Isaiah 5:1-7 Psalm 80:7-15 Phil 3:4-14 Matthew 21: 33-46
On Friday I spent hours trying to form a sermon from this morning’s gospel passage. Honestly, it was mediocre at best, but I knew I would be at synod all day yesterday so I figured it would have to do. When will I learn that God will drop God’s words into my heart whenever God chooses – like last week with the church that was falling into ruins analogy!? So, it will come as no surprise to you, but still a surprise to me that, at the opening Eucharist early yesterday, the members of Synod were treated to a sermon by the Reverend Canon Uncle Glenn Loughrey, Chair of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Anglican Council, and priest in the diocese of Melbourne. He blew us all away with his words about this coming week’s Voice to Parliament Referendum, and as he spoke – not on this passage at all, but on something quite different – so the meaning of this passage from Matthew’s gospel took on a message I couldn’t ignore. I scribbled in my synod books and here is my reflection on the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, the Australia 2023 edition.
Listen to another parable… there were landowners who planted a civilisation.
The land was rich and prosperous for almost 60,000 centuries and then Tenants came – uninvited tenants – and they took the vineyards and the watchtowers and the land and their children and their country. And they turned the landowners and their children and their children’s children into their slaves. They beat them and stoned them and put them to death. They stole the land, kept it and dominated it.
And the landowners, for 60,000 years still lived in hope that there might be relationship – that tenants and landowners might be able to live together well. The first landowners didn’t want to own the land in domination – they wanted to share their beautiful land and its produce and wealth with the tenants, and their families and visitors who came to explore and enjoy it. But never was it thus, because the tenants rose up, took over, and kept from the landowners what was theirs.
And now we are at harvest time again – this week, this Saturday, in 2023. And again, the first landowners are sending their own children to claim their harvest. And they are not asking for everything, just for what they are owed – they are not even asking for all they are owed – just a small share of it.
And whether we like it or not, we are part of the group of tenants. We hold in our arms the entire harvest and it is for us to share. It is our chance of repentance for the years we have been greedy and grabbing. And it is time.
It is time to give to the landowners what is rightfully theirs – theirs and their children’s. And it is time to do this small thing that says thank you for the years you have shown patience and perseverance in considering that these tenants are worth investing in – worth keeping on sending their children to, to make another attempt and another one, and another one, to receive what is theirs and share with us what we already have.
And when the spirits of the first landowners see what we tenants do, what will they think?
Will we give them their produce at this harvest time?
It is time.
It is time to say yes. Amen.
Holy Adventures 