Isaiah 5.1-7, Psalm 80.9-17 Matthew 21.33-46
The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, 4th October 2020
Eldroth, Clapham and online
Welcome to the parable of protest in the plantation, of violence in the vineyard.
Jesus’ parables may illustrate what God is like; but they also always get us thinking about what we are like, the ways we act towards each other. Because they are drawn from everyday life we always find a ring of truth in them.
This parable takes us into the parched economic landscape of Galilee and Judea in Jesus’ time where resources are few and conflicts over land are common, and where violence could erupt when boundaries are crossed, which is exactly what is happening here. [1]
'A landowner planted a vineyard,' begins Jesus. A few short words, packed with meaning. This man is wealthy enough to speculate on a project requiring considerable outlay before he saw any return. Vineyards produced no crop for their first four years whilst the vines matured, and the fifth year’s harvest would be uncertain. Constant care was essential, so all through that time the owner would need to pay tenants to nurture and dress the vines. It was a big investment, and so this man must have been one of the powerful landowners of his day.
Why did his investment turn quickly into a tale of spiralling aggressive actions, each provoking the other, culminating in the murder of the landowner’s son? It’s unstated, because Jesus’ audience would know, that the only way this man could incorporate this vineyard into his expanding portfolio of estates, was by seizing smallholders’ land. Common practice at the time.
So the tenants hired by the landowner were very likely the same peasant farmers who he had expelled: their boss was the man who had taken their land away from underneath their feet. You can imagine their reluctance to work for him. With these workers fenced-in and labouring beneath the gaze of a watchtower, you can appreciate this whole initiative, tainted by mutual loathing, as a recipe for insurrection in the plantation.
This is one of those classic acts of enclosure which we know from our own history. Think of how our British landscape - our physical and social landscape - has been shaped over the centuries by the privatisation of common land. How smallholders have been turned into trespassers overnight by being expelled from the ground they worked. [2] This story is usually told from the perspective of those who now own the land, the perspective of the powerful - as indeed this parable is told. But consider those hidden stories of how the commoners have resisted. The peasants revolting against the imposition on their way of life and livelihoods by the landowning elite. Whichever way it’s framed, it’s never a pretty tale; it’s often violent and it’s rare for anyone to come out of it untainted.
Property law - consider what emotions that provokes in us, the divisions it causes in our society. Think of how boundary walls may intend to bring order, but more often than not they cause imbalance in society. This is our story; as it was also Jesus’ audience’s story. And it’s in the Bible, and so we must consider why it’s there and what on earth we do with it today.
Jesus is re-telling a tale told many times before in scripture: how the people of God in Israel, planted by God as a beautiful vineyard, turned away from him, turned on him. It’s God’s lament over a people who’d lost their way. It’s there in the readings we had earlier, from Isaiah 5 and Psalm 80. Jesus is talking to the chief priests and the Pharisees, people at the heart of Israel’s society, privileged, landed people who lord it over the commoners. His audience recognise the story and you can see them complacently identifying themselves with the vineyard owner who is (in this version) wronged by those wicked rebellious tenants. But imagine how they become scandalised as they realise Jesus is turning the story around to show how they are the wicked tenants, who resent and expel the owner’s messengers and ultimately murder his son.
It’s a judgement on how they - who were supposed to be the godliest of citizens - had lost sight of their mission under God, and wrapped up instead by the concerns of power, property and possessions, are now ultimately rejecting God’s own son.
So this is a parable about possession and control. It shows how, if we reject God’s direction and providence, we seek to bring order to our lives by other means; by the property we possess and the power that gives us over others. It demonstrates that, when we ignore God’s entreaties to love our neighbours, we end up controlling our relationships by building walls between us, sometimes physical ones.
God creates us to be his fruitful vineyard, his people are ‘his pleasant planting’. How it must sadden him when we put our property before his providence. As Isaiah puts it: ‘he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!’ As in first-century Palestine so in our own history: for instance those who bought land in the Caribbean in the eighteenth century, almost always had slaves included as part of the deal. “Slaves, like livestock, were chattel, attached to the land, and under property law were subject to the complete dominion of the landowner.” [3]
And still today in UK law, property is inviolable: never to be broken, taking priority over all other concerns. Property before people: this is how it has become possible for many of our villages to be filled with second homes and holiday lets whilst local young people are forced to move away to a town or city more affordable. Property before nature: the loss of so many of our native species when habitats are destroyed for speculative gain.
Imagine a world where an Englishman lost interest in his home being his castle, and instead devoted his days to making his home his community, opening his life to others, caring for the earth. This is an opportunity to ask, with open hearts and minds, how might we, individuals and communities, even better use our properties to serve the purposes of our God? If the gospel of Jesus works itself out through people crossing boundaries to build a common life together, what could we do to encourage and shape that today?
Notes
This sermon is inspired by two exceptional works, by the theologian William R. Herzog and the writer, illustrator and land activist Nick Hayes. See also my Imitation of violence - imitation of Christ, preached in Devon, 2011 and Somerset, 2017.
[1] William R. Herzog, Parables As Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed, Chapter 6, ’Peasant Revolt and the Spiral of Violence: The Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Mark 12.1-12)’, pp.98-113.
[2] Nick Hayes, The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us.
[3] Nick Hayes, The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us, p.130. Quoted in Sara Hudston, Stay out of my lanes: The limited right to roam. Times Literary Supplement, 31 July 2020.
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