The Wine-God

Propers: The Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost (Lectionary 27), AD 2023 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

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

The purpose of a vineyard is its fruit.

Empires of the Ancient Near East enjoyed comparing their respective reigns to the growth of mighty trees, providing protection and shelter for all beneath their encompassing shade, whether they desired it or not. But Israel preferred to speak of the vine. “You brought a vine out of Egypt,” sings the Psalmist. “It took deep root and filled the land,” stretching from the river to the sea.

Here is God the vinedresser, God the vinter, who encourages growth, trims out disease, erects a protective fence, then clears and waters the ground. But the purpose of a vineyard is its fruit, specifically grapes. Raisin cakes provided sustenance for people on the move. And wine—well, according to the Psalmist, the purpose of wine is to gladden the hearts of men. They were aware of the dangers of drunkenness, which shows up in the Bible a lot, but a vineyard is meant to bring joy, sustenance and joy.

From the beginning, Israel is called to embody the goodness of God for the sake of the world. Abraham is given a family, that they might become a blessing for all the families of the earth. And so Israel understands her purpose as existing for others, for all of humankind. They are a chosen people; not because they’re better or smarter or stronger than everyone else; but because they were small and enslaved, and God saved them by grace. They are liberated by love, in order to show others the liberation of love.

They are to be wine for the world, which is why the prophet Isaiah calls his people to task. “My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill,” he cries. “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?” In Isaiah’s telling, God seems, if not genuinely perplexed, certainly astonished and aghast.

A prophet’s mission is to speak truth to power, not to gloss things over. They call a spade a spade. If something isn’t working, they don’t pretend it is. Nevertheless, the cry of truth, the call to action, is always a labor of love. Truth and love are inseparable. God has granted us grace overflowing, says Isaiah, every advantage, every blessing. And so God has every right to expect that His love and His care would result in justice and peace, that we as the vine would produce those sweet grapes.

But instead we have gone wild, Isaiah accuses, wild and bitter and bad. “He expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!” It is a call to come home, in Isaiah, a call to return God’s people to their identity in Him, their purpose in Him. The purpose of a vineyard is to put forth fruit, providing sustenance and joy for all the world. Failing that, Isaiah says, God should not waste His time. Why labor for briars and thorns? Why should God support injustice?

Of course, the whole point of the prophetic call is that God does not abandon His people. Rather, He begs them to live as His people again, to live for others and for the world God loves. The fruits of injustice are not the work of God, cannot be the work of God. They are the result of a vineyard gone wild.

Now Jesus, of course, whose ministry begins several centuries after Isaiah, knows the Hebrew Bible, and likely the Greek Scriptures too, inside and out. In fact, that’s why we study the Hebrew Bible in the first place: because you can’t understand Jesus without it. It’s part of who He is: His people, His culture, His promise. We oughtn’t be very surprised, then, when He draws from Old Testament stories in His own teachings, such as the parable from which we read this morning.

“There was a landowner who planted a vineyard,” He says, using the same descriptors as the Prophet Isaiah: the fence, the winepress, the watchtower. But now a new twist: When the owner of the vineyard sends servants to gather unto him the harvest, they are beaten and abused by tenants who work in the vineyard. The problem in the parable is no longer the vine but the people entrusted to steward it.

So the owner sends his son, assuming that no-one would dare to treat his own flesh and blood as poorly as they’d treated his servants. Yet the tenants, in their madness, seem to think that if they but kill the son, if they eliminate the heir, then the vineyard will be theirs both free and clear, without any repercussions whatsoever. It’s a little bit nuts when you think about it, but they don’t appear much to be thinking. Their blood is up. Together they murder the owner’s son and cast him into a ditch.

“Now what do you think the owner will do to those tenants?” Jesus asks. And the people listening to His parable reply: “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at harvest time.” Yes, Jesus says. “The kingdom of God will be given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom,” at which point the chief priests and the Pharisees conclude that He is in fact speaking of them, identifying them as terrible tenants and murderers.

Note that He doesn’t say that. Jesus speaks out against obvious injustice and they infer from that that He must mean them. Rather tells you what they think of themselves, doesn’t it? This parable, mind you, has been misused over the centuries in order to perpetuate anti-Judaism: that the Kingdom will be taken away from the Jews and given to the new Christian Church. But the Matthew who wrote this Gospel is a proud and observant Jew; as is Jesus, His Mother, His Apostles, St Paul, and every single person in the story.

The parable clearly appears to foreshadow Jesus’ Crucifixion. The son of the vineyard owner, the Son of God, is murdered by those to whom He is sent. It might even refer to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, less than one biblical generation after Jesus’ death. But the point of the parable, as laid out by Christ Himself, remains simply this: that the purpose of a vineyard is its fruit.

Just before this passage, in the section we read from last week, the religious elite question Jesus’ authority. He doesn’t teach in the traditional way, citing from different opinions, debating the various schools. Rather He teaches as one with authority, but whence does it come? To this He responds by saying that it doesn’t really matter what one says, so much as what one does. The kingdom of God exists wherever the fruits of the kingdom are borne.

It isn’t about your theology. It’s not about your education. It isn’t about your academic or religious or denominational pedigree. And to be honest, that’s got me eating a little crow up here, because I’m the pastor, the cleric, the priest. I do believe that theology is important, education is important, liturgy and history and tradition are important. But the kingdom of God is not what you say. The kingdom of God exists, self-evidently, where we find the sweet wine of justice, righteousness, peace, and love.

And if we don’t bear that fruit, God will bear it through others. That’s all there is to it. This theme is pervasive throughout Matthew’s Gospel: Bear the good fruit as best as you can, for as long as you have, to as many as you meet, without judgment and without ceasing. Produce all that you are able, now, before the harvest—for all of our times are short.

That doesn’t sound terribly Lutheran, I know. Lutherans are very concerned about the distinction between Law and Gospel; that is, what we do versus what Christ does for us. Lutherans want you to know that you don’t have to earn salvation. Indeed, you can’t. No-one can. Except of course for Jesus. Jesus earns salvation for us all, for all of humanity, all of Creation, and He pours it out upon us in His grace. There’s a reason why He says: “I am the vine, you are the branches.” The fruit doesn’t earn salvation, but bearing fruit is salvation.

Salvation isn’t just a rubber stamp. It isn’t just a box we check and go about our lives. You are saved. And the purpose of your salvation is to share it with the world. Wherever there is peace and truth and love and joy, there is Jesus. There is His kingdom. Do your Father’s work in freedom and in bliss. Be wine for a world still in need of real joy. Because your neighbor’s salvation is your own.

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

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