Readings

Philippians 3.4b–14 – If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Matthew 21.33–end – ‘Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watch-tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, “They will respect my son.” But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’ They said to him, ‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.’ Jesus said to them, ‘Have you never read in the scriptures: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes”? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.’ When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

Sermon

In our Gospel reading this morning Jesus tells a story about a vineyard. And for those listening to him, the image would have been immediately familiar in the largely agricultural economy of his day. A landowner plants a vineyard, puts a fence around it, digs a wine press, builds a watchtower. Everything is prepared. Everything is provided. And then he leases it to tenants.

That detail is important, because from the beginning the vineyard does not belong to the tenants. They are entrusted with it. Their task is to tend it, nurture it, protect it, and in due course to give the owner what rightly belongs to him.

But somewhere along the way, something goes badly wrong. The tenants begin to behave as though the vineyard is theirs. When the owner sends his servants to collect the produce, they beat one, kill another and stone another. More servants are sent, and they receive the same treatment.

Finally, the landowner sends his son, saying, “They will respect my son.” But when the tenants see him, they say to one another, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” It is an extraordinary piece of logic. They think that if they can get rid of the heir, somehow the vineyard will become theirs.

And perhaps that is the heart of the parable. The tenants have confused being entrusted with something with owning it.

Now, for some context, Jesus tells this parable in Jerusalem in the final days before his death. The confrontation between Jesus and the religious authorities is becoming increasingly intense. And Matthew leaves us in little doubt that the chief priests and Pharisees recognise themselves in the story. “They realised that he was speaking about them,” he tells us.

But if we leave the parable there, safely confined to a dispute between Jesus and the religious leaders of his own day, we can rather easily avoid its challenge. Because the temptation of the tenants is not confined to them. It is a temptation that can affect the Church in every generation.

We too have been entrusted with a vineyard. We have been given the Gospel. We have been given the Scriptures. We have been given the sacraments. We have inherited churches built and maintained by generations before us. We have traditions, patterns of worship, communities and resources. But none of these things ultimately belongs to us.

The Church belongs to God. The Gospel belongs to God. The Kingdom belongs to God. And we are tenants in the vineyard. That doesn’t mean that what we have inherited is unimportant. Quite the opposite. If something has been entrusted to us, then we have a responsibility to care for it. But caring for something is different from possessing it. Possession says, “This is ours.” Stewardship asks, “What is this for?” And Jesus gives us an answer when he speaks about “a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”

Fruit is what the owner of the vineyard has been looking for all along. So perhaps one of the questions this parable asks of the Church is quite simply: where is the fruit? Not: are we keeping everything exactly as we found it? Not: are we protecting what belongs to us? But: is what God has entrusted to us bearing fruit? Are people encountering the love of Christ? Are those who are lonely finding friendship? Are children and young people discovering that they have a place in the family of God? Are those who are struggling being supported? Are strangers being welcomed? Are we growing in prayer, generosity, forgiveness and hope?

Because a vineyard exists in order to bear fruit. And there is something hopeful about that image. God has already planted the vineyard. God has already done the work that makes fruit possible. At the beginning of the parable, the landowner does not simply hand the tenants an empty field and tell them to get on with it. He plants the vineyard. He puts a fence around it. He digs the wine press. He builds the watchtower. Grace comes first. So our task is not to manufacture the Kingdom of God by our own effort. It is to respond faithfully to what God has already given.

And at the centre of all that God has given stands the Son. The tenants see the son and reject him. Jesus then quotes from Psalm 118: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” The one who is rejected becomes the foundation of something new. Those words point us towards the cross and beyond it to the resurrection. Human rejection does not have the final word. Violence does not have the final word. Even death does not have the final word. God takes the rejected stone and makes it the cornerstone.

And perhaps that is where this rather fierce parable ultimately leads us. Not simply towards a warning about bad tenants, but towards Jesus himself. Because the Church will never bear the fruits of the Kingdom simply by trying harder to be a successful institution. We bear fruit when Christ is our cornerstone. When his love shapes the way we treat one another. When his compassion shapes the way we look at our community. When his generosity loosens our grip on what we imagine belongs to us. When his welcome becomes our welcome. When his life becomes visible in ours.

We are living, in many churches, through a time of considerable change. The Church we hand on to the next generation will inevitably look different from the Church we inherited. And that can sometimes make us anxious. But perhaps this parable gives us another way of thinking about it. The vineyard was never ours to preserve for ourselves. It was entrusted to us so that it might bear fruit.

Our calling is therefore not simply to guard what previous generations have handed to us, nor to change things merely for the sake of change. Our calling is to be faithful tenants. To receive gratefully. To tend carefully. To share generously. And to keep asking what fruit God desires from the vineyard entrusted to us here and now. Because one day we too will hand it on.

And perhaps the measure of our faithfulness will not be whether everything looks exactly as it did when we received it. Perhaps it will be whether, through God’s grace, the vineyard has borne fruit. Fruit in lives changed. Fruit in people welcomed. Fruit in faith discovered and deepened. Fruit in love offered freely. Fruit in a community which, however imperfectly, has begun to look a little more like the Kingdom of God.

The vineyard is God’s. We are privileged, for a while, to work within it.

So may Christ, the cornerstone, remain at the heart of all that we do. And may the vineyard entrusted to us bear fruit in abundance.

Amen.