18th Sunday after Pentecost

October 4, 2020

Crazy Love

Isaiah 5:1-7; Matthew 21:33-46

 

Vineyards and prophets and the story of God’s people:

Jesus is Jewish – we the people of God living in the 21^st century and influenced by our Western culture all too often hear Scripture and the Bible through western eyes – Jesus is a first century Jew and vineyards and prophets and the story of God’s people were very familiar.

Isaiah uses the image of the vineyard to describe God’s relationship with his people.  He sings the song of the vineyard.  It is a love song.  God’s core and character is one of mercy.  This Love-Song – folk song tells the story of God’s people at the time of Isaiah.

God is keeping God’s side of the covenant.  God gives every opportunity for his people to yield fruitful grapes – but instead they yielded wild grapes… a better translation is rotting grapes. 

God remains faithful to his side of the covenant.   There is judgment for the vineyard – walls torn down – grounds trampled because where God intended justice, the people return bloodshed.  Where God intended righteousness, the cry of the downtrodden is heard.

Jesus picks up on this prophetic love song.  Jesus continues in the tradition of the prophets challenging the religious leaders to turn and repent and restore the core of the covenant:  JUSTICE – namely love of God and love of neighbor.

 So Jesus retells Isaiah’s well known story:

Christ is doing a commentary on Isaiah using the vineyard as an allegory.   The landowner, of course, is God.  The tenants are the religious leaders – the chief priests and Pharisees.   The story is told to the people – a people weary of the heavy laws and loss of compassion from their leaders.

The landowner sends wave after wave of slaves to collect the produce at harvest time.  The tenants seized his slaves, beat one, killed another, and stoned another.  

This is certainly an ‘R’ rated story due to the violence.  Finally the landowner sends his son. 

I don’t know why, but somehow the tenants think that in killing the son – they will somehow inherit the vineyard.  They seize the son, throw him out of the vineyard, and kill him.

Jesus asks the crowd gathered to hear the story: 

“What will the landowner do?”

Jesus does not answer that question, but the crowd does:  “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.”

WOW!  This is a story of judgment – judgment on God’s people.  Jesus is channeling the Prophet Isaiah:

Where God intended justice, the people return bloodshed.  Where God intended righteousness, the cry of the downtrodden is heard.

Time and again the message of the prophets – righteousness and justice - is rejected and oft times the messenger killed.  Look at the history of God’s people.  Look at the history of the church.  How often has the church set aside standing for justice in order to survive unscathed?

So what do we do with this prophetic parable – this allegory of God’s people – both Israel and the Church? 

We hear and interpret it for our time:

God keeps sending messengers to faith communities – calling us to justice and righteousness –calling us to stand in solidarity with the least of these – hearing and responding to the cries of the downtrodden.  

On Good Friday we share what is called ‘The Solemn Admonitions’ – a call for us to repent. One of those solemn admonitions reads:

O my people, O my church, what more could I have done for you?

 Answer me.

 I planted you as my fairest vineyard, but you brought forth bitter fruit;

 I made you branches of the vine and never left your side,

but you have prepared a cross for your Savior.

Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal, have mercy on us.

So, what do we do with this prophetic message today?  What does it mean for our life as individuals and as a congregation?

Martin Luther once said that sometimes you have to squeeze a biblical passage until it leaks the Gospel.

What is the Gospel message in this violent allegory about the prophets and their message being rejected time and time again?  Can we squeeze this passage until it leaks the Gospel? 

This is one of those passages that we dare to squeeze because at its core is crazy love.

Parents know about crazy love. It is difficult to live with consequences when a child reared in a loving home makes unwise choices dashing the hopes and dreams of his parents. 

Yet what will parents do? Give up?  Do nothing?   Or continue in the relationship and with the constancy of a deep love -- keep sending a compassionate message…like the foolish crazy love landowner keeps sending messengers and then even his son.

Our former Bishop, Mark Hanson, has told this story of his own family to both lay and clergy gatherings.

Mark and his wife, Ione, adopted children.  One son went through his teen years in a state of rebellion.  Doing drugs and yes, even becoming addicted. 

Mark and Ione were beside themselves.  Even though they both were clergy and knew a lot about counseling they sought help for themselves while their son refused any help and just kept on abusing drugs.

So Ione and Mark were confronted with a situation that was desperate and seemed impossible. 

They loved their son – they kept sending messages of compassion – those time and again were rejected and the addicted behavior continued.  Finally they called the police and had their son arrested – charged with illegal use of drugs.  He was in prison.  But the deep compassion – crazy love was still there from his parents.

Ione tells how she and Mark visited their son while he was in prison.  They would go together and she recalls how before they were allowed into the secured area guards would wave a wand over each of them to check for any metal or items that they might be carrying.  

Ione noticed that the guards, without realizing it waved the wands over each of them – over their entire bodies - making the sign of the cross.

She noticed and took heart for this was a vivid reminder of God’s love of them and their son.  She remembered baptism and how the pastor made the sign of the cross on them and their son:

“You are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ, forever.”

So every time they visited their son the wand crossings empowered their visit.  God’s love – God’s crazy love never gives up on anyone.  God keeps coming after God’s beloved. ..like the parent who just won’t quit loving – it is crazy love.

This parable was an indictment of the religious leaders who were not faithful to their call to care for the poor and be a light to the nations.  But it is also crazy love –meant to open them up to God’s compassion.  So we need to ask not ‘What will the landlord do?’ but ‘What did the landlord do?’

 And what did the landlord do?  He sent his only Son.

Crucified – abandoned on the cross – rejected by us tenants of the vineyard – God still loved us. 

What did the landlord do?  When we killed his Son God raised Christ from death and gave him back to us.  We wretched, oft unfaithful tenants, are not put to a miserable death but embraced by the living Christ – forgiven and called back to work in the vineyard.

What we have is a God who is so desperate to be in relationship with us that God will do anything, risk anything, to reach out to us.  The Good News is that in Jesus the Christ we see the desperate, crazy love of God, love offered not once, not twice, but a million times or more to those who will receive it.

Love, love, crazy love.

Amen.

[Exegetical background- Source for this Sermon:  In the Meantime - http://www.davidlose.net/]