Weekly Devotion: Sour Grapes
Weekly Devotion: Sour Grapes
The world is the vineyard that has been given to us by God and we are the tenants. How are we tending to this world?
Jesus tells the story of a man who plants a vineyard and then rents it out to tenants. He goes away for a while. After a while, it’s time to collect the rent, so he sends one of his servants. The tenants decide at this point that they don’t want to pay rent and beat him up. The landlord sends another servant and he is beaten up. He sent a third and that one was killed. This goes on for a while- the landlord sends a servant to collect the rent and the tenants either injure the servant or outright kill him.
Finally, the owner decides to send his only son. His son was the sole heir to this land. This point was not lost on the tenants. As they see the son coming from a distance, they see this as a chance to get the land. In those days, if an owner has no heirs, the land can go to the tenants. The tenants had wanted the land all to themselves and this was their chance.
When the landowner’s son arrives, they seize him, kill him, and in a sign of ultimate disrespect, they throw his body outside of the vineyard.
The landlord hears of this and is enraged. Jesus says that the next thing that happens is that the owner will send people to come and punish the tenants and when I say punish, I mean kill. Judgment came to the tenants.
The problem with tenants is their sense of not thinking of others. They thought that because they worked on the land, they had a right to the land and the owner had no right. They were willing to do whatever it took to prove that point, even if it meant killing the landlord’s son.
This parable was meant as a warning to the religious leaders of Jesus’ time. They were the type of people who took pride in their following of the law, not caring much for how others were or were not able to follow along. Jesus, predicting his death, knew that these leaders would reject him and would seek his death. This parable itself is a take on an older text from Isaiah 5 called the Song of the Vineyard where the writer likens Israel to a vineyard that grows rotten grapes. The gardener was so upset he decided to let the garden grow wild, to be left to its own devices. The vineyard was Israel and it wasn’t following the ways of God so God was ready to give them up to face the consequences of their actions, which happened in due time.
We live in a time where civility is nearly gone. We seek to be with like-minded people and not encounter anyone who has a different view. Our college kids want safe spaces where they don’t have to hear different opinions. This has led to what David Brooks, the conservative columnist calls anti-politics, a sense that the other side is not just wrong, but evil. It is in times like these that we see the rise of anti-politicians like Donald Trump who show no concern for those who don’t agree with them.
Have we become so full of ourselves that our society has been left to grow wild and produce sour grapes; the consequences of our actions?
The world is the vineyard that has been given to us by God and we are the tenants. How are we tending to this world?
In these challenging times of political polarization, we followers of Jesu must be witnesses of character, because that matters- in our church and in our world. We should expect our leaders to be people who care for others. As followers of Jesus, we should speak out when there are people who seek to lead from a position of hatred, meanness, and selfishness. None of these are godly virtues; they are the characteristics of the tenants, people who thought only of themselves, only in having more, and saw others as being in the way of what they wanted.
Jesus Christ was one who treated others with respect, especially those that are forgotten. He crossed political and social boundaries to share his message. He gave up his life to save the lives of others. These are the values, the aspects of character that we should be looking for in leaders as well as in our own lives.
The parable ends with the tenants facing judgment. This is not something we should look forward with glee. The God we serve is one that shows love even to those who don’t deserve it. But flagrant violations of virtues cannot go unchallenged. The tenants came to a point where they had to face the consequences.
May God give us the wisdom to be faithful stewards in our world.