The Parable of a Long-Suffering God
Isaiah 5.1-7; Psalm 80.7-14; Matthew 21.33-46 (Proper 22A)
How I miss ER. Do you remember it? That Emmy Award-winning American medical drama series that ran from 1994 to 2009? Its’ frenzied pace was created by the show’s setting in the ever changing circumstances of an Emergency Room of the fictional County General Hospital in Chicago.
One episode comes to mind in my thinking on today’s gospel: an elderly lady Barbara admitted with serious chest injuries after a fall. Accompanying her is her former husband Harry who lives in the same apartment block. They fight incessantly while she is being attended to. It turns out they have been married and divorced three times. Barbara regales the staff with stories about her frightful marriage. Meanwhile Harry is being examined because he has hurt himself lifting Barbara – he makes it plain how stubborn and hot-headed his former wife is. They can’t bear to be together. Barbara’s health deteriorates quickly – ruptured spleen perhaps – emergency surgery is necessary – death a real possibility. Harry can’t bear the thought of living without her. They declare their undying love for one another as she goes for the anaesthetic. Needless to say the complexities of this relationship prompts rethinks amongst staff members caring for them who have their own love issues.
Love’s troubles, love’s complexities, unrequited love, spurned love, the pains of love, the joys of love, and the misunderstandings of love. Those things have long shaped the tragic imagination: we think of Shakespeare’s “Othello,” spurned Roderigo hastens the downfall of “one that loved not wisely, but too well”; the deaths of Juliet and her Romeo; the haunting arias of Bizet’s “Carmen.”; the desperation and the exaltation of Bridget Jones. The real-life tragedy of spurned love plays out in divorce courts across the land. And the Bible itself offers a startling panorama of love spurned. “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob” hears the complaints of his people against Egyptian slave drivers and knows their sufferings, comes to their rescue and makes with them a covenant of enduring fidelity (Exodus 3.4-9). Then unfolds sorry generations of failure and apostasy, followed again and again by a rejected and suffering God reaching out to an obtuse people. Hear it in the poetry of Isaiah (5.1-7 NRSV):
Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard:
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 watch-tower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.
And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
and people of Judah,
judge between me
and my vineyard.
What more was there to do for my vineyard
that I have not done in it?
When I expected it to yield grapes,
why did it yield wild grapes?
And now I will tell you
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
I will make it a waste;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it.
For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are his pleasant planting;
he expected justice,
but saw bloodshed;
righteousness,
but heard a cry!
A poignant reminder of love’s troubles. God, the friend, plants and constructs a vineyard with loving care so it will yield fruit, but what grows are wild grapes. A distraught God pleads with the vineyard keepers, the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the people of Judah, “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done?” Here the song turns tragic, (and the commentators tell us there’s a significant play on words) God will cause ruin to the vineyard because he looked for judgement (mishpat) but received bloodshed (mispach), for justice (sedaqah) but received a cry (se’aqah). Behind this threat stands the unjust exploitation of God’s people by the privileged and wealthy aristocracy of Jerusalem.
Today’s Gospel is a midrash on Isaiah’s song—in other words a kind of amplifying exposition and interpretation of scripture that fill it out, as it were—a way of handling scripture that the rabbis loved. The plot is simple: a man constructs a vineyard – reminiscent of God’s care in Isaiah 5. He leases the vineyard to others and then wants his share of the produce. He sends three servants, whom the tenants rough up and kill, followed by another set more numerous than the first, who are treated the same way. A bad lot, these tenants! With seemingly obtuse logic, the owner muses that if he sends his son, they will respect him. Not surprisingly, the tenants see this as an act of powerless desperation and kill the son. As in Isaiah, the mood shifts. The owner will come, “and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” These others will produce just and fair fruit.
In all the Gospels the parable becomes an allegory of the rejection of Jesus by the Jerusalem establishment, which results in the destruction of the Temple (in the year 70) and the transfer of the vineyard to other tenants. But I wonder whether on the lips of Jesus there aren’t subtler shades to it. The utterly illogical action of the owner in sending the son reflects that pattern in which a long-suffering and compassionate God reaches out in the face of the most blatant forms of apostasy and idolatry (think, for example of Hosea 11-12). So a better title for today’s Gospel might be The Long-Suffering God rather than The Wicked Tenants.
Isaiah summoned the earlier tenants to justice and righteousness by learning to do good, redressing those wronged, hearing the orphans’ pleas and defending widows (Isaiah 1.16). Those things of mercy, compassion and justice are the marks of living in loving relationship with God. Would be followers of Jesus who don’t do these will hear from Jesus the ominous words: “I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers” (Matthew 7.23).
The readings today re-enact on the vast and eternal scale of God’s abiding love the age-old tragedy of spurned love. Love that should grow all kinds of beautiful things is refused or abused. What had promised delight turns into crucifying hurt—literally. We are the gifted tenants of the vineyard of God – Isaiah and Matthew remind us what the consequences of neglecting that tenancy will be.
A reflection by that brilliant RC preacher, Flor McCarthy, makes the point personal and specific:
Lord, you planted me on this earth.
You fenced me around with the love of family and friends.
T heir care towered over me.
In the shelter of this tower I grew in safety and peace.
I put out early blossoms; I filled up with Leaves.
People had great hopes for me.
You had great hopes for me.
But now the year of my life is passing.
The harvest is approaching.
What fruit have I to show?
What if after all this care I had nothing to offer but sour grapes?
May you lord have mercy on me,
and with your patient urging
help me to produce the fruits of Love.
[New Sunday and Holy Day Liturgies by Flor McCarthy, Dominican Publications, Dublin 1998]
One episode comes to mind in my thinking on today’s gospel: an elderly lady Barbara admitted with serious chest injuries after a fall. Accompanying her is her former husband Harry who lives in the same apartment block. They fight incessantly while she is being attended to. It turns out they have been married and divorced three times. Barbara regales the staff with stories about her frightful marriage. Meanwhile Harry is being examined because he has hurt himself lifting Barbara – he makes it plain how stubborn and hot-headed his former wife is. They can’t bear to be together. Barbara’s health deteriorates quickly – ruptured spleen perhaps – emergency surgery is necessary – death a real possibility. Harry can’t bear the thought of living without her. They declare their undying love for one another as she goes for the anaesthetic. Needless to say the complexities of this relationship prompts rethinks amongst staff members caring for them who have their own love issues.
Love’s troubles, love’s complexities, unrequited love, spurned love, the pains of love, the joys of love, and the misunderstandings of love. Those things have long shaped the tragic imagination: we think of Shakespeare’s “Othello,” spurned Roderigo hastens the downfall of “one that loved not wisely, but too well”; the deaths of Juliet and her Romeo; the haunting arias of Bizet’s “Carmen.”; the desperation and the exaltation of Bridget Jones. The real-life tragedy of spurned love plays out in divorce courts across the land. And the Bible itself offers a startling panorama of love spurned. “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob” hears the complaints of his people against Egyptian slave drivers and knows their sufferings, comes to their rescue and makes with them a covenant of enduring fidelity (Exodus 3.4-9). Then unfolds sorry generations of failure and apostasy, followed again and again by a rejected and suffering God reaching out to an obtuse people. Hear it in the poetry of Isaiah (5.1-7 NRSV):
Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard:
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 watch-tower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.
And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
and people of Judah,
judge between me
and my vineyard.
What more was there to do for my vineyard
that I have not done in it?
When I expected it to yield grapes,
why did it yield wild grapes?
And now I will tell you
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
I will make it a waste;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it.
For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are his pleasant planting;
he expected justice,
but saw bloodshed;
righteousness,
but heard a cry!
A poignant reminder of love’s troubles. God, the friend, plants and constructs a vineyard with loving care so it will yield fruit, but what grows are wild grapes. A distraught God pleads with the vineyard keepers, the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the people of Judah, “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done?” Here the song turns tragic, (and the commentators tell us there’s a significant play on words) God will cause ruin to the vineyard because he looked for judgement (mishpat) but received bloodshed (mispach), for justice (sedaqah) but received a cry (se’aqah). Behind this threat stands the unjust exploitation of God’s people by the privileged and wealthy aristocracy of Jerusalem.
Today’s Gospel is a midrash on Isaiah’s song—in other words a kind of amplifying exposition and interpretation of scripture that fill it out, as it were—a way of handling scripture that the rabbis loved. The plot is simple: a man constructs a vineyard – reminiscent of God’s care in Isaiah 5. He leases the vineyard to others and then wants his share of the produce. He sends three servants, whom the tenants rough up and kill, followed by another set more numerous than the first, who are treated the same way. A bad lot, these tenants! With seemingly obtuse logic, the owner muses that if he sends his son, they will respect him. Not surprisingly, the tenants see this as an act of powerless desperation and kill the son. As in Isaiah, the mood shifts. The owner will come, “and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” These others will produce just and fair fruit.
In all the Gospels the parable becomes an allegory of the rejection of Jesus by the Jerusalem establishment, which results in the destruction of the Temple (in the year 70) and the transfer of the vineyard to other tenants. But I wonder whether on the lips of Jesus there aren’t subtler shades to it. The utterly illogical action of the owner in sending the son reflects that pattern in which a long-suffering and compassionate God reaches out in the face of the most blatant forms of apostasy and idolatry (think, for example of Hosea 11-12). So a better title for today’s Gospel might be The Long-Suffering God rather than The Wicked Tenants.
Isaiah summoned the earlier tenants to justice and righteousness by learning to do good, redressing those wronged, hearing the orphans’ pleas and defending widows (Isaiah 1.16). Those things of mercy, compassion and justice are the marks of living in loving relationship with God. Would be followers of Jesus who don’t do these will hear from Jesus the ominous words: “I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers” (Matthew 7.23).
The readings today re-enact on the vast and eternal scale of God’s abiding love the age-old tragedy of spurned love. Love that should grow all kinds of beautiful things is refused or abused. What had promised delight turns into crucifying hurt—literally. We are the gifted tenants of the vineyard of God – Isaiah and Matthew remind us what the consequences of neglecting that tenancy will be.
A reflection by that brilliant RC preacher, Flor McCarthy, makes the point personal and specific:
Lord, you planted me on this earth.
You fenced me around with the love of family and friends.
T heir care towered over me.
In the shelter of this tower I grew in safety and peace.
I put out early blossoms; I filled up with Leaves.
People had great hopes for me.
You had great hopes for me.
But now the year of my life is passing.
The harvest is approaching.
What fruit have I to show?
What if after all this care I had nothing to offer but sour grapes?
May you lord have mercy on me,
and with your patient urging
help me to produce the fruits of Love.
[New Sunday and Holy Day Liturgies by Flor McCarthy, Dominican Publications, Dublin 1998]