God's handiwork

God’s handiwork 100514

Psalm 19, Matthew 21:33-46

Ps 19....the heavens are telling---speech without words in creation, thru God's teaching, warn us...which brings me to the challenging gospel... 

the Gospel of Thomas, an early Christian writing that didn’t make it into the Bible, is primarily a list of Jesus’ sayings, without narrative or editorial additions.   In Thomas’ gospel, this parable about the absentee landlord ends with the tenants’ killing the son, and the words, let those who have ears hear.

Matthew’s version however, speaking to his own late first century situation, adds the bit about Jesus asking the religious leaders what would happen next, and naturally they answer with what in reality would happen.  In Matthew, Jesus then goes on to quote an ancient scripture and condemning the religious leaders for their failure to be good stewards of God’s handiwork and what God had given them.

Unfortunately, this addition has taken a parable and made it an allegory:  God is the landowner, the Jews failed in their job and the Christians got the kingdom….leading to centuries of anti Semitism and an image of a God of retribution. 

Today we might think we’ve softened that interpretation, and perhaps need to say the Church hasn’t taken care of the vineyard, and others outside the church are being given the kin-dom of God.   Or we might say that we as Christians individually have failed to be good stewards, at home, at work, in community, globally.   But its still an allegory.  And it doesn’t fit with the God of Israel then, the early Christian experience, or the God we experience now……this isn’t a God who wreaks divine retribution on those who rejected even the son….this isn’t a God who gives up trying when the world has done its worst.   We know, as the early Christians knew, that God doesn’t wreak retribution, and doesn’t give up.  Indeed God answered the worst we could do with the resurrection, and God continues to speak, as the psalm says.

So lets go back to its being simply a parable in its original form (as best we can guess)….

If the landowner is simply a landowner, we get a whole new perspective, without the lens of thinking it’s about God.

(thanks to a web post for this perspective-I just can't remember whose)

The landowner doesn’t live on the land, doesn’t work the land, but uses, in fact misuses, sharecroppers like migrant workers to do his work – and he doesn’t send his servants out of any love for the people or the land, but simply to get what he needs as a return for his investment so he can continue to live the lifestyle to which he is accustomed.  And according to first century culture, what he takes doesn’t leave much for subsistence for the workers…no living wages here either.

The first and second time, the tenants send them packing; they’ve had enough of slavery to another’s greed, even if it’s the way of the world.  You can almost hear some of Jesus’ listeners cheering at such rebellion against an unjust system.  Then here comes the son; and they get rid of him with equal violence.  More cheers.  Let those who have ears, hear.   Even without Matthew's addition, those who can hear would know what would happen next.

The culture of violence escalates, and simply leads to more violence….the tenants are destroyed and the work is given to other poor suckers so that the landowner can continue to get what he wants.

As a simple parable, this story wreaks havoc on my soul, for it is so relevant to today.

Like the landowner, I depend on the exploitation of others to get what I want to live my life of relative ease.   I too consume and consume with little thought for those on whose backs I get my coffee or my clothes.    Like the tenant farmers, how are we willing to do, or allow, wrong to achieve what we think is ok.  How do we perpetuate violence by violence, and allow conflict to escalate?

Jesus confronts 21^st century Fairport.  

 We all know the alternative, Jesus has preached it for 2000 years to us:  the kin-dom of God, the reign of God in our lives, instead of the reign of greed and injustice. 

Jesus challenges us to co-create a world, or a little part of a world in our homes and businesses and congregations, where the earth is cared for, and not full of our glorious toxic and electronic waste, so it still may speak of God’s handiwork as in the psalm

… where we care for all of God’s children, including the ones who make our clothes and pick our cotton, as well as the ones we buy all that stuff for, for they too are God’s handiwork.

….where we do not answer violence with violence, but work peaceably to end oppression so that all of God’s handiwork is free

…where our security is in God instead of in our wealth or our jobs

…where faithful stewardship is what we do with what God has entrusted to us

This is the kin-dom, the culture, the world, we are baptized into…the world we promise to co-create with Wesley and his family as we make our vows at his baptism today…..

Let’s do it!