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Proper 22 – Year A

Preached on October 2

At St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello

Isaiah 5:1-7; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46

Today Jesus continues his response to the religious leaders questioning of his authority. We heard the beginning this last week with the parable of the two sons. Jesus’ three-part response winds up next week with the parable of the wedding banquet.

Today, the middle parable is that of the wicked tenants, and it is not very difficult for us to figure out who it is Jesus is chastising under the thin veil of the story of the vineyard. We know who it is; so does the crowd; and so do the religious leaders.

There’s the vineyard, representing the people of Israel. There are the tenants, representing the religious authorities. There is the Landowner, the metaphor for Yahweh, God. And there are the servants sent to receive the harvest. These are the prophets. Finally, the Landowner, Yahweh, God sends his son. The son, who is sent, is killed at the hands of the tenants.   Any guess as to who this son who is sent by the landowner only to be killed by the tenants might be? You guessed it.

In this parable, which Jesus tells in the week between Palm Sunday and Good Friday, Jesus foretells his own death at the hands of the religious leaders, uh, I mean, the wicked tenants.

In this crystal clear indictment of the Pharisees and Chief Priest, Jesus throws a warning out that is a bit more mysterious. Jesus uses the words of a psalm that everyone would have known to let them know that, though he might be killed, this stone that the builders will reject will go on to be the chief cornerstone. In the foretelling of his crucifixion, he also foretells resurrection. He lets them know that not even death will stop the Gospel from being told, the Gospel from building something great.

While the cast of the parable seems clearly set in the context of its telling, Jesus’ parables always leave room for the hearer, or the reader to place themselves in the scene. In Jesus’ storytelling, we are always given the opportunity to hold a mirror up to ourselves to see in what role we might be cast, were Jesus to be teaching here with us this morning.

As I gaze into the mirror of this parable, the question that Jesus appears to be asking me, asking all of us, is what kind of tenant do we intend to be.

The mirror of this parable helps me to see that we have been given quite a vineyard ourselves. In fact, we have been given many vineyards. The earth is a vineyard. What kind of tenants will we be? Our families are a vineyard in which we are placed. What kind of tenants will we be? And, of course, there is this place. This great, wonderful, wild, beautiful place we call St. Paul’s. This, certainly, is a vineyard to which we have been entrusted and of which we are called to be tenants.

What kind of tenants will we be here?

I think one of the tests of a tenant is how it treats the stones it tills from the soil. As the stones are pulled from the earth, are they seen as obstacles to be rejected and discarded, or will they become cornerstones of something wonderful?

“Mas piedras feas!” “Mas piedras feas!”

This command came from the other side of the work site in Honduras. As we were carrying large rocks for the purpose of creating a foundation for a future home, the foreman did not want us to bring the beautiful rocks; these beautiful golden and beige almost perfectly square stones that were everywhere around us. Each time we brought one, he shook his head no. “Piedras feas! Mas piedras feas!”

Ugly rocks! More ugly rocks!

We spent the rest of our time there moving the perfect, beautiful rocks out of the way, so that we might find the ugly rocks.   And the small rocks. And the misshapen rocks. Each time we brought these ugly, small and misshapen rocks to the foreman, he would look at the rock for a bit. Then he would look at the foundation and the rocks that were already laid. He’d look back at the rock and then drop it into the foundation. It would fall into place as though it had been hewn just for that particular place, and that particular purpose.

“See, Jeff” one of your fellow parishioners called to me, “even the stones the builder would have rejected has become the foundation.”

It wasn’t hard to begin to see our own rock parable come to life in the faces of everyone around us. Over the course of the week, as the rocks continued to fall into the foundation, I could see that we were all rocks, of one kind or another. My fellow mission team members, the teachers at the school and the boys with whom we worked and laughed and ate; we were all these stones; all stones some builder might have rejected.

And we were all stones with potential to become foundations; to become cornerstones; if only in the hands of the right foreman; a foreman who could look at us, look at the world, look back at us, and place us in the midst of the world as though we had been hewn just for that particular place, for that particular purpose.

Perhaps, in the story of the wicked tenants, we are the tenants, called to live out our stewardship of the vineyards which we have been given with grace and joy for all that God has given us.

Perhaps, too, we are the stones which the builders rejected. Perhaps by some standards we are not the stones one might pick for the building of anything great. But we are the stones God picks to build something great.

But today, more than any of this¸ in the parable of building a house’s foundation in Honduras, we are called to be the foreman.   We are all to be the one who calls for the ugly rocks, who seeks out the small and misshapen rocks, to find just the right place, to build something really, really great.

We are pretty good at letting folks know, when they come through these doors that, no matter what the world says about who they are, here they are welcome, here they are beautiful, here they can be part of building something really great.

But it isn’t enough just to welcome them. It isn’t enough to wait here for them to walk through the door. Like the foreman in Honduras, we are called to seek them out. We are called to find those who wonder where they might fit, to bring them in and to help them find just the right place in this community. We must seek those stones that the builder might reject so that everyone might know the joy of being placed in community as though they had been hewn just for that particular place, for that particular purpose.

As we till the soil of our everyday lives, we are bound to encounter more than enough rocks. Some will be just the rocks we think we are looking for. Others might be, well, a little like this one. When these kinds of rocks come into our lives, we have a choice to make. We can reject them, or we can see the beauty that the foreman sees, and invite them to be part of the foundation of something really great.

What kind of tenant will we be?

AMEN.

© 2011 The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello