nineveh stands for Assyria, an ancient enemy of Israel. Surely, they can’t be the object of God’s love, surely that is restricted to us!

Our gospel text for this Sunday gives us another angle on human discontent. In Jesus’s parable, we meet some day laborers. They are economically vulnerable and socially marginal — and they will have represented the majority of people of that time, dependent on a day’s payment to survive and to be at the mercy of a landowner. In the story, the day laborers work for various amounts of hours yet are all paid the same (not a generous amount by the way, just enough for a family to live on for one day). Complaints and discontent start when the first-hired day laborers notice that the last-hired day laborers are paid the same wage as them. It’s not fair – and a sense of fairness is deep rooted in our psyche: “That’s not fair” is a common complaint from children! Those who worked fewer hours should not be compensated the same as those of us who have worked all day. But again, where is the disadvantage? Did the first laborers get paid less because everyone was treated equally and given enough to survive? No, but they just do not think the others deserve it, they did not work as hard or so long.

I can think of a couple of contemporary examples in our public discourse. Why do people who have no work (and, so the claim, even do not want to work) get paid as much as those who do? It’s not true for one thing. On their own, benefits are not as much as a working wage, and our system also ensures that working wages that are too low are topped up (though we could also ask why a wage is being paid that is not enough to live on). And ensuring people in need survive does not take anything away from anyone else. Why do refugees get free housing, when we can’t find or afford ours? Refugees do get free accommodation to prevent them living on the street (as is the case in some countries). But do you really want a bed in a room shared with 4 or more others? And does this take housing away from everyone else? There is a problem to be solved, there is a reason for discontent. But it’s not the poor and the refugees or other homeless who are the cause …

Let’s look again at how God reacts in these two stories from Jonah and Matthew’s Gospel:

And God said (Jonah 4:11) “And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” God reminds Jonah – and the readers/listeners – that God is a God of all people and that God’s primary motivation is love and compassion. The Book of Jonah is a sort of parable, written at a time after the return from exile when many people in Israel, especially those in power, wanted separation and exclusion. Just read the Books of Ezra and Jeremiah written about the same time and in which anyone marrying “foreign women” is accused of being unfaithful to God: In contrast, the Book of Jonah describes a just but also generous, inclusive, and expansive God.

And in Matthew’s Gospel, the landowner’s response to the complaints is to say (Matthew 20:13-15) “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. …. Or are you envious because I am generous?” Matthew paints a picture of a generous, inclusive and expansive God. We interpret the parable as being about salvation. God will show equal generosity both to those who have always been part of God’s people, and to the new believers, the “latecomers,” the new Gentile Christians. We can also apply it to individual Christians, the earlier we find our way to faith the better, our lived will be richer for it. But it is never too late to turn to God. At the same time, the underlying story also has value and reminds us, like Jonah, that justice is never diminished by generosity and that helping those in need to survive does not harm us!

Being discontented is very human, and discontent with want, war, and injustice is a good thing! But we cannot let ourselves be motivated by fear or envy or a false sense of scarcity. Instead let a true sense of justice, generosity and gratitude move us. We trust in God’s unlimited goodness and in the provision that flows from God’s own life and self and is most perfectly expressed in Jesus Christ.

In that sense, as our opening prayer told us, let us “not to be anxious about earthly things, but love things heavenly …. through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Amen.