Things That Come to Us Naturally

Image Credit: Aerial view of vineyards at Markgräflerland, 21 October 2012 by Vladislav Sojka. Wikimedia Commons. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version.

 

Proper 22 (27), Year A
4 October 2026

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Psalm 19
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46

 

The parable Jesus tells in today’s Gospel reading appears violent. We will see that it appears violent because it is us who are violent, and because we are violent, violence is what we think of.

I want to begin with a few stories.

Last Sunday, when I was driving home, I listened to a radio program on indigenous culture and people.¹ It’s a weekly program, but it seemed particularly relevant as we were coming up to the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The segment of the show I caught was an interview with two authors, Elin Sandberg Miller, an immigrant from Sweden and, Derek Aronhie:nens Montour, a Mohawk man. They are the co-authors of the book Everyday Reconciliation: A Guide to Action and Change for All of Us. Early in the interview, Montour told of his experience as a young man in the Canadian military. This was at the same time as the so-called Oka Crisis or the Kanehsatà:ke Resistance, when the town of Oka in Quebec wanted to build a golf course on native burial ground. Montour was at a training event at CFB Valcartier and all in all there were perhaps seven or eight soldiers from Kahnawà꞉ke. On this particular day, as he was packing up, he could hear some of the troopers outside the tent commenting on the Oka Crisis, saying, “I hope they go in and kill all them savages.” When he went outside the tent, everyone looked at him with a blank stare, and there was no retraction or disagreement.

As shared with you previously, in 2023 Russel Moore, senior editor of the evangelical publication Christianity Today, gave an interview to National Public Radio in the US in which he said that a number of pastors had told him that when they would quote the Sermon on the Mount in sermons, specifically the part about ‘turning the other cheek,’ after the service someone would come up and ask, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?”
Moore said, “What was alarming (…) is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,’ the response would not be, ‘I apologize.’ The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.’”²

I still pay a little attention to what’s happening in the “Old Country”. And even if I were not, I could not have missed the recent electoral successes of the anti-democratic and xenophobic so-called Alternative for Germany.
About two or three years ago I read an article by a journalist who had grown up in what once was East Germany and who reflected on the fact that more hate crimes, particularly against immigrants, are committed in the former East than in the West, although they happen in the West as well. The author, who did not identify as Christian, put forward the hypothesis that while all of Germany was very secular, the East no longer had the cultural memory of stories like the Good Samaritan, no longer had the memory of Christian stories that had shaped the ethic of the Western world.

And lastly, William Cavanaugh, in a piece on religious violence, states that given certain conditions, Christianity, Islam, and other faiths can and do contribute to violence.
And that is certainly true regarding the history of today’s parable. Even though Jesus is a Jew and his audience are Jews, it was long assumed that when in verse 43 Jesus says to the religious leaders, Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits, that this meant that God’s people Israel had been replaced by the Church and thus terrible violence was unleashed against Jews, even though Jesus is a Jew and he is speaking not about God’s people in general but speaking to the religious leaders of his time.
However, Cavanaugh takes issue with the modern assumption that religion is more prone to violence than ideologies and institutions that are identified as “secular.” Such a reading of history can only exist if you omit the slaughters of the 20^th century from your analysis of history. And so Cavanaugh says that the myth of religious violence creates a blind spot about the violence of the secular nation-state. He says that the myth of religious violence promotes a dichotomy between us in the secular West who are rational and peacemaking, “and them, the hordes of violent religious fanatics in the Muslim world. Their violence is religious, and therefore irrational and divisive. Our violence, on the other hand, is rational, peacemaking, and necessary. Regrettably, we find ourselves forced to bomb them into the higher rationality.”³

Not too long ago someone I know expressed regret that a public figure had not died. My response was that God does not redeem the world through violence,⁴ which they knew to be true. Yet it seems that in times like these we are more likely to return to the instincts embedded in us since the Fall. And I am not talking about autumn but about life after humanity had disobeyed God and was forced to leave the Garden of Eden.

I think that we will find that death wishes come to us naturally, no matter who your enemy is. And since death wishes come to us naturally, it is no surprise that the Parable of the Wicket Tenants presents us with a death wish. When Jesus turns to the religious leaders who had questioned his authority and asks, “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”, they answer, “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.” In the scope of the story it turns out that they judge themselves, yet it appears violence is all they can think of. And it is how they envision God.
This should not surprise us, for we too believe that our problems can be solved by removing those we judge to be the problem. The idea that life would be easier if it were not for the other(s) comes to us naturally, even though we know this to be naive and know that the clock cannot simply be turned back.

It is wishful thinking to assume that the world would be better if it were not for this or that person, for this never takes into account who would fill the void. Worse is that this line of thought robs us of imagination and initiative and fails to understand that we are part of communities large and small which will always have serious disagreements, no matter how many offenders we remove. To somehow believe that ‘putting those wretches to a miserable death’ could be a solution, shows how we still believe that it is primarily the others who are the problem and this demonstrates a remarkable lack of introspection. Without seeking to exonerate the tenants in the parable nor those who have abandoned the common good for power and profit and who take the wrecking ball to established moral and societal consensuses, it appears that a lack of introspection and self-awareness lies at the root of our current malaise.

The Parable of the Wicket Tenants is the second of three parables Jesus tells in response to the question about his authority (21:23). Jesus builds the parable on Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard (our alternative first reading). In the vineyard the grapes have gone wild, in the parable the tenants have gone wild. And yet despite this echo, the parable is an absurdist story. It is absurdist because who would continue to expose one’s servants to such danger, and who, after the death of one’s servants would risk one’s own son? For the reader the absurdity of the narrative progression of the parable is paralleled with the absurdity of the world being saved through the Cross. But because we have long learned to read the story christologically, we may no longer notice the folly of the owner of the vineyard.

And yet noticing the absurdity of the parable may help us discern the absurdity of the world in which we live, because it is absurd to think that ‘putting those wretches to a miserable death’ could be a solution to anything.
It is absurd to believe that the exercise of power can build trust. I remember a piece in which a representative of an aid organization explained how it was impossible to earn the trust of the local Iraqi population when aid workers were outnumbered by security forces by a ratio of 3 to 1 or more.
It is absurd to permanently be at war and to expect peace.
It is absurd to break agreements and threaten allies and expect this to provide greater influence.

It is as if Jesus tells the parable to illustrate St Paul’s words to the Corinthians, “Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” (1 Cor 3:18-19) Yet the tenants, the religious leaders, expect God to be as they are, as do we.

That this parable has played such a dark role in the history of Christian Anti-Semitism confirms that after the Fall, death wishes come to us naturally. This, we need to take seriously for it determines how we view the world and it literally is a matter of life and death.
Further, theological education and biblical literacy matter. Yes, Jesus really did call on his followers to turn the other cheek.

About 25 years ago Stanley Hauerwas bemoaned the fact most of us do not think that an inadequately trained pastor might damage our salvation while we are certain that an inadequately trained doctor would likely hurt us.⁵ And he asserted that right theology is a matter of life and death. Two quick examples of how bad theology will hurt us are Christian Nationalism and the so-called prosperity gospel.

We are given the parable of the Wicket Tenants as we near the end of the liturgical year and contemplate the coming reign of Christ. And yet to perceive the parable as a story of violence would miss the point because it turns out that this violent text is not violent at all but an invitation into the way of peace, a way the world needs the Church to give witness to. It is an invitation into the way of peace despite the threat of the vineyard to be “given to a people that produces (…) fruits.” (v.43)⁶

The parable of the Wicket Tenants is an invitation into the way of peace, for even the murder of his Son Jesus does not provoke the Father to vengeful retribution. When Jesus returns on Easter morning, he comes offering forgiveness, he says, “Peace be with you!”⁷ And so the parable is an invitation into the way of peace because God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live. It is an invitation that includes us.

Amen.

 

Let us pray for the whole people of God in Christ Jesus, and for all people according to their needs. Each petition ends with Hear us, O God, to which we respond, your mercy is great.

~ a brief silence ~

We are right to demand discipline of ourselves and others. We know that it takes discipline and work to accomplish things. But why, O Lord, do we not apply this same discipline to our feelings of resentment and revenge, thereby making room for your Spirit, your imagination, and for your peace. Hear us, O God. Your mercy is great.

Help us imagine how different our world would be if we had not acted out of revenge after 9/11, after October 7, and so many other times, large and small, global or personal. Grant us your Holy Spirit that we would imagine a world without violence. Hear us, O God. Your mercy is great.

We give thanks that on Easter morning your Son Jesus did not return seeking vengeance but offering peace. We give thanks that you vindicated him as your beloved, as the One through whom you will make all things new, as the Prince of Peace who called your Church into the way of peace. Hear us, O God. Your mercy is great.

Forgive us our lack of imagination, our impatience, or projection of our own sins upon our enemies, and by your Holy Spirit give us the self-awareness and introspection to see how we are caught in a web of violence and force.
Create in us clean hearts, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within us.
Restore to us the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in us a willing spirit.
Hear us, O God. Your mercy is great.

Healer of our every ill, grant your healing presence to all who are ill in any way, and fill them with the joy of your presence, especially …., and all we bring before you, spoken or silently … Bless those who experience the blessing and burden of age, especially …. Bless their families also that they may have strength to accompany those they love. Hear us, O God. Your mercy is great.

All these things and whatever else you see that we need, grant us, O God, for the sake of Christ who died and rose again, and now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.