As Jesus' followers, we build a faith that asks questions and changes us.

I think this part of our draft mission statement tells us that we are different than most Christian communities. Change is not something most of us welcome. And I think most Christians look to their faith almost entirely for assurance and comfort. Most of us seek a faith that doesn't call us seriously to look at how we live . . . and hear the demand to change.

The story that Suzi just read is a great example of this tension between comfort and the demand to change.

Almost every Bible scholar says this story is an allegory. Which means it's a story in which each character represents something else. The vineyard stands for Israel. The man who planted the vineyard and owns it is God. The farmhands are the religious leaders in the Temple where Jesus is telling this story. The messengers whom the vineyard owner sends to the farmhands are the prophets the Jews have rejected. Old Testament prophets and John the Baptist whom Matthew is saying the Jews didn't receive as God's messengers. Then the owner sends his own son. If the owner is God, then of course the son is Jesus. Just to make sure no one misses this, the parable says that when the son arrived at the vineyard, the farmhands "grabbed him, threw him out, and killed him" (Matthew 21.39, The Message). This is exactly how Jesus is treated: Jesus is arrested, taken outside the walls of Jerusalem, and hung on a cross. Finally, the new farmhands who now will work in the vineyard are those who believe Jesus is the Messiah and commit themselves to follow him (all of the socioeconomic and sociopolitical references in this sermon are drawn from William Herzog, Parables as Subversive Speech, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994, pp. 98-113).

That is how the vast majority of Bible scholars interpret this parable. And it seems like that is the way the writer of Matthew wants the story to be interpreted. Matthew here says Jesus is warning his fellow Jews that God will replace them as God's chosen people if they continue to refuse to accept Jesus as God's Son.

But we are a people who believe God is calling us to build a faith that asks questions and changes us. And I think this traditional interpretation deserves to be questioned. Maybe this interpretation worked for the community Matthew was writing for at the end of the first century. But it raises serious questions in my mind. I'll just mention two.
First: what does it say about the relationship between Christians and Jews? It seems to say that Christians are right, and Jews are wrong, and if Jews don't see the error of their ways, then that's just too bad for them. They've lost God's love and protection. And though it doesn't mention people of any other non-Christian faiths, the message seems clear. They will not receive God's love. For they do not accept this Son as Messiah. As people who follow Jesus, I believe we have to question any teachings that seem to suggest that we are insiders and everyone else is an outsider. Jesus spent most of his ministry with the outsiders. So I believe whenever we claim to be insiders, Jesus is probably not spending much time with us. Except for trying to get us to question whatever has led us to judge and exclude . . . and change what we believe.
The second question I think we have to ask of this traditional way of interpreting this parable is this: how does it call on Christians to change? I'm not saying that every Bible passage needs to challenge us and change us. All of us need assurance and comfort. And the Bible is filled with passages that offer these. But as followers of Jesus, we have to remember that Jesus always called his listeners to conversion. And conversion means turning around. Conversion means changing. So we who hear God calling us to build a faith that changes us have to question anyone who tries to tell us, "You're fine. It's just everyone else who has to change." Our faith has to question that.

Another way to hear this parable of the vineyard is to hear it as a story Jesus is telling about the concrete realities faced by the people he lived with and loved. Jesus probably told this parable many times in many different places. No scholar I know of believes Jesus only told parables in the one time and place the gospel writer records. Matthew gives this parable an opening and a closing to make a particular point. Some scholars believe Jesus' parable would have ended with the question, "What do you think they'll do with the farmhands" (Matthew 21.40)?

This alternative way to hear the parable is based on trying to determine how Jesus' might have told the parable, separate from the opening and closing context Matthew gives it.

To our ears, the story starts off innocently enough. A wealthy farmer plants a vineyard (Matthew 21.33).
No problem, right?
Wrong. Most of the people listening to Jesus tell this story would be peasants from the area around the Sea of Galilee. They know all the land that can grow crops already is being used for crops. It's not like there's unused farmland lying around just waiting for someone to buy and cultivate. The only way a farmer could plant a vineyard would be if he had taken over someone else's land and planted something new on it. And the way that happened was that a poor farmer would fall behind on his loan payments to a rich farmer. And the rich farmer would force the poor one to give him his land as payment for the debt. So when Jesus stars his parable by saying a wealthy farmer plants a vineyard, his listeners know that a poor farmer has lost his land. And that this poor farmer now can only make ends meet by becoming a slave to some rich farmer. Probably for the rest of his life. An economic system that rewards the greedy . . . sounds kind of familiar.

So right from the start, the peasants hearing Jesus tell this story are angry. They hate rich farmers for what they do to poor farmers. How different this is from the traditional way this parable is interpreted. Most scholars say the people listening to Jesus would see the owner of the vineyard as God. But the vineyard owner can't represent God! The vineyard owner is the one who takes their land and puts them in poverty. And these peasants know God would never do that.
Because the stories of their faith tell them God is a God who cares for the poor. And by the way Jesus starts this story, they know it's a story that has something to do with justice for the poor.
Because these peasants were Jewish. They would have grown up going to synagogue. Because most of them could not read, they knew these stories by heart. When they hear Jesus say, "[The farmer] planted a vineyard, . . . dug a winepress, [and] put up a watchtower" (Matthew 21.33), they think of the prophet Isaiah. A vineyard, a winepress, a watchtower – this comes from Isaiah's song of the vineyard. Seven hundred years before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah wrote a love song to the vineyard God had planted:

"God . . . had a vineyard . . . .
He built a watchtower, [and] built a winepress,
a vineyard to be proud of" (Isaiah 5.1-2).

Jesus' audience knows the story he's telling somehow is connected to Isaiah's song of the vineyard. The only question the traditional way of understanding this parable asks is, "What does the vineyard stand for?" The answer: The vineyard stands for Israel." But it doesn't ask anything about how what God says in this passage from Isaiah connects to what Jesus is saying in this parable. If we hear Jesus' parable as saying something about the wealthy taking land from the poor, the connection becomes clear.
Isaiah says God loves this vineyard. But he warns God is going to stop caring for this vineyard, and let it wither and die. Why? Because

"God looked for a crop of justice
and saw them murdering each other.
God looked for a harvest of [compassion]
and heard only the moans of victims.
Doom to you who buy up all the houses
and grab all the land for yourselves" (5.7b-8).

By starting his parable with these images from Isaiah, Jesus is telling his audience to expect it to have something to do with violence: the violence of murder, of injustice, of the rich making themselves richer while they make the poor poorer.

And this story is violent. The farmhands beat up and kill the messengers the owner sends to collect the rents. Finally, the farmhands kill the owner's son.
But the language this story uses helps us see why the farmhands are filled with such hatred toward the owner and his son. When the farmhands see the son, they say, "This is the heir! Let's kill him and have it all for ourselves" (Matthew 21.38, The Message). A better translation is, "Let's kill him and get his inheritance" (New Revised Standard Version). Since the owner of the vineyard has planted his vineyard on land taken from someone else, that land at one time had been the inheritance of someone else – probably a poor farmer. So this land shouldn't be the inheritance of the owner's son in the first place. It should be the inheritance of the son of the previous owner. Talk of an heir and an inheritance reinforces the message that this already-rich farmer is making himself richer by taking someone else's land. Land that a poor farmer had once inherited. Now the landless peasant had no inheritance to pass on to his heir. His only inheritance was a life of perpetual slavery (Herzog, pp. 111-12). Seeing the heir as the one who would inherit what was once their land, the farmhands murder the owner's son.
You can imagine who the peasants hearing Jesus tell this story would be cheering for. It's like watching a movie where the bad guys finally are apprehended or killed. We cheer. And the peasants cheer for the fact that these farmhands finally do something other than go along with a system that kept them in perpetual slavery.

But what Jesus says next silences all the cheers. He has told the story of a violent peasant revolt. The desperate, landless peasants have killed the owner's son. And now what's going to happen? Will the owner give the land and the vineyard back to them? Will all the landless peasants in Galilee band together to start a widespread rebellion? After the farmhands kill the son, and the owner finds out, Jesus asks, "What do you think the owner of the vineyard will do" (Matthew 21.40)?

Some scholars think this is where the original story ended. They think Jesus left his audience with that haunting question (William Herzog: 99). Put yourself in the crowd hearing Jesus tell this story. You're a peasant. You have no economic, political, or social power. Like you, the peasant farmhands in Jesus' story have no economic, political, or social power. They have just killed the rich farmer's son. And Jesus asks, "What do you think the owner of the vineyard will do?"
What do you think is going to happen to the farmhands? How will the parable end? With the landowners holding all the political, military, and economic power, there's only one possible ending. The farmhands will die. They will be killed.

This alternative reading of the parable seems to make a painfully clear point to the peasants listening to Jesus. You are being oppressed. You see the suffering of your family and your friends. This suffering leads you to want to respond with violence. Because you see no other options. But if you use violence, you will die. And your family and friends will be worse off than they were before. Violence will get you nowhere.

The parable does not offer an alternative to violence. But it seems absolutely clear that Jesus is telling them violence will only lead to more bloodshed.
And what does this alternative reading of the parable say to us? We live in the world's most powerful country. We are at war with two countries. How we live and how our government operates lock many in this country and around the world in poverty. How does this parable shape a faith that asks questions and changes us?
God says to the beloved vineyard,

"I look for a crop of justice, and see you murdering each other.
I look for a harvest of compassion, and hear only the moans of victims.
Doom to you who buy up all the houses and grab all the land for yourselves" (Isaiah 5.7-8, adapted).
The one we follow calls us to imagine how to respond without violence to the challenges we face. Yet we live in a country whose imagination is impoverished. We live in a country that seems like it can only imagine violent ways of responding to what and whom we do not like. Can we who follow Jesus build a faith that expects more of ourselves and our leaders than violence in response to violence? Can we who follow this Jesus ask the questions and do the hard work that will change us – so we truly can produce a crop of justice . . . and a harvest of compassion?
That is what this meal is about. Jesus gathers with his friends the day before he knows the religious and political authorities are going to kill him. He knew the day after sharing this meal with his disciples that they would murder him. So he gathered with his friends. As his Living Spirit gathers us this morning. He was a victim of state violence. As citizens of a nation that is committing acts of violence in this moment, how do we share this meal with Jesus? How do we take the bread that is his body, and the cup that is his blood? . . . How do we receive this living food, and let it change us into Christians who live a different story?
Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. Amen.