The Scripture
Matthew 21:33-46
[Jesus said,] “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went away. 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. Then 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 its fruits. 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.
The Sermon
Jerry wanted to open a nice restaurant in Snarleyville. You could never have too many nice restaurants in a community, and in this case, the community could use a few more. Jerry lived in New York City, had opened restaurants in small cities in the state, and he had a reputation for being a good owner, allowing his employees and managers to use their talents and abilities to make the restaurant work, and when they celebrated and shared success, everyone profited.
It didn’t take much for him to find a suitable place, a building just begging for renovation and renewal. Jerry was excited.
As he prepared, in his painstaking way, he was careful to select the best of everything: furnishings, lighting, music and decor to immerse the customer in a delightful dining experience. Jerry was also careful to install and select the best kitchen equipment to enable the chefs to have every type of utensil and appliance at their disposal, organized in a way that made meal service smooth and satisfying, as long as the people the manager hired were gifted and highly trained in running a kitchen. Jerry could afford it. His name on the restaurant gave the place an advantage because of his good reputation. Soon managers were selected and hired and waitstaff and kitchen employees ready to go. All he had to do was press the “start” button and let things happen, then wait for the profits at the end of the first quarter.
What Jerry learned from his secret customers in disguise, who frequented the restaurant several times during that first few weeks, was that things were going well. Hiccups, sure, as was true for any new business. But Jerry had hope. He liked to picture his employees enjoying the way in which he set up his kitchens to maximize convenience and quality. He wanted his waitstaff to feel proud of their work at the end of each shift. He could relax and enjoy the spoils, knowing that not only he but his managers and employees, too, would reap the benefits that they all had agreed upon when the restaurant was set up.
In anticipation of success after a few months, Jerry sent an area representative named Adele to the restaurant to confer with the managers and obtain a report on Jerry’s portion of the profits. But Jerry did not expect what happened when Adele, his area representative, set foot in the booming business one balmy night in mid-June.
As soon as Adele announced her purpose and asked for the current manager on duty, the friendly waitress smiled brightly. “Sure! Lenny’s in the kitchen. He loves to taste-test the food,” she said over her shoulder as she led Adele through the path between tables.
On the other side of the swinging kitchen doors, Lenny stood, platter of appetizers in hand, scooping up clams and butter and slurping them down with gusto! “Doggone it, these are delicious, Pete!” he sang. “I’m gonna weigh a ton if you don’t stop cooking such tasty food!” he laughed.
Then Lenny saw Adele with his favorite waitress, Veronica. Adele put out her hand for introductions and the explanation of her mission to the Snarleyville location. But instead of greeting Adele with delight, Lenny’s bright, wide smile went dark. “Profits? To Jerry? Who does he think he is, after all the hard work we’ve put into this place? Ain’t no absentee owner living in the City gonna get a single, thin dime of any profit made in this restaurant!” He grabbed a slice of garlic toast from the tray that went past on its way out of the kitchen, and he bit into it.
Adele stepped forward towards Jerry, wanting to ask him to elaborate on his very unreasonable and not-agreed-upon perspective on profit sharing, and Jerry reached a greasy, buttery hand out towards Adele. “Don’t come near me, lady,” he said as his beady eyes pierced hers and the smell of garlic butter floated off his breath.
“Mr. Leonard, you signed an agreement with Jerry, the rightful owner of this place. If it weren’t for him, you’d have nothing.”
Lenny spit out a wad of garlic bread onto Adele’s face. “What the heck?” Adele said, wiping the glob away. “Who do YOU think YOU are?” she said.
In answer, Lenny said, “This is MY restaurant and this is MY work and these are MY employees and this is MY profit, and you can get right on outta here!” He pumped his hand back, then shoved it forward towards Adele again, this time not stopping when it reached her chest. Adele fell back, the back of her head hitting the floor. Adele was out for a few minutes, then upon returning to consciousness she picked up her bag and exited the restaurant, heading back to the city to inform Jerry of all that had transpired.
Several months had passed since Adele had attempted to gather the profits of the Snarleyville franchise and settle the disagreement with Lenny. Jerry had sent two more area representatives, with similar results. One fellow, Lou, came back with a black eye and broken nose. Jerry decided that if no one was going to respect his area managers, he’d send his son Joey. Surely that would put the fear of Jerry into Lenny and the other managers who’d insisted that the last thing that restaurant would do would be to share the profits with an absentee owner. This was the restaurant family, and they were a tribe.
But the night Joey parked his Lexus in the lot outside Jerry’s restaurant turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. As soon as word caught on that Jerry had sent his own son Joey to the restaurant to get them to pay up, Lenny and a couple other guys got to work preparing Joey’s car for the last lesson Jerry would ever need to learn about whose restaurant this was. As soon as a discouraged Joey got into the car following an unsuccessful discussion with Lenny, the automobile exploded into flames and noxious chemicals filled the air inside the car, causing Joey to pass out before he had a chance to exit the vehicle. Joey died that night.
But the managers of Jerry’s restaurant didn’t get away with it – they suffered the consequences of their behavior through the closing down of the venue and the arrest of several restaurant managers in a conspiracy to commit murder. (Pause)
As you know, I like to tell stories in my sermons. I wrote this story out of the connection I felt to the vineyard owner, imagining him thoughtfully putting his efforts into the details of the vineyard he was developing. I pictured Jerry, the restaurant owner, finding satisfaction in the thought of reaping business profits for not only himself but for all of the managers and employees involved. Jerry, who could have carelessly taken most of the profits and run with them, as so many absentee owners are wont to do.
And yet the employees spat on it, and more than that, they murdered Jerry’s own son in the process of claiming all that the restaurant yielded, all that was in it and all the profit that it brought, was theirs.
What a tragic, grievous disappointment.
Jesus equates the vineyard tenants with the Pharisees, those God appointed to run the business of faith in their day, and God with the vineyard owner. The Pharisees had taken what God had sent, what God had given them gifts and treasures to care for, and they spat on them, taking not what was solely theirs, which would have been sufficient, but insisting that the religion, the interpretation of the scriptures, and the profits thereof were theirs alone.
They’d forgotten God, upon whom that religion was built. God kept sending people – prophets – to glean God’s good part of the agreement, which left more than enough behind. But they wanted it all. Their very reaction to Jesus proves this, for he is speaking of himself as the son God sent, to be murdered simply for trying to teach what the religion was really about: the profits of goodness and love and hope and challenge that came in God’s name. How to live a faithful life. How to bring zest and a taste for living and loving into the world by his teachings and presence.
They didn’t want to share.
How about us? Could we be like the Pharisees, insisting our form of faith and way of worship and living be the best way, a way we have worked hard to develop and nurture, forgetting whose ministry it really is? Could we insist it’s our way or the highway, and fail to step back and remember whose creation, managers, tenants, and workers we are? Can we remember that God has painstakingly and lovingly created a world in which we can do this work, and generously given us gifts and opportunities with which to do it? Can we open our hearts to new ways for God to work, always remembering whose house this is, whose love and spirit of joy and forgiveness motivates us to represent and create the wine of faith in our community and our world?
Whose ministry is this, in this church? It is God’s, first. Then it is ours. We enjoy the fruits, and we share of our abundance with God, in whatever ways God calls us to do so – by our service, by taking what we have and consciously using it to make Jesus known in the world. The fruits of our labors. Knowing we are Christians by our love, and praying others will want to join us in that knowledge and the joy of service.
Whose ministry is it, anyway? It’s God’s. And ours. May we work in harmony and joy, ever open to how God wants to use us as we manage the world in which we have been gifted and placed in service. May our ministry bring joy to our community, and joy and satisfaction to God as we share the profits with all.
Amen.
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