Vintage

Propers: The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 27), A.D. 2017 A

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

One of the most pervasive metaphors found in the Bible for God’s people Israel is that of a vineyard. And I find this a very telling image because vineyards, as such, are unnecessary—in the very best sense of the word.

One does not need to have a vineyard. Yes, raisins were a popular foodstuff for ancient peoples on the go. But the purpose of a vineyard is to make wine. And wine is for joy. Wine is for celebration. Wine represents all the unnecessary things in life that make life worth living. Bread and oil will keep us alive, but wine will remind us of what it is that we live for.

This is how God intends for us to experience Creation: as a gift, as a joy. We are meant to delight in Creation, in the adventure of existence. And yes, we have fallen. And yes, the world has been broken. But it was still made good, as were we. And God has not given up on us. Despite our sin, despite our pride—despite our wars and mass shootings and general indifference to the sufferings of our neighbors—God still loves us, desperately loves us. And He is willing to go to any length to bring us home in Him.

And so when all seemed bleakest, when sin had ravaged the world, God chose a single old man “as good as dead” to become the father of a great multitude. Abraham was his name, and Sarah his wife. And together they had a son. And that son became a family. And that family became many tribes. And those tribes became a nation. And that nation was scattered throughout all the known world—for the purpose of Abraham’s children, specially chosen by God, was to become a blessing for all the peoples of the earth. Through them, God would save us all.

Thus we can see, then, why God would call them His vineyard. They were the wine of His joy, wine to gladden the human heart, wine intended to celebrate the endless wedding feast that would be held when God and Man at last are one.

Which is not to say that it was an easy road. The course of true love never did run smooth. And as is so often the case for the owner of a vineyard, the greatest challenges arose not so much from without as from within. The Israelites, the children of Abraham, were not chosen because they were supermen. They were not by nature any more or less moral, any more or less noble, than the teeming mass of humanity. They were chosen instead to show God’s providence.

Had some great empire been tasked with the salvation of the world, one might have given credit to human greatness or sheer force of arms. But to choose the Israelites—a nation of liberated slaves, of wanderers and exiles—put on full display God’s mysterious love for the least likely and most easily overlooked.

When the Israelites sinned, they were punished. Not because God is cruel, but because He intends to correct His wayward children: punishment with a purpose. Yet never did God break His promises to Abraham; never did He violate His covenant with Israel, that He would be their God and they would be His people, period. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable!

So that’s the whole Old Testament in a nutshell.

That’s why Isaiah, in our first reading this morning, laments how God had showered mercy and grace in superabundance upon His people, only to have His vineyard produce wild, sour grapes. A wrathful, sinful vineyard cannot produce joy and blessing for the nations. God expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry! The gifts of God do not exempt us from showing mercy and compassion. Rather, they place upon us the duty to share these same gifts with those most in need.

Likewise the Psalmist, crying out to God, invokes the ancient covenant: Are we not Your vineyard, O Lord? Did You not take us out from Egypt to plant us in a fertile land, defending us and driving out those who would trample us down? In our sin we rejected Your gracious protection, yet now we repent, calling upon You to remember Your promise, the covenant You made with Abraham and his children forever! We are still Your vineyard, O Lord. Tend us, as You have in days of old.

All of which brings us to our Gospel reading this morning. For some 2000 years between Abraham and Christ, the prophets had exhorted God’s people to bear good fruit—the fruit of mercy and justice, the fruit of compassion and forgiveness. And now at last, in the time of Jesus, we come to the harvest. It is time now for the firstfruit to be given over to the nations, who will crush it underfoot into wine.

For in Jesus Christ, all the promises of God are fulfilled! The Old Covenant with Abraham has reached full fruition, and will burst forth now into a New Covenant, as promised by the prophets from of old. This New Covenant will open up the people of God to all believers, for the forgiveness of their sins and the salvation of the nations. The New Covenant, mind you, is not the abolition of the Old, but its flowering. It is not new in the sense of the old being swept away, but new in the sense of the old being made new.

Jesus Christ is the fruit of the vine, God come to earth, God made Man, through the children of Abraham, through the people of Israel. But He is a strange fruit, hanging from a strange tree. We expected the King, but not the Cross.

Imagine if you will that it is the week before Passover, the greatest feast of the Israelite nation. Jesus has been welcomed into the capital of Jerusalem as a King—riding upon the back of a donkey, hailed by the crowd with hosannas and with palm branches laid before Him. Meanwhile the rulers are just itching to kill Him. And into this hotbed of tensions and simmering violence, He preaches a parable of the vineyard: of the ancient role of God’s people for the salvation of the nations.

Yet He preaches it with a nasty twist: that when the time for harvest came, the owner of the vineyard sent out his servants to collect the rightful harvest from those entrusted with the vineyard’s care—only to have his servants stoned! So then the owner sent his own son, thinking surely they will listen to him—but alas, the beloved son is killed, and the caretakers usurp the vineyard for their own. “Now when the owner comes,” Jesus asks, “what do you think He’s going to do?”

By now the chief priests and the Pharisees, those with all the power and prestige in Jerusalem, have realized that Jesus is talking about them, and they don’t like it. “The Kingdom of God will be taken from you,” He proclaims, “and given to a people that produces the fruits of the Kingdom.” And here His Apostles must surely remember what He had taught them earlier: “I am the Vine,” He’d said, “and you are the branches. He that abides in Me bears much fruit.”

He is prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem, which will occur less than 40 years—within the same biblical generation—after His Crucifixion and Resurrection. Surely it will look like the end of the world, He tells His disciples, when the Temple and land and people of Israel are swept away. “Not one stone will be left upon another!” But this is not the end. Indeed, such will be only the beginning.

The Church will spread from Jerusalem, from the Israelites, incorporating into her branches all the nations of the earth. The Old Israel will by no means be excluded, but will welcome all peoples into her embrace as the New and Universal Israel. And so all the promises given unto God’s people from of old become now our inheritance. Christ is the Vine; we are the branches. If we abide in Him, we bear good fruit: fruit of joy, the wine of celebration, for the wedding feast of the Lamb which has no end!

This is the mission of the Church! Not to wag our finger and say, “Thou shalt not.” Not to terrify unsuspecting peoples with the eternal fires of a wrathful God. But we are to be the bearers of Good News, the wine of joy, the Blood of Christ poured out for us in the New Covenant for the salvation of the world!

And that does mean calling a sin a sin. And that does mean offering people a fuller and freer understanding of what it means to be truly human through the example of our daily lives. But how often do we stop to remember that the crosses we bear we bear for others—for their liberation and forgiveness and joy? We are to be wine for the world, gladdening the human heart, pouring out the joy that makes life worth living.

We bear the cup of salvation, God’s endless love for the world. Let us partake of this cup always, and share it gladly and with joy.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.