Proper 22 (RCL) Year A 2011
Reverend Gregg D. Wood
Today's gospel is the parable of a landlord who buys a field, leases it to tenants, and then goes away. However, his tenants do not pay the rent, which, since they are sharecroppers, would consist of a portion of the crops that they produce. And when the landlord sends his agents to collect the rent, the tenants abuse them and even kill the landlord’s son.
Jesus parables had different meanings at the different times in which they were spoken and heard. This parable, for example, was probably spoken by Jesus originally at around 30 AD. Matthew's gospel is usually dated about 50 years later. By that time, the Temple at Jerusalem had been destroyed by the Romans, and Christianity was beginning to emerge as a separate faith from Judaism. It was important for Christians to be able to say that, since the death and resurrection of Jesus, they and not the Jews were the true heirs of the promises of God, the new and true Israel of God. And that is the interpretation that Matthew gives to this parable.
But, as with all the parables of Jesus, there are many ways of looking at it, and many possible lessons to be drawn from it. One way of starting to look at this parable, or any parable, is to ask: What is unusual about this parable? What goes against common sense? What sticks out as odd or peculiar?
Notice that the owner makes some capital improvements to his property before he goes away. He builds a fence around the field, digs a wine press, and also builds a watchtower. Now watchtowers were actually fairly common in Jesus time. The purpose of the watchtower was to enable the owner to determine when his fields were ready for harvest, and also to detect thieves before they were able to get away. These watchtowers were usually made of stone and were round and had a first floor living area, with a kitchen and sleeping areas, so that the owner or his trusted agent would be there around the clock to keep an eye on the property.
What is odd about this story is that the owner takes care to build a watchtower but doesn’t make proper use of it. He goes away, and he apparently does not leave a manager or agent in charge, who could live in the watchtower and keep a close eye on things, especially on the tenants.
And so things go bad. The tenants, left alone without supervision, apparently conspire with one another to withhold payment of the rent. The master twice sends slaves to collect, and the tenants abuse them. Finally the master sends his son, and they decide to kill him, thinking that somehow they can gain possession of the property. In NY state you can acquire title to land by adverse possession, that is by occupying and using the land for a stated period of time against the rightful owner’s wishes. Maybe there was something similar in Palestine in Jesus’ time. In any event, the tenants think that somehow they will gain something by their violent uprising against the master and his agents.
One thought I had was that the master, to some extent, brought this problem upon himself by not properly utilizing the watchtower that he had built. If he or his trusted agent had stayed in the watchtower, they may have become aware early on of a conspiracy by the tenants. Indeed, they might have been able to establish good relations with the tenants and to prevent the conspiracy from developing in the first place. By the time the landlord became aware of the situation and decided to act, it was already too late.
The problem occurred because he didn’t staff his watchtower. His watchtower was empty. So the surface lesson of the parable would be: landlords, use your watchtowers! Protect your property!
But of course Jesus was not in the business of giving practical advice to landlords and farmers. His parables have to be interpreted spiritually.
I would suggest that in talking about the vineyard, Jesus is really talking about us as individuals. The vineyard represents your body, your mind, your whole self. I would further suggest that the tenants represent the things that motivate us to do the things we do. The tenants represent our instincts, our impulses, our drives, our passions, our hopes and dreams.
For example, we all need food, shelter, and clothing. We are driven to work to earn a living so we can have these things. We all need social affirmation, that is, we need to belong and be accepted by family and social groups. We need intimacy and love. We need to be relatively free from fear and anxiety. And some people need to feel they are part of a higher purpose in life; they need to be doing the will of God.
All of these are legitimate needs and desires. But, like the tenants in the parable, our needs and desires can sometimes get out of control. They can threaten to take over the vineyard. The need for food can turn into the sin of gluttony. The need for social affirmation can give rise to the sins of envy, pride, and malice, as we seek to elevate ourselves at the expense of others. The need for intimacy can turn into lust. The desire to be free from anxiety can lead us to the abuse of alcohol and drugs. And so on.
That is why we have a watchtower, given to each of us by God who created us. The watchtower is our conscience. The watchtower is our moral judgment. It represents that part of us that can look at ourselves critically and prevent a takeover by some rogue desire. We all have watchtowers, and we need them to keep the rest of ourselves in balance and proportion.
But we have to use them. We cannot be like the landlord in the parable, who went away to another country. We need to regularly climb up into our watchtowers and monitor ourselves, and be ready for trouble from those very needs and desires that are so essential to our survival. In our Christian tradition, this is called examination of conscience and confession of sin.
So I leave you with three questions. Have you been to your watchtower lately? If so, what did you see? And what did you do about it?
