The Violent Tenants [Proper 22A - Matthew 21:33-46]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Matthew 21:33-46

 

The Violent Tenants

 

Jesus said, “Listen to another parable.”  And we trained our ears, instead, for a simple allegory.  But Jesus said, “Listen to another parable.”  And we quickly sifted through his words for a glimpse of God, a hint that might help us solve the divine mystery.  But Jesus’ parables only give a path further into mystery.  These strange stories always defy our narrow focus and our easy answers.  Parables are not simply theological talk made interesting.  They are odd stories that are unclear enough to help us see a bit more clearly.  Parables are not puzzles for us to solve; they are puzzles that help us solve ourselves.

 

This Gospel story is a strange story – although it begins in an ordinary way.  A landowner plants and equips a vineyard.  Once it is ready to be tended, he leases it to others who will do the work required to produce a harvest.  It is his land and his vineyard and therefore the landowner expects a share of the harvest, the return on his initial investment. 

 

He sends some low-level employees to collect what he is owed.  Still, at this point, everything in this parable is rather mundane, expected.  The landowner did not give the vineyard to the tenants – that is why they are called tenants.  They are leasing the land; that they would be expected to pay a rental fee is hardly a surprise. 

The first surprise in this parable is how the tenants treat the employees who stop by to collect payment.  They violently seize the unsuspecting servants – even killing one, beating the others.  They choose to kill, to take a human life, rather than simply fulfilling their contractual obligation.

 

One might wonder: in what manner will this landowner respond to this terrible act of violence, to this breach of contract?  Well, one does not have to wonder long.  The landowner, rather level-headedly, patiently, sends a larger team of employees to collect his fee – almost as if the first outbreak of violence never happened.  The tenants treat this second group with equal violence.       

 

Now the landowner has a choice.  The obvious play is to fight fire with fire, to respond to their violence with an escalation of violence, to use his considerable resources to rain down fire and brimstone.  But that is not what happens.  Instead, in a horrifying twist, the landowner sends his son, his own child – likely, given the tenants’ presumption about the inheritance, his only child.  Perhaps foolishly, the landowner reasons that the tenants will respect his son.

 

They do not – which I think, given the past history, is to be expected.  In their twisted and violent minds the tenants actually convince themselves that they will be rewarded for killing the heir; they decide that the son is the only reason they are not included in the landowner’s will.  It is a stunning twist in this strange story.  Or at least it would be if that same line of thinking wasn’t so prominent in human history: eliminate the rightful owners and take their land.  The tenants, like so many empires, decide that the road to power and glory is paved with violence and domination.  And so they sharpen their swords and take the vineyard by force.  They are human, after all.

 

We were looking for a story about God and we found a story about us – a carefully crafted history of human violence.  A story written in blood and bullet holes.  A celebration of domination.  A tale in which the heroes are those who set forth and conquer – nations and peoples, oceans and lands.

 

Into this human story, God entered.  And took on our flesh and blood.  And experienced, first hand, our human violence.  Jesus presented a way of love, a message of mercy.  And it felt weak.  And so we violently seized him and nailed him to a cross.  When there was nothing left to dominate, our human ancestors chose to violently dominate even God.  On Good Friday, when the earth shook and the sky turned black, we were the conquerors. 

 

In this parable, in this scathing implication of our violence, is also an implication of God.  God never learned.  The very first person born into the world God created was a murderer.  For generations, God watched and wept as the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve destroyed each other.  God commanded them to stop, even set it in stone, but it was no use.  The violence had taken root in the human heart and it spilled out in ugly ways – sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle.  The violence lived in the mind as hatred; it seeped out on our words; it was enshrined as law; it inflamed and justified oppression and division.  And it became so ubiquitous that we all just live with it – as it if is inevitable, as if there is no other way.    

 

And still God came and naively expected people to trade their violent ways for the way of love.  The horror of the cross presented God with a decision: respond with wrath or respond with undeserved love.  So stubborn was God’s hope, that Jesus whispered mercy with nails in hands: Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

 

This parable is about what is worst in the human species.  And this parable is about God’s greatest blind spot: a stubborn love that refuses to give up on us.  It is that love that is our salvation.  And while, in a world in which the powerful seek to dominate the rest, love might appear weak, I can tell you that it is not.  It is stronger than the march of violence, stronger than the forces of hatred.  It is strong enough to carry the cross, strong enough to bear the insults, strong enough to forgive the trespassers, strong enough to roll away the stone.  The forces of evil always place their trust in violence, assert their authority through power and domination, because they think that is where strength is found.  God chose another way, a way much more courageous: Love.  And though the world rages on, and at times hope seems faint, we know how the story ends; deep down in our bones we know how the story ends: love will have the final word.