Sermon – The Rev. Leah D. Schade
Oct. 5, 2008 – World Communion Sunday
Text: Isaiah 5:1-7; Matthew 21:33-46
Have you noticed? This is our third Sunday in a row with readings about vineyards. Two weeks ago, our Vicar preached a sermon about the workers in the vineyard. Last week Pastor Smoose preached on the parable of the two sons sent to work in the vineyard. And in this week’s readings we have two parables about vineyards. One is from Isaiah about a vineyard that is carefully planted but comes to yield only wild, sour grapes. The other is about the wicked tenants in the vineyard. These are tough texts to preach for World Communion Sunday! This is supposed the one Sunday of the year when Christians of many denominations around the world celebrate the holy sacrament of wine and bread. We're supposed to be celebrating our oneness in Christ in a world desperately in need of peacemaking.
But these texts, which are assigned for this day in the three-year lectionary cycle, seem to be about anything but oneness and peacemaking. The first parable equates the vineyard with the nation of Israel, and God as the vineyard planter. God does everything a good landowner should do, but nothing of value is produced. The grapes are wild, small and sour - not fit for winemaking. So God destroys the vineyard by withholding rain, taking away its protective hedge, wall and tower, and allowing it to be overrun and overgrown. Not a parable with a very happy ending.
The parable that Jesus tells is no easier. It begins in a positive enough way with the landowner planting a vineyard, making sure it’s protected by a fence and a watchtower, and getting it ready to produce wine by digging a winepress. The trouble begins when the landowner takes a leave of absence and leases the vineyard to some tenants who turn out to be truly evil. When it comes time to collect the harvest, the landowner sends his representatives to the vineyard, and that’s when the violence starts: beatings, stonings, murder. Shocked, the landowner sends his son as a last resort, figuring that the tenants will at least have the decency to respect and honor him. But no. In an act of premeditated greed and hostility, they murder the son as well.
When Jesus tells this parable to the chief priests and Pharisees gathered around him at the temple, he stops at this point and asks them what they think the landowner will do to those tenants. They respond that the landowner will kill the tenants in kind and lease the vineyard to new tenants. And Jesus concurs, adding yet another violent image – that of falling onto the stone and breaking into pieces, and the stone crushing anyone on whom it falls.
This is a very heated exchange between Jesus and the chief priests and Pharisees. In fact, it’s part of a whole section of harsh parables and violent images in the Gospel of Matthew. It all begins when Jesus comes into Jerusalem and overturns the tables of the moneychangers, angrily confronting the powerbrokers and top dogs in the temple system. In the following five chapters we get intense discourses that include images of withering fig trees, a crumbling temple, vultures descending on corpses, eternal fire for the wicked, and people being thrown into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. You’d think this was Wall Street, 2008, instead of Jerusalem, 33 C.E.
Back and forth the scribes and Pharisees volley with Jesus, hurling trick questions, and receiving scathing criticisms for their hypocrisy. The crowd watches the battle of fierce rhetoric, all the while sensing that something really awful is about to descend upon the whole lot of them.
This might as well be red-state, blue-state America on the eve of a presidential election, with both camps throwing verbal jabs, trying to trip each other up, watching for the political blunder or stump speech gaffe. Each side thinks they’re right – and righteous – while those of us on the sideline can’t figure out whom to believe or what to believe in anymore as our financial temples crumble around us.
We lash out wildly, trying to find the one to blame. The two candidates blame each other’s political party. The president blames Congress. Congress blames the financial giants. Foreclosing homeowners get blamed. Lenders are blamed for their greed and risky investments. The Federal Reserve, real estate agents, presidents past and present - everyone shares the blame for this fiasco. It’s just like this parable – there’s greed, anger, a complete collapse in morality and, if we’re not careful – there may be bloodshed. Meanwhile we sense with a growing feeling of foreboding that something really awful is about to descend upon the whole lot of us.
In the Isaiah parable, the whole vineyard is destroyed. In Jesus' parable, many lives are lost, crushed and broken. But no matter how you look at these stories, it all comes down to one thing. These parables are about total system failure. You can finger point all you want, but at the end of the day what you have is a complete system breakdown. No one is blameless. Everyone had a part to play in the fiasco. These parables are a description of the human condition. God placed trust in us, and we let God down. We let each other down. We have failed to produce the fruit for the harvest. And neither of these stories offers a happy ending. This is what happens when human beings experience total system failure. And I struggle with these parables because they do not seem to offer much hope for our human condition. Where is the good news in all of this? I have to ask.
Because system failure doesn't just happen on a global scale. Sometimes it happens on a smaller scale too, in communities like the Navajo nation, or like Chester right down the road. And sometimes it happens in family systems as well. And I think that's where I've had my most personal experience with total system failure. My family was like a well-planted vineyard at first. At my home church, St. Paul's Lutheran, we always sat right about here (third pew back, just behind the first pillar). All six of us - my mom and dad, me, the oldest, and my three siblings. The reason we sat here is because my sister, Ivy Jo, was confined to a wheelchair, and this was a three-quarter pew set in from the side aisle, leaving just enough room for her chair to fit. Now I don't know how it is for your family, but it was grueling for my parents to get me and my three siblings to church each Sunday, let alone one in a wheelchair. But week after week, here we were. This is where we sat. Ours was a uniquely dysfunctional family for various reasons. There was always some kind of conflict, some drama tearing at the fabric of our lives. And yet no matter what was happening, when it came time for communion, we all came forward together and held out our hands for the bread and wine. Now Ivy was in her chair, so she couldn't come through the pew with the rest of us. She had to wheel up to the front on her own. But she always got there first, meeting us there as we came around to kneel at the communion rail.
Not only was Ivy Jo's physical body affected by her condition, so was her emotional and spiritual body. And she was born in the days before there were support groups for families, before family counseling was a widely-known therapy. There were very few resources for my parents to draw from for support. The demands of Ivy's condition on our family were extremely burdensome. And Ivy herself was beginning to be weighed down by mental and emotional burdens too great for her to bear. In October of 2000, my sister ended her life. Looking back now, I can see that it was a total system failure. Everybody let her down. My parents, the government, her schools, her friends, her siblings - we all failed her. I failed her. Because at the end of her life, I, like so many others, had pulled away from Ivy Jo in complete frustration. I had had enough. And I left the vineyard to its own devices. No one was exempt from blame. For eight years my family has individually and collectively tried to figure out how such a tragic thing came to pass. There is still so much deep-seated pain in my family system. It feels like the walls crumbled, and the vineyard became overrun and overgrown. It feels like the tenants who were supposed to be taking care of things did just the opposite.
Two months ago St. Paul's completed construction of a columbarium - a burial wall for the cremated ashes of deceased loved ones. So my family gathered there one Sunday morning this past August before the dedication service so that we could finally place Ivy Jo's urn in its finally resting place. Then the church service began, and there we were again sitting together in the pew, just like we had done so many times before. As I sat there, I looked at the place where Ivy's wheelchair would have been - could have been. And the thought came to me:
It didn't have to be like this. It could have been different. The vineyard could have been fruitful. The harvest could have been so full and healthy. But here we are with so much loss, so many wild, bitter grapes. It is what it is. What has been done cannot be undone.
And yet here is my hope. It does not have to be like this for all time. It can be different for the future. What will be is still open to discussion. Perhaps that is the reason for these parables. They tell us the truth about the way things are. Because we need to hear that truth, to be honest about our brokenness, our mistakes, our bad choices, our neglect and evil deeds, our violence done to each other and the creation around us. Because only by seeing it for what it is can we stop deluding ourselves and finally face up to what needs to be done in order to make a better future. And I got a glimpse of that future that morning.
Finally we came to the time of communion in the service. The congregation sang one of my favorite hymns, "Shall We Gather at the River", as my family made our way across the pew and came to the altar rail. I knelt and looked down at the end of the rail and it hit me with such force that Ivy Jo was there. She had to go up alone, but she was the first one there. And her presence there, through the connecting presence of Jesus Christ, gave me a peace that passes all understanding. Yes, the pain is still there. Of course there are still many unresolved issues and bitter feelings. But this meal is not just about the broken body of Christ. It is also about the resurrected body of Christ. If the son is killed and experiences unexplainable resurrection through the love of God, then we, too, will experience this same resurrection. We are together with Christ, who is together with us in all our system failures, in all our brokenness.
Because that is what happens in this meal. Communion means "together with." We are together with all those who are here now, and all those who eat the feast at the heavenly banquet. We are together with our brother and sister in the pew, and we are together with our Navajo brother and sister in Arizona, our Pangani brother and sister in Africa, our Republican and Democrat brother and sister.
Do you see how this day, this World Communion Sunday, takes on new relevancy and depth of meaning in a world where the vineyards are withering and the tenants are killing the landowner's son? Do you see why it's so important that even as our temples crumble and we fear the worst is still ahead, that we still gather at this table with our hands outstretched like beggars pleading for the bread of life and the wine of forgiveness? Do you see that the vineyard is still in God's hands? Yes, there will be total system failures. Yes, the walls will fall and the losses will be staggering. Yes, there was a crucifixion. But there is also the resurrection. The whole world is still in God's hands, and we will see the light of a new day. Thanks be to God for this meal, this resurrection, this hope! Yes, he's got the whole world in his hands, and he is placing the whole world in your hands every time you reach out for that bread and wine. Sing with me now, "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" .. . .