A Stewardship Sermon [Proper 22A - Matthew 21:33-46]

The Rt. Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Matthew 21:33-46

 

A Stewardship Sermon

Zion, Morris

 

The characters in the story severely misjudged the situation.  As the parable makes abundantly clear, they would never own the land, never take the vineyard.  The tenants had no right to it – even though they clearly thought they did, or should.  Their warped perspective, fueled by desperation and a wild sense of entitlement, hatched a plan to keep killing until they arrived at the front of the line; it did not work out.  Because the vineyard did not belong to them.  And it never would.

 

Today’s parable from Matthew is one of Jesus’ final parables.  It was told during his last week, Holy Week.  The crowds that gathered around his teaching were a complex stew of the society.  There were religious leaders – who unhappily take the brunt of this parable.  But there were also his disciples.  And there were the curious crowds – the mass of common folk who come and go throughout the Gospel narratives.  Jesus connected with people by telling agrarian tales and so likely that crowd included farmers and many others familiar with their plight. 

 

And so as Jesus laid out this story, allowing it to slowly unfold, I suspect there were a variety of rooting interests – including many who quietly supported the tenant farmers – at least at first. 

 

Because tenant farmers in that ancient world, and still today, often fall victim to the economic injustices of their context, they are easy to root for.  In 1st-century Palestine, the relationship between tenant farmers and wealthy landowners was often marked by economic desperation, systemic exploitation, and deep underlying hostility. In that ancient Empire, listeners would have known peasants who were driven off their ancestral lands by debt, crop failures, or exorbitant taxes, forcing them to work the land they once owned. Landowners—often absentee elites residing in urban centers or foreign cities (the landowner in the parable leaves for another country)—sometimes viewed the land primarily as an investment, often one among many. For the tenant farmers, who endured intense labor under harsh lease agreements while retaining barely enough harvest to survive, the landlord represented an oppressive system that severed their bond to the land of their ancestors. This volatile dynamic created a cauldron of agrarian resentment, where tenant farmers viewed the absentee proprietor not as a legitimate owner, but as an illegitimate parasite.  So some in the crowd might have initially sympathized with the tenant famers before the story twisted and turned.

 

Jesus’ parables were always meant to keep his listeners deeply engaged and totally off-balance.  There were always twists and turns in his stories.  As was his custom, Jesus begins a story that sounds normal enough.  But then it becomes shockingly violent.  And then becomes absurd.  And then makes the religious leaders furious when they realize what the parable is actually about.  Educated, privileged, and powerful as they were, they likely did not expect to be cast as tenant farmers in the tale.  Even worse: they likely did not at all enjoy being cast as killers. 

 

And, honestly, who can blame them?  No one enjoys being publicly criticized.  I know I don’t.  But they were.  In front of a large crowd, Jesus scolds and criticizes the religious leaders – at first in poetry but then, just to be clear, also in prose.

 

And these religious leaders really don’t like it.  By the end of the reading, which is the end of this chapter in Matthew’s Gospel, they are plotting Jesus’ arrest and murder.  Ironically, for as much as they did not appreciate Jesus’ parable, they turn it into a true story rather quickly.

 

But it did not have to go this way.  Jesus wasn’t criticizing the religious leaders to make them feel bad.  He was casting a new vision.  Sadly, one that they could not, or would not, see.

 

Even though the religious leaders in Jesus’ audience that day took the parable personally, it was not only about them.  (I mean, it definitely was about them, but again not only about them.)  And that too is clear in this passage.  Jesus’ parable borrows the language and imagery of the prophet Isaiah.  It was a message first spoken about seven centuries before Jesus’ earthly ministry.  It was familiar to Jesus’ audience because it had been rehearsed endlessly in synagogues and homes.  And so Jesus’ critique was nothing new; it was less specific than it was universal.  Religious leaders had a history of trying to wrestle the reign of God away from God.  And, despite the parable and Jesus’ efforts, that ancient history did not end in the first century. 

 

Neither was it confined to Judaism.  The Church has inherited the history and the tendency.  Everyone is inclined to ownership.  But God is calling us to stewardship. 

 

Jesus’ parables work because they are true.  And they are offensive because they are true.  And they are for us, as they were for his first-century audience, because they are true. 

 

The vision Jesus casts in the Gospel was also cast for the Church, and for the Episcopal Church, and for the Episcopal Diocese of Albany, and for Zion Episcopal Church in Morris, NY.  We are called to be stewards of the mission of God in this world.  And each institution within which we find ourselves is established to help us carry out God’s mission.  None of this belongs to us.  We are simply called to tend to the vineyard.

 

And that requires us to cultivate an incredible amount of trust in God.  Because it is easy to hold on to these institutions we love too tightly.  To allow ourselves to believe that they live because of us – our efforts and our ideas.  But while we are called to work, it is God who breathes life into our churches and it is God who gives the growth.

 

All that we have belongs to God.  Sometimes we are tempted, like the tenants in the parable, to push against that truth.  But, of course, that makes it no less true.

 

As stewards of the Church, it is our work to trust God with the future.  It is our duty to invite the Holy Spirit to move in us and through us – to, as the Pentecostals of my youth liked to say, let go and let God.  We are tasked with bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – and then watching the God of the Harvest transform the world through the offering of our fruitful lives. 

 

Stewardship is always a tremendous discipline of trust.  It can be hard to believe that God will take good care of everything we love – our family, our finances, our lives, our church.  But the good news is that God loves us so much that God can do nothing but take good care of us. 

 

All of us.  This entire world is beloved of God – the God who so loved the world that God gave Jesus to redeem all creation.  God intends to use us, to use this Church, to use the Episcopal Church, and our diocese, and this parish, to carry out the plan of salvation.  For a time, we are the people who are laboring in that holy work.  But it does not belong to us.  We hold our sacred callings and our holy institutions with open hands and obedient hearts, until it is time for us to hand it all over.  And then, our faithful God will work through those who will follow us.  Because the mission of God does not end until the Kingdom comes.  And until that great day, we are called to steward all that God is entrusting to us. 

 

All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.