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Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
A
sermon by Dr. Jim Somerville
Pastor, Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
October 5, 2008
World Communion Sunday
Matthew 21:33-41
Before we sink our teeth
into the meaty parable that is this morning’s Gospel reading, we need to pick up
the knife and fork of literary criticism and spend a little time talking about
allegory. An allegory, as you probably know, is a story where the
objects or persons inside the narrative have a one-to-one correspondence with
meanings outside the narrative. For example: in this last month before the
election, if someone told you a story about a race between a donkey and an
elephant, you might assume, correctly, that it was a story about the Democrats
and the Republicans, especially if it were a really, really long race.
One of the pleasures of allegorical interpretation, then, is figuring out who or
what the characters stand for.
But sometimes it is not a pleasure.
One of the best-known allegories in the Bible is a parable told by Nathan the
prophet to David the king. David, you may remember, had committed adultery with
Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. When she later reported to David that
she was pregnant he tried to cover his sin by bringing her husband home from the
war and begging him to spend some time with his wife (nudge-nudge, wink-wink).
When Uriah refused to go down to his house as long as his fellow soldiers were
still on the battlefield, David sent him back to the war with sealed
instructions that he be put on the front lines, where he was killed. So, David
took someone who didn’t belong to him and tried to cover his tracks by killing
off her husband. He thought he had gotten away with it, thought that no one
knew. But then along came Nathan the prophet, whose name means “Gift.” This
parable is the gift that he brought (from 2 Samuel, chapter 12):
"There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The
rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one
little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him
and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare, and drink from his
cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a
traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd
to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man's
lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him” (Verses1-4).
Now, I’ve told you that this story is allegorical, and so you can begin to
figure out who the different characters stand for. The poor man, you think,
might stand for Uriah the Hittite. His “little ewe lamb” might be Bathsheba.
You see how it works? But David didn’t know that it was allegorical. He
thought that it was historical, that Nathan was just coming to report on
something that had actually happened. When he heard about this selfish and
heartless rich man, who would take the only lamb of the poor man—and she like a
daughter to him—well, he was incensed, and rightly so. "As the Lord lives,” he
declared, “the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb
fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity." And that’s
when Nathan taught David a lesson about allegory, about how objects or persons
inside the narrative have a one-to-one correspondence with meanings outside the
narrative. Taking a deep breath and bracing himself for what might follow
Nathan said, “You are the man.”
It is a terrible moment in the story, and we find that we are all bracing
ourselves for David’s response. What we get is not what we expect. Instead of
bellowing with rage at being found out, instead of having Nathan executed, David
bows his head and says, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Out of that
experience came one of the best-loved and most moving Psalms in all of
Scripture, Psalm 51, which is subtitled: “A Psalm of David, when the prophet
Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”
It says:
Have
mercy on me, O God,
According to your steadfast love;
According to your abundant mercy
Blot out my transgressions.
Wash
me thoroughly from my iniquity,
And cleanse me from my sin.
For
I know my transgressions,
And my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
And
done what is evil in your sight,
So
that you are justified in your sentence
And
blameless when you pass judgment.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And put a new and right spirit within me.
Do
not cast me away from your presence,
And do not take your holy spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
And sustain in me a willing spirit.
Then
I will teach transgressors your ways,
And sinners will return to you.
—Psalm 51:1-4, 10-13
This is the right kind of response to such an allegory. It is not the response
Jesus gets in today’s Gospel reading.
Standing there before the religious authorities in Jerusalem Jesus tells a
parable about a man who planted a vineyard. That’s all it took to bring to mind
that passage from Isaiah 5 where the prophet says, “My
beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and
cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in
the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.” It’s the allegory of the vineyard, and in that
story the “beloved” stood for God, and the vineyard stood for Israel. Everybody
knew that. And they knew that God had done everything he could for Israel. Put
his people in a good and broad land, a land “flowing with milk and honey.” All
he wanted from them was their loyalty and devotion, their worship and praise,
but instead of following him they had chased after other gods. “What more could
I have done for my vineyard that I did not do?” God asks. “Why when I expected
it to yield grapes did it yield wild grapes?” And so God decides to break down
its protective wall and let it be trampled and, in a sense, that’s just what
happened. The Babylonians came in and laid waste to Israel, took its citizens
into captivity and carried them off into exile.
But in the story Jesus tells a landowner plants a vineyard, puts a fence around
it, digs a winepress in it, builds a watchtower, and then leases it out to
tenants and goes off to another country. If the landowner in this story is God
and the vineyard is Israel, then God has put the whole nation into the hands of
these tenants. The question is, “How will they tend the vineyard?” And the
answer is…shocking. Because when the harvest comes, and the landowner sends
some of his servants to collect the fruit of the vineyard, these tenants seize
his servants and beat one, kill another, and stone the third. And when the
owner sends other servants, more than the first, the tenants treat them in the
same way. Finally, he sends his own son thinking, “Surely they will respect my
son!” But when they saw him they said, “This is the heir to the whole estate.
Let’s kill him and take the inheritance!” And that’s just what they did, those
dirty rotten scoundrels: they seized the son, killed him, and threw him out of
the vineyard.
Now, you wouldn’t even have to be very good at allegorical interpretation to
know what’s going on here. Jesus is talking about God’s vineyard—Israel—and the
people he has rented it out to—the religious authorities. When God sent his
servants, the prophets, to collect the fruit of the vineyard they were beaten
and stoned and killed. And when he sent more prophets these wicked tenants did
the same to them. “And then he sent his own son,” Jesus says, looking the
religious authorities in the eye, “and guess what they did to him?” Thinking
about what will actually happen in the next few days Jesus says, “They seized
him, and threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.” And then he asks the
religious authorities, the very ones who would do this to him, “What do you
think the owner of the vineyard will do to those tenants when he comes?” And
the religious authorities (who are apparently not very good at allegorical
interpretation) say, “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.”
And then Jesus waits for them to figure it out. And waits. And waits.
Finally, as they stand there wondering who he’s talking about, Jesus says, “I
tell you, the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people
that produces the fruits of his kingdom.” Then and only then do the religious
authorities realize he is talking about them, and when they do it makes them
furious. They want to arrest him on the spot, but what can they do? He’s
surrounded by those crowds, and all those people think of him as a prophet.
They’ll have to think of another way and knowing them I’m sure they will. Those
miserable wretches. Those dirty rotten scoundrels.
But today it’s not them I’m thinking about as much as us. Do you remember what
they said? That the owner of the vineyard would take it away from them and
lease it to tenants who would give him the fruit at produce time? Well, I think
that’s us. I think that through Jesus Christ God’s Kingdom has gotten a whole
lot bigger than the nation of Israel, and the gate to that Kingdom has gotten a
whole lot wider. These days we don’t have to be born into Abraham’s family, we
don’t have to keep Moses’ laws, we just have to believe in Jesus and there we
go, strolling through the gate into God’s vineyard. And on this world communion
Sunday we recognize how many people have come through that gate—hundreds of
millions, some would say billions, from every part of the world. We’re all in
here together—people from Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, North and South
America—celebrating God’s goodness, gathering at the Lord’s table, smacking our
lips and feasting on the bread of life, slurping from the cup of the new
covenant. But let us not forget for a moment why we’re here. We’re here
because the old tenants wouldn’t give the owner the fruit of his vineyard.
We’re the new tenants, but if we won’t give the owner the fruit of his vineyard
he’ll toss us out, too, won’t he?
So, what is the fruit God is looking for? Well, here’s a place to start. Try
loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Try loving your
neighbor just as much as you love yourself. No, really. Do it. Put your back
into it. Break a sweat. Fill bushel baskets with the labor of your love. And
then, when the owner of the vineyard comes to collect what is his, give it to
him.
—Jim Somerville
©2008
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