Teaching by Frances Flatman on next weekend's Bible Readings :-
What does and did the vineyard and the fruit of the vine symbolise in Jewish thought? We have to remember that it evokes very ancient imagery, as the ‘spies’ first sent into the land from the Exodus party brought back large bunches of grapes, representative of the fertility of the Promised Land; and more powerfully, grapes became images of the very nation itself, living as the chosen of God, the Kingdom. Wine its product symbolised wholeness, and in time stood for the obedience of Israel, its loyalty to God, and it was central to their festivals and their religious life; and of course our Eucharist took and developed Passover imagery and its use in our Christian liturgy. Ancient Christianity borrowed heavily from Judaism in its iconography, covering tombs and ceilings with carvings and frescos of the vine harvest, as we can see today in S Constanza in Rome, where it represents entry into God’s kingdom. The vineyard, and all its powerfully suggestive images, therefore stand for the very heart of Judaism, and the Christianity which grew out of it; its images were never pretty pictures but deeply representative of the heart of both faiths, long long before Christianity portrayed the cross or figures of the saints.
When therefore in the late 8th century BCE, First Isaiah, writer of the Assyrian destruction of Samaria/Israel, wrote of the national tragedy of the fall of the northern kingdom in 721 BCE, he gave us a tragic poem or lament for the folly of his nation, which we have as Isaiah 5:1-7, in which his ‘friend’ God planted a vineyard and took immense care over it, only to find that despite all his love and attention it produced, not the choicest wine, but only bitter wild grapes. Halfway through the lament, we see how God takes over from the narrator and speaks in person of his utter devastation at the result of his rejection by his people (the vine) and his response in which he will utterly destroy the product of his labours. Great love paean and tragic poem, it speaks of a fractured relationship between God and his chosen, and the retribution wreaked by the Assyrians as his agents with their destruction of the cities of Israel and Judah. It’s picture of the terrifying might of the Assyrian war machine; ‘I will lay it waste, unpruned, undug; overgrown by briar and thorn. I will command the clouds to rain no rain on it,’ gives a chilling picture of cities and towns overrun by the enemy.
In our Gospel, (Matthew 21:33-43) we catch up once more with Jesus in Jerusalem for Passover and his passion. He is being questioned by the Temple chief priests and elite after his attack on their abuse of the Temple. Last week’s parable was the first response he made, followed by this Jesus’ gloss on Isaiah’s story, but brought up to date as those in power in Judaism challenge him at every move and plot his downfall, resolutely refusing to allow his understanding of Judaism to have acceptance as they clung onto their power and wealth, focussed on the Temple and its deadly liturgies by which they controlled the people; and a people who for centuries had awaited the messiah. Jesus updates the parable by making it easily understandable with the tenants and the owner of the vineyard and their bitter and calculated refusal to accept the terms on which they had farmed the vineyard for the owner/God. Pointedly the tenants simply resort to ever escalating violence to keep what they have in effect stolen from the owner/God, and ultimately kill his slaves and then his heir who is of course God the Son. Such a story would have resonated amongst Greco-Romans as a heinous act of revolt, punishable by death for the perpetrators. Briefly covered in this parable, is the image of God the vineyard owner/creator and his cherishing of Israel, so central to Isaiah, only to have the tenants savagely reject both owner and his son, in Matthew representing God the Father and Christ. This appalling story is not merely one of rejection and revolt, but of savage hostility to the God who made them and gave them everything. We witness Christ the true vine and the wine trodden underfoot by wicked men as he travels the path to his inevitable crucifixion. Significantly, Jesus then shifts the image, quoting from Psalm 118, one of the Passover psalms, and turns to the Gentiles. It is a picture quite as devastating as that written by Isaiah, as Jesus tells a parable unmistakable in its reminiscence of their past mistakes and hinting at the retribution which would follow in the failed Jewish Revolt in 70 CE. ‘I tell you, then, that the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.’ Parables of Jesus are always parables of the kingdom, teaching and developing our thoughts, and showing us models of kingdom living; they are never isolated stories to entertain, but gritty tales of challenge and revolution.
Our Reading from Philippians, (4:6-9) and the closing part of a series of Letters to this community, focusses on Christian living and how that relates to their life in Christ. Last week we saw how he had sent them a profoundly developed Creed about the nature of Christ; but today’s reading shows us that later there had been some serious ‘slippage’ among the community, clearly with some succumbing to the Judaisers who so frequently dogged Paul’s ministry. Clearly too there had been divisions within the community, probably as different people, here women possibly of greater class, battle for power; so different from the self-emptying of the Christ of the Creed. And the community is under stress. Paul writes to reassure and reset their focus, recalling them to what is critical in their belief in Jesus as practised in their daily lives. As a guide he simply recalls them to his own behaviour; ‘Keep doing all the things that you learnt from me and have been taught by me and have heard or seen that I do, then the God of peace will be with you.’ This copying or modelling of oneself on Christ and on Paul suggests that their lifestyles were common knowledge and all that mattered for the future of the communities.
All this should surely prod us to thought on the nature of our own kingdom life and our daily encounters with Jesus. Just what is our vision of the Church? What of our place in it? Do we expect merely to be obedient ‘sheep’, or are we all called like Jesus to question and battle with the status quo? Is it enough to worship in solemn liturgies of great beauty, but ignore the state of our Church, its lack of priests and its abuse of so many, women, and children, by systems which work to conserve the establishment, as did the Jerusalem Temple elite which Jesus so consistently attacked? Do we allow the present system to infantilise us, and do we fail to rise to the challenge in which we are not called to constant acquiescence but to be people of God with vision and responsibility for the future of our communities with outreach to the poor and needy and those thirsting for the faith, but who are fearful of the buildings we erect which now so easily repel rather that embrace? Have our churches become the new Temple which works to exclude rather than draw all into the divine image? In Paul’s Churches it is clear that many were sent out to evangelise others, offering them a place in the kingdom, where are we in this picture?
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