SERMON FOR THE 4TH OCTOBER 2026
Matthew Chapter 21 verses 33-46
October 4 is the day that the church remembers one of its great saints, St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis is remembered by most of us for his great love of all of God’s creatures, and for creation itself. He was particularly passionate in bringing that love to those that the world often forgot. One other thing that St. Francis is known for, was his passion for God and for all that God made, and the time he spent in prayer. He would spend hours in prayer before our Lord. We are told he would spend most time in prayer before God and would say a simple prayer: “Who are you, God? And who am I?” by way of reflection. St. Francis of Assisi had a love of Creation and a way being that respected who we are in the big scheme before God. This is a theme that can strangely be found in a parable that doesn’t say it outright, though prompts in that direction. The parable is found in the gospel reading found in Matthew chapter 21 verses 33 to 46
Jesus relates a parable to the chief priests and elders about a vineyard and the tenants of the vineyard.
What Does this Parable Teach Us about God?
In the parable, we hear about a landowner who has planted a vineyard, leased it to tenants, and gone to another country. This was usual practice of absentee landowners in the Roman Empire. They would collect their rent every five years So, a large gap in time. An interesting aside is that the Chief Priests and elders (who Jesus addresses this parable to) were landowners themselves and often had a vineyard. This puts another layer to this parable that gives us a clue that it is not only about an allegory about God, it is about practices of the time.
When we view this from the Christian perspective of today, we are reminded that God is the ultimate landowner and we are merely his tenants. That’s why we as Christians understand ourselves to be stewards of God’s creation, rather than owners.
The tenants
If we imagine renting a house and looking after it so well, that we might be inclined to think we owned the property after five years without rent. In a normal scenario, tenants might just protest.
However, the parable is not a normal scenario with the servants collecting the rents are at first beaten and then later killed as they came along to collect the rent. Worst of all, the owner’s son is killed and the law of the time in Israel and Roman rule was that if the heir to property was killed, then they could take ownership of the land. Notice, I didn’t say rightfully, though in law speak, rightful owner’ was the terminology.
So, just because the landowner appeared to forgot all about this vineyard, doesn’t mean that the tenants became the owners. It’s not so great a stretch to think that these tenants really began to believe that they owned the vineyard.
Isn’t that always a danger when they haven’t seen the owner in a long while? Isn’t that a danger for ourselves? It is not unheard of in the news. One classic case was the finding of a Spanish sunken boat that contained gold and treasures taken from Columbia. This was found in recent years and it was a Spanish ship, in the 1700’s that was taking the gold. The Spanish government thought it was rightfully theirs and the Columbians had to fight many legal battles and still lost some of this treasure to the Spanish. It left a lot of ongoing resentment.
When we look at the parable, we find something unusual in the landowner behaving in what appears as a merciful way.
So, we traditionally interpret this parable as God as the landowner, the tenants being the people of Israel (or their leaders), the servants as the prophets and the owner’s son as Jesus. It has parallels to what has played out it in the Old Testament with God bringing mercy to the people of Israel and being met with rejection that culminates in Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Placed in Matthew’s Gospel, near the very end of Jesus’ ministry, it’s not much a stretch to see that the Son is really Jesus, sent by our heavenly Father to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom, and to call everyone to repentance. T
Some scholars see that God’s mercy is in this parable and others see that God’s patience can run out and judgement is more prominent in this parable. This thinking derives from verse 41 where Jesus puts a question to the Chief Priest and elders.
Jesus addresses his audience: “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” The answer is obvious, and the tenants offer it: “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” (verse 41). The chief priests and elders could see themselves in this story as the landowner and their response sounds reasonable, though lacks the mercy of the landowner in the parable.
Some see this as mercy and others see that Jesus is pronouncing judgement awaiting those who assume they can take over what is not theirs. I think there is a bit of both going on. Though it is important to hold the thought that the charting of God’s action in the Old Testament and with Jesus’ arrival is one of seeking the people of Israel to change their ways and come back to God.
Ownership
So, what happens when the son appears at the vineyard? The story seems unlikely, because how likely are the tenants to do what they do. By killing the landowner’s son they would inherit the vineyard?
Well, our cogs are working in our minds and seeing this is exactly what happened to Jesus. The assumption that they were the rightful owners. We could see this as just about Chief Priests and Elders. However, this is a parable about assuming that God won’t turn up and the people thinking they are the owners of everything in this world. In this sense, there is no judgement and yet the ways and consequences of bad stewardship bring their judgement anyhow.
When looking to God, we are asked to be good stewards of Creation and to take seriously just ways and peaceful ways.
What we do see in this parable is destructive ways, entitled ways, ways that push God to the background and even do not acknowledge that God exists. The vineyard is described as a country in the Old Testament and the question here is God is the maker or not of the vineyard – or Creation in the first place.
We can easily see parallels with the religious leadership not wanting to hear what Jesus is saying and them being the owner. There is an arrogance around authority and they don’t like the way Jesus is confronting them.
We can limit our thinking to those bad Chief Priests and Elders, though the sentiment is wider and asks how seriously we understand that God is the Creator.
We have only to look at Medieval history to see that God was in the background as some parts of religion used religion to take what they could rather than be good stewards in looking after not only creation. God had to remind people from the pious to rebel through the prophets of who and what God wants for people.
What Does this Parable Teach Us about Ourselves?
The parable happens at the end of Jesus’ ministry and Jesus’ collision with the Jerusalem leadership is a thread running through the whole Gospel, just as the church would later be in conflict with the synagogue as both communities attempted to deal with the consequences of the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple in an around A.D. 70. The arguments in those communities were most often not about religious practices, but about the temple leaders’ collusion with exploitative economic and social policies of the Roman Empire, and later over different ways of negotiating life under that Empire in the church and the synagogue from which it was “called out” (ekklesia).
In that way, the parable is also a practical social justice comment on systems that are not working or unfair. It could be a comment directly about the Chief priests using God ordained power while availing of the benefits of the Roman system at the time that was doing no favours to their people.
It could be these , though what is more important to Matthew is the focus on a totally new structure of which Jesus himself is the “cornerstone.” That structure is God’s reign or empire, which Jesus has been proclaiming from the beginning of his ministry and which the church will continue to proclaim in Jesus’ name. What is more apparent is life is better served when anchored in Jesus Christ.
That applies today.
We can see that Jesus appears to be teaching us that we are now the tenants, the stewards, of God’s vineyard. We have been entrusted with this world, with all that we have, and are now called to care for it well, and to give our creator the fruits of our harvest. This parable is saying not to take any of this for granted. Our world, our life, our salvation – it is all grace, all a gift from God. We, too, can be tempted at times to think that we can keep the fruits of God’s vineyard for ourselves. We work hard, making our living and providing for ourselves and our family, and it’s easy to forget that everything that we have is not ours, but the Lord’s.
2,000 years later. Judgement day still hasn’t arrived. And whether or not we share the fruits of our harvest with those in need, we will probably not be struck down by lightning. And whether or not we are nice to our neighbours this week, we will probably not receive a visit from the owner of the vineyard to receive the consequences. Whether or not we have lived selfishly this week, we probably won’t notice any immediate consequences from our Heavenly Father.
But then again, today is all that we can be certain of. So why would we put off living faithfully as God’s steward until tomorrow, if we can do it today? Why would we tempt God to take the Kingdom of God away from us, and give it to a people who will produce the fruits of the kingdom, as Jesus warns us in this gospel reading?
Why would we do that? There can really only be one reason – we would do this only if we believed that the landowner would never return. When it comes right down to it, this is a parable about faith, about the importance of believing that God is very real. This world is a vineyard that is not owned by us. We have a landowner who has entrusted us with it, and will one day hold us accountable to this trust.
Closing
Who is God? Who are we? These questions, asked by St. Francis, are answered in many and various ways throughout God’s word. Today, we learn that God has given us a beautiful vineyard that is not all about Red Hill wineries and more the bigger picture of how we live, how we go about living with each other and do we bring ourselves before God, like St. Francis did and say, Who is God? Who are we?
In doing so, to use what we have been given to bear fruit in our lives, not for ourselves, but for God.
References
Commentary on Matthew 21:33-46 Sharon Ringe Working Preacher
My Pastoral Ponderings Caring for God’s Vineyard, Sermon on Matthew 21:33-46 by James Laurence.