Wicked Tenants 22A Mathew 21:33-46 Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, October 8, 2023 5 o’clock
Jesus’ parable of the wicked tenant farmers is more like an allegory, with its meaning barely hidden. It is a good story from the viewpoint of the landowner. But let’s listen to another version. A wealthy farmer from Texas buys an abandoned apple orchard in Searcy, Arkansas. He prunes the trees, fertilizes them, and fixes the sales stand with a new hand-painted sign on Highway 67. He leases the place to a local family for less than market value, with the understanding they will return ten percent of the apples. With no business experience and high hopes of owning their place someday, the tenants agree and seal the deal with a handshake. The wealthy landowner gets into his black Hummer and drives back to Texas.
The tenants love the place like it is their own. They tend the trees from dawn to long after dark. They use organic pesticides. They haul water by hand during the summer drought, and when the first frost is predicted before the apples are ripe, they build small fires throughout the orchard and stoke them all night.
Come October, the air smells of applesauce. The trees are so heavy with fruit that they look like Victorian ladies wearing too much jewelry. A Little Rock cousin designs a web page advertising their homegrown Arkansas beauties. The harvest must be done quickly, so they work in shifts, some half-sleeping while others pick. Seventy-two hours later, mountains of apples rise from the wooden bins in the sales shed: Golden Delicious, Winesap, Arkansas Black, and most especially, Fuji.
Exhausted, the tenants admire the fruits of their labor when they hear gravel crunching under tires behind them, and turn to see an eighteen-wheeler with Texas plates backing into the shed. Two big men with bulging biceps start loading apples into the truck. When one of the tenants attempts to negotiate the ten percent business, the big guys pick him up and set him out of the way.
So, one of the tenants cranks up the Bobcat, while the others get out pitchforks and pruning hooks, and soon, they have persuaded the landowner’s men to return to Texas empty-handed.///
You know the tenants are wrong. It is not THEIR orchard. They have made a deal. The vineyard owner deserves his share of the produce, but the story does not sit right. Maybe because no one likes absentee landlords. Perhaps we have relatives who were sharecroppers, and we know how hard that life is: making someone else’s profit.
This is not the American way. From the beginning, this country has fueled the dreams of disenfranchised people from all over the world who have come looking for their own small piece of paradise.
This is the American way: owning our own home on our own land. Most of us believe in ownership, autonomy, and self-reliance. We do not like following someone else’s agenda.
Barbara Brown Taylor tells us if we believe Jesus’ parable,/ the American values are not the kingdom’s values. Ownership of the vineyard is NOT the issue. It is NOT for sale and NEVER will be. The owner is not looking for BUYERS; he is looking for tenants, RENTERS, who will give him his share of the produce at harvest time, which means the real issue is stewardship, a word that puts us on the defensive because it challenges our sense of ownership.
We worked hard for what we have. We have deeds, titles, and fence lines to prove it. We have registered land plots, mortgage payment books, and tax bills with our names on them. Getting these things was difficult, and keeping them requires financial courage. But according to this evening’s parable, we are simply deluding ourselves.
Our ancestors became divine tenants so long ago that we forgot the circumstances. Somewhere, someone misplaces the tenant’s agreement and writes up a deed instead.
The landowner is surprisingly easy to handle. When he sends messengers to remind the tenants of their agreement, it only takes a little burst of violence, and those still alive run away empty-handed. The owner could send the police or recruit his own army. He could return violence for violence, but he does not. He keeps sending messengers, pleading with the tenants to come to their senses and honor their agreement.
Finally, when there are rows of unmarked graves of messengers outside the vineyard walls, the owner sends his son, unaccompanied, unarmed, to teach the tenants things they have forgotten. He reminds us that ownership is a game we are playing, that we are guests on the earth, not rulers.
This is good news! Being guests relieves us of responsibilities we are not equipped to handle,/ like numbering the hairs of our head/ or speaking out of a whirlwind to command the eagles to mount up and make their nests on high/ or to bring rain on land where no one lives,/ or knowing when the mountain goats give birth.
As guests, we have free access to far more than we could ever earn. Instead of a vineyard full of one-acre tracts divided by barbed wire, we have acres and acres at our disposal, not to own but to use and enjoy through the owner’s generosity. All he asks is that we care for it, “this fragile earth, our island home,” and that we give back to God a portion of what we produce,/ not because God needs it,/ for he always turns around and gives it away,// not because God needs it,/ but because we need it. We need to give so we remember who we are: grateful guests. We are to take our lives like wrapped and ribboned gifts to return the favor by giving ourselves away to others.
The tenants kill the son, but he does not stay dead,/ and to this day, he walks the vineyard, reminding us that we are God’s guests, welcome on this earth as long as we remember whose it is/ and how it is to be used. We can love it as our own. We can even will pieces of it to our children, naming them our successors in the stewardship of the vineyard. //
We are God’s sharecroppers. We tend to the earth and its riches on someone else’s behalf. We are expected to represent God’s interests, being as generous with each other as God is with us. We are not owners. /This is not the American way, but it is the kingdom way, A NEW THING,// and I will tell you something:// the harvest will take your breath away.
Barbara Brown Taylor, “God’s Sharecroppers,” Gospel Medicine, pp. 96-100.
Mary W. Anderson, “Reflections on the Lectionary,” Christian Century, September 23, 2008.