October 8, 2023
I will sing for my beloved
my love song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
2 He dug it and cleared it of stones
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded rotten grapes…
7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are his cherished garden;
he expected justice
but saw bloodshed;
righteousness
but heard a cry!
8 Woe to those who join house to house,
who add field to field,
until there is room for no one,
and you are left to live alone
in the midst of the land!
Isaiah 5:1-2, 7-8
When I opened the news today, and saw the horrific violence in the so-called “holy land,” I ached. As the story unfolded through the day, I processed it over and over in my head. I have two different sermons to preach on Sunday. They were both finished, so I didn’t give them much thought. Then tonight, Saturday night, I sat down to review my sermons, one on Acts 18, and the other, on the texts for the Revised Common Lectionary, the Vineyard Song (Isaiah 5) the parable of the wicked tenants. As I went over the sermons, I was stunned by the parallels. I sure wish it hadn’t struck me as I was trying to sleep, but this is how it goes with current events that unfold on Saturdays. It seems once a year the sermon must be tossed in the wastebasket for a more timely word.
Herzog (Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed) goes to great pains to remind us of the social conditions of first century Palestine: a two-tiered agrarian society of Haves and Have Nots.
THE HAVES
The Haves include one ruler who will do anything to maintain his position at the top of the food chain. He controls more wealth and the rest of the ruling class combined. Then comes the ruling class/elites/landowners/aristocracy, who make up 1-2% of the population (ruled and elites). Each of them are positioning themselves to become the next ruler. Then come the retainers who make up 5-7% of the population. They are absolutely essential to keep the system in place:
- financial bureaucrats redistributed wealth by moving it from the peasant farmers who produce it and accumulating it, to the ruler who uses it to
pay retainers and perpetuate his rule. - a military bureaucracy enforces the system, provides internal security, protects from external threats, and launches campaigns to expand the land holdings of the empire.
- priests and religion legitimatize the system, keeping the peasants from rebelling by making the case that the system is a divine order.
THE HAVE NOTS
The have nots consist of:
• peasant farmers 70-80% of the population
merchants, 5%;
• artisans, 3-7%
• unclean and degraded, 5%
• expendables, 5-15% – children of peasant farmers with so few lands there was no inheritance, day laborers, beggars, bandits. Most died during famines. Their lives were brutal and brief.
We cannot understand the parables without an awareness of the socioeconomic realities in which and for which they were preached and ultimately written.
The chasm between the Haves and the Have Nots was as great as the wadi that separated the rich man from Lazarus (Luke 16:26). In the world today were there individuals with more wealth than many African countries, are we any better?
And Isaiah 5, God, plants a Vineyard, but it yields wild grapes. The reference is clearly Jerusalem. Got expected justice, but got bloodshed instead. Conflict usually arises because there is an injustice in the system. The result is violence.
The parable in Matthew 21 begins with a clear reference to Isaiah 5. The injustice of the agrarian system leads to violence. A ruling class landowner sends slaves to collect the produce at harvest time. The tenants have broken, their backs working the fields, but they will be given barely enough to live on. Fed up with the system, they beat, kill, and stone the landowner’s slaves, so he sends a more. They are treated the same, so the landowner since his son. The tenants kill him so they can have the land back. Jesus asks, “When the landowner comes, what do you think he will do to these tenants?” The responses definitive: “He will put those wretches to death.”
People can only take so much oppression, and then they will lash out. The result is predictable. Those in power will put those wretches to death. We are seeing this played out on the global scale right now.
John Dominic Crossan calls this a deliberately shocking story of a successful murder. Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you.
What do you think the landowner will do? The story highlights, real, social, and economic injustice. It also lifts up the futility of armed resistance. Jesus warns of this constantly. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if only you knew the way of peace. But it escapes you.
Pacifist Palestinian Lutherans groan under the end just conditions they face. Their homes are bulldozed. Their ancestral lands have been taken. They have been walled off. Their water sources have been cut off. And they are not allowed to fly, but must pass by car through endless checkpoints where they are treated as second class citizens in a country where they cannot vote.
Hamas responds with violence. What do they expect and return? What do you think the landowner will do? Palestinian Lutherans oppose violence, as do most Palestinians, who yearn for peace, who want all Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace and prosperity.
Jesus warns about armed rebellion against the Romans. He predicts the violence will lead to the destruction of the Jerusalem and the Temple. Not one stone will be left on another.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem…
Matthew turns the story on its head. The story that might have been told by Jesus as a critique of the unjust system and a warning against violence, now becomes an allegory. God is the landowner, the prophets are the slaves who are stoned to death, and, of course, the landowner’s son is Jesus, who is also killed. “Which of the prophets did your ancestors not kill?” Jesus asks a tad sarcastically.
Think of the prophets of nonviolence. What names come to mind? Gandhi. Martin Luther King Jr. Jesus. Look what happened to them. Look what happens to those who speak of the futility of violence.
Jesus shows us a different way. Even his followers cannot abide it. As G.K. Chesterton fomously put it, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”
My heart breaks for Israel and Palestine. Israel and Saudi Arabia were on the verge of an agreement that could have improved things for all parties. Hamas rockets and violence will not achieve peace and prosperity for Gaza. For every hundred Israelis killed, one thousand Palestinians will die, mostly children. It’s gut-lunching. The cycle of violence snowballs. This impacts us, given that the U.S. gives $7M/day in military support for Israel.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Pray for peace, justice, and prosperity for Palestinians and Israelis. Hatred and violence are not inevitable. Easter can follow Good Friday. New life is possible. In time, God will bring about peace. There is a vision for the appointed time. If it tarries, wait for it, pray for it, for it will surely come.
Woe to those who join house to house,
who add field to field,
until there is room for no one,
and you are left to live alone
in the midst of the land!
“An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.”
—M.K. Gandhi
