Story

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
October 8, 2023

22 Proper A 

          Sometimes a very few words tell an entire story.  In our family, those words would be “birthday cake.”  In our family the words “birthday cake” mean a very specific triple chocolate/peanut butter confection that weighs about 5 pounds.  I know the exact weight because UPS has delivered them all over the eastern part of the US since 2005 when our first born left for college.  Now we have grandchildren so four more cakes are delivered or sent every year.  Just last weekend, Don and I took one to Cincinnati for Sabrina’s first birthday.  But more than just a tradition, as delicious as that tradition may be, getting the birthday cake is about identity.  You know you are part of the family when you get a birthday cake mailed to you, wherever you are, so our daughters-in-law knew they were part of the family long before they were married or even engaged to our sons.  They remember their first birthday cake.  The cake is a rite of passage and getting a birthday cake means that you are beloved and accepted as a member of the family. 

          In the reading from Exodus, we hear a whole story in just a few more words than “birthday cake.”  When God gives the people the 10 commandments, God begins by saying “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”  In those few words, God tells the whole story of the people’s deliverance from exile, from the call of Moses, through the plaques, to the Passover and the deliverance at the Red Sea.  That story is the foundational story for the Israelite people.  Over and over again in scripture, that story is told with the same few words.

          The 10 commandments are not just a set of laws to be obeyed to keep God happy.  The 10 commandments are a matter of identity and a gift to show the people how they are to live in freedom.  The people are to live in relationship with God by having no other gods, nor idols, nor making wrong use of God’s name, and by setting apart one day as sabbath.  The people are to live in relationship with each other by honoring their parents, neither murdering nor committing adultery, nor stealing, bearing false witness, or coveting.  Because the Israelites wanted to make all of life pleasing to God in gratitude for the great gift of freedom, they dedicated themselves to figuring out exactly how to keep the 10 commandments in every aspect of their lives.  This was not a burden, but an act of gratitude and joy for the people.

          The beginning words of Jesus’ parable this morning tell another story.  When Jesus says “There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower,” the original Jewish audience would have immediately remembered a passage from the prophet Isaiah that begins “Let me sing for my beloved a 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 watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it.”  How could the religious leaders hearing Jesus’ parable not think of this beautiful passage from Isaiah?  But when Isaiah’s vineyard yields wild grapes, God is furious and destroys the vineyard, drawing a parallel between the vineyard and the destruction of Israel by the Assyrians in the 8^th century BC.  So no wonder when Jesus asks what the landowner will do to the wicked tenants in the parable, those listening said “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.”  That makes perfect sense given the destruction in the book of Isaiah.

          Both the prophet Isaiah and Jesus tell a love song.  The love song in Isaiah does not end well for the people due to their disobedience and their failure to live as people who were delivered from bondage in Egypt, carried through the wilderness, and set in the promised land.  Ultimately, after much destruction and 150 or so years, the people will be restored to the land having learned much while in exile about how to be God’s people.  The love song in Jesus’ parable of the vineyard ends differently. The landowner takes the one whom the tenants rejected and turns it into a new cornerstone.  God takes the death of the son and turns it into resurrection life, takes hatred and turns it into love.

          How do we, as 21^st century Christians, live our lives in gratitude for the great love of God given to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus?  We can easily think that Jesus’ parable is about someone else, those who rejected Jesus during his earthly life, that it is a parable only for those who wanted to arrest Jesus but feared the crowds.  But both this parable and the reading from Exodus call us to lives of gratitude for God’s abundant and lifegiving love, gratitude that is expressed not just with our lips but with the actions of our lives, actions that show our identity as people of God, and actions that care for all that God has given us.  At Christ Church, today is all about gratitude as we gather at this table to give thanks to God and receive the bread and wine of thanksgiving, which is what the word Eucharist means.  Later this morning/then we will gather around tables in the Parish Hall or Upper Room and share platters of pancakes as we have conversation about how we live our lives and use our resources as people of gratitude.  How do we care for our part of God’s vast vineyard?  Our lives of gratitude and thanksgiving will use very few words and a lot of action to tell the story of all that God has done for us.

                                                                   Amen.