Sermon: October 8, 2023
Reading: Matthew 21: 33-46
Many in the early church understood this parable to mean that God rejected the Jewish people and gave the vineyard to gentile Christians. But that’s not the case. Jesus is not telling an antisemitic parable. Everyone hearing the parable, including Jesus, is Jewish. The parable is meant to be a warning and a reminder to them and to us that we have been given the care of God’s creation and the importance of staying connected to God and to one another.
Jesus said we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, and soul, and our neighbors as ourselves. He never taught church doctrine. What he taught was a way of life, the importance of living every aspect of our lives connected to God and the priority that goes along with sharing God’s love with our fellow human beings. That is the vineyard we’ve been entrusted to care for.
The way of life that Jesus taught, is one that calls us to practice ways of living that connects us to a deeper and more meaningful relationship with God and all humanity. It is a radical revolutionary love that calls us to see not a stranger but instead, look at others and say: You are a part of me I do not yet know. That is the starting place from which the world begins to change: It is a love that can transform a relationship, a community, a culture, and even a nation.
That is the fruit we are to bear as tenants of God’s vineyard. We have the choice of being like the pharisees and reject the Son God has sent, or to be the living example of the love of Christ to our neighbors and our communities, and affect change by building upon the cornerstone of Jesus’ love. The world God is shaping through the ministry of his tenants in the vineyard will not be established by chance or coincidence. It will come only by allowing ourselves to be cleansed of those things that draw us away from a deeper connection with God and by living out our lives in the way that Jesus taught —no longer rejecting the will of the God who made us, but striving to live together in peace and sharing the love of God in the vineyard God created.
