Having served most of my ministry in rural east Texas, several of my church members have done some farming. And over those years I became at least somewhat familiar with sharecropping, particularly a form of it that they called farming on the halves.
At first thought, I would never have imagined that there could ever be any real trouble in sharecropping. I mean really, what is the big deal? If you are farming on the halves, half goes to the landowner and half goes to the farmer. It really is a pretty easy concept. Even if the sharing were on the basis of three to one, four to one, ore even 100 to one, the concept is still the same. You take the total amount of crop grown, divide it by the agreed upon percentage between the person who owns the land and the farmer who is actually growing the crop.
I guess that the biggest problems can occur when the landowner doesn’t live in the area where the farming is taking place. When that is the case an amount of trust is necessary between the absentee landowner and the farmer. The landlord needs to know that the tenant will send the landowner’s share and that all of the accounting methods will be done correctly.
There is the rub. Wherever there are people, someone will work hard to try to get the edge and take advantage of somebody else. Cheating and stealing have been present in our world just about as long as there has been a world. The problem doesn’t just exist in the farming community. It is everywhere.
Our lesson this morning finds Jesus telling just such a story. On the surface this parable is a story about sharecroppers and landlords. The landlord provided a prime piece of land for the sharecroppers. Everything was there they needed. All that the workers had to do was take care of things and give the landowner his fair share. It would seem that this was even a little too much to expect. Harvest time came and the landowner sent his servants to get his share. They met resistance from the tenants to the point they were killed, beaten and stoned, the Scripture says. The landowner then sent more servants. They had the same disastrous and deadly results. Then he sent his son. He thought that they would respect his son and give the landowner his due. Instead they thought they saw away to steal the vineyard from the landowner so they killed his son too. Finally, the owner of the vineyard comes to take possession of what belonged to him, put the tenants to death and then give the vineyard to more trustworthy tenants.
That is the surface story of the parable. But, as with any of Jesus’ parables, there is a much deeper, spiritual, meaning to this story. God of course is the landowner. The vineyard is the kingdom of God. The tenants are the Israelites. The produce is the fruit of righteous life which consists of love of God and love of neighbor. The servants are the long line of prophets that God sent to warn Israel to change the way it lived. And, of course, the son is Jesus, who here states another prophecy, that he would also be killed. The new tenants are the new chosen people. They are the gentiles. They are us.
As we read this parable it is really easy for us to see that big trouble is brewing for the Israelites. For centuries the Israelites lived their lives virtually ignoring everything that God wanted them to do. The story could be taken back to the beginning with Adam and Eve. God gave them instructions that they ignored. The troubles and disobedience continue with the Israelites and Moses. It would seem that every time that Moses turned around they were ignoring him and grumbling against God. Then there were the judges and the kings (many of whom turned away from God themselves) and then the prophets. All of them were sent to warn the people that God would hold them accountable for what they did in His vineyard. Again and again the Israelites ignored God. So, God sent Jesus. With Jesus’ coming, and now prophesied death, the end would come for God’s patience with the Israelites and the vineyard would be given to someone else. Today, we understand that to be the Church of Jesus Christ. We understand it to be us.
What also seems clear to me, however, is that Matthew didn’t really intend this parable so much for the Israelites as much as perhaps he intended it for us. Remember, these stories were not written down until many years after the death of Jesus. For Matthew, the Kingdom was now in the hands of a few Jewish converts and the gentiles. So, is this a story of great joy? Christian folks now have the Kingdom. Or, is it a story of sorrow? Other folks have lost the Kingdom. Or, is there something else that is present here? As I read and study this story it seems very clear to me that there is something else here, there is a clear warning to the current tenants of the vineyard. If they don’t produce fruit in the vineyard, they could lose it too.
That causes me to pause and ask the question, “How are we doing?” As a society, I fear that the answer would have to be, not very well. I can’t help but thing of the accounting scandals that have been in the news so much during the past few years. It makes me wonder how Jesus would have responded.
If Jesus were here and telling the parable today, I feel certain that he would probably use something more modern to tell the story. As I have given this some thought, it seems to me that in many ways the accountants and executives from Enron were a great deal like the tenants in Jesus’ parable. I wish I were creative enough to write a modern day parable out of that mess. The thing is, those who were in the know at Enron and World Com and Barings and some of the other business disasters of the past few years used many tricks to fool people. While they didn’t kill the servants as it were, as in the parable, they still had a powerful and dramatic impact on their lives. They held people’s money to serve their own need for greed and power. Individual stockholders, employees, and other companies that did business with these all suffered. In other words people, perhaps even some of you paid the price.
On February 26, 1995, Barings, the oldest bank in Great Britain, announced it was seeking bankruptcy protection after losing nearly one billion dollars in a stock scheme. At the time Barings went under, the bank held assets for Queen Elizabeth, some $100 million according to Time magazine.
In late 1994, the chief stock trader at Baring’s Singapore office began betting big, without authorization, on the Japanese stock market. That is when disaster struck. An earthquake hit Kobe, Japan, and on January 23, 1995 the Japanese stock market plunged more than one thousand points.
Barings Bank lost and they lost bog. But, instead of cutting his losses, Baring’s Singapore trader doubled his investment, apparently hoping that the market would rebound. It failed to do so. As the market continued in free-fall, he began to work at different ways to cover-up the loss and things continued to get worse.
Barings’ London office ended up placing nearly $900 million in an effort to shore up its falling position in the Far East, due to the Singapore investments. Finally Barings Bank ran out of capital. Having no other alternative, the bank declared bankruptcy.
How could one twenty-eight-year-old trader in Singapore lose nearly a billion dollars and ruin a British bank with more than 200 years of history? According to Time magazine, the problem was lack of accounting standards and accountability.
Barings London allowed the trader to take control of both the trading desk and the accounting operation in Singapore. It is a mix that can be, and in this case was, absolutely devastating. For a trader to keep his own books is like a failing school child getting to grade his own test papers; the temptation to cheat can be overwhelming, particularly if the stakes are high enough.
It seems to me that Enron, World Com, and Barings are only examples. All too often we are the wicked tenants in the story. Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength.” How can we claim to love the Lord and not use what He has given us to benefit His Kingdom? We have been entrusted with much, time, talents and money. What do we use them for? All too often we use far more for our personal gain than we use for the Kingdom of God.
Jesus’ commandment continues on. He said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” How can we claim to love our neighbors and do so little to share the Gospel with them? Are we hiding the treasure of the Gospel from God’s people?
In the parable the Israelites lost the vineyard because they failed to produce fruit to share with the landowner. Today we are the tenants. Are we producing fruit? Are we sharing that fruit with the landowner? If Matthew intended this parable to be a warning to the Church that we too could lose the Kingdom, and I believe that it is, I fear we are well on the way.
Think for a moment about something else that Jesus said. Remember his words to the church at Laodicea in the Book of Revelation, chapter 3, verses 15 and 16. “I know what you do, that you are not hot or cold. I wish that you were hot or cold! But because you are lukewarm – neither hot, nor cold – I am ready to spit you out of my mouth.” Again, it is a warning. Are we hot or cold? Or, are we simply lukewarm. Are we producing fruit for the landowner, or are we just taking up room in the vineyard and not giving the landowner his due.
I would submit to you, however, that the story is not one of only warning. There is good news in this parable as well. When the landowner sent the first servants they were killed. By all rights he could have gone and taken over the vineyard right then. He probably should have, but he didn’t. Instead, he sent more servants. When they were treated in the same way, he sent his son.
That says to me that the landowner was a man who gave a second chance and even a third. There is a word that we Methodists like to use for that, Grace. Grace is a gift that we don’t deserve and yet we get it anyway. The tenants in the story didn’t deserve a second chance. They absolutely didn’t deserve a third. Yet they got the additional chances anyway. That is grace.
Since the landowner in the parable is God that tells me that God is one to give us another chance. God is a God of grace. God is a God of love. He will forgive us.
That is good news for all of us who are tenants of the vineyard. Whether we have been involved in a little shady accounting or just fallen a bit short of loving the Lord our God and loving our neighbor as our self, God through His wonderful grace will give us another chance. It isn’t too late for us to turn things around in the vineyard and start producing the fruit of the Kingdom, from for God, the landowner.
The God we serve is a God of grace, a God of love, and a God of forgiveness. Our God will give us a second chance, a third chance, a twenty-fifth chance or even more. God will listen and hear our prayers of confession, our shortcomings, the ways that we have failed in our work in the vineyard. Then, through those prayers, God will forgive us and fill us with His love and his grace, making us ready to go out once again to do work in the vineyard.
Thanks be to God for His love and His grace. May it strengthen us for the work that we are called to do.
