Let’s imagine we are in a Bible study group. We might begin by recalling what we know of landlord tenant law. This provides that a land owner may allow another person, called the tenant, to use the owner’s land as if it were their own. In exchange for this privilege, the tenant agrees to pay the owner of the land some fraction of what the land produces; for instance, 10%. We might also recall that in this case the landowner not only gave the tenants the use of his land, the owner also, most generously, put in some capital improvements, so that the tenants would have a head start in making a go of their enterprise. For instance, he owner erected a fence to keep out predators; the owner put in a wine press to make it easier to squeeze the grapes; and the owner even built a watch tower so the tenants could oversee their entire operation.
In our study group we would realize that Jesus means this story to teach us about our life and our relations with God. The landowner would be God and we would be the tenants. The vineyard would be our life, given to us by God. We are to make something of it and give a portion of it back to God. So far so good; but what might Jesus have meant by the capital improvements? What do the wine press, the fence and the watch tower represent? In other words, what assets did God throw into the bargain to make our lives more successful? We might name a lot of things: capacity for compassion or health or family or intelligence, energy, conscience, common sense – each of us came into this world with many God-given assets in addition to the main asset of life itself. So this parable tells us that we are in relationship to God the way a tenant is in relationship to a landowner; and not only that, but our landowner, God, has been exceptionally generous to us in all that God has put at our disposal.
Now if this is a proper Bible Study group, we would move on to apply what we just learned to our own lives. So we talk about harvest time, time for the collection. Our Landlord has two ways to collect from us, just two. We can give God our time and we give God our money. Apart from these two things, we have nothing to give back to the Landowner.
That sounds like paying taxes, only worse. Not only do we have to hand over a proportion of our money, but also our time. Wrong. In fact, sharing our harvest with God is the opposite of paying taxes. And it’s not because God has no IRS to come and take what is owed by force. The opposite is this: if we fail to pay taxes we go to jail. If we fail to pay our ‘harvest’ we remain in jail.
Following in the footsteps of Isaiah, Jesus ends his parable harshly. He asks his hearers what will happen to the tenants who do not pay? And his hearers say this: “[The landowner] 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.” Jesus does not correct them when they say this. In fact, whenever Jesus’ teaching makes God sound punitive or harsh, it is because we are up against a spiritual law, and unlike human laws, spiritual laws cannot be broken with impunity.
The law here is this. God created us to be fully alive. We come from our mother’s womb with physical life, but then we have to grow into fulness of life, what Jesus called eternal life. St. Irenaeus put it this way. “The glory of God is the human being fully alive.” God has given us any number of aids to come fully alive, but the two essential aids are to give of our time and to give of our money. This is the spiritual law: we cannot come fully alive until and unless we give in these two ways. Otherwise, we live in a self-made prison, which is to say we live in a tightly constricted world.
As for money, giving, even to God, can be hard to do. It is common to feel we do not have enough, or to believe we will come up short at the end of the month. But we do it anyway, as cheerfully as we can, as a token of our faith and trust in God’s bounty. But what about our time? That, too, feels in short supply, especially when it comes to prayer. We can usually find time to serve at the soup kitchen, or Habitat for Humanity, or any number of similar places where we do God’s work. But prayer? Giving time to God for prayer is the hardest thing of all to give, and yet that is what God most needs from us.
I think that is why Jesus told this parable with such a harsh ending. He is willing to scare us into doing what is needful, if that is what it takes. Not because God is actually harsh, but because the consequences are harsh if we fail to give. God, through Jesus, will go to any lengths to help us come fully alive. And this is another spiritual law: you may be absolutely certain that whatever God asks of us is for our own good. Whether we like it or not, God insists on showering us with blessings. In fact, we could let all this rain we are having serve as a reminder of how God showers us with blessings. But we have to stop hunkering down under our umbrellas! Let us resolve at this season of harvests to fold up our umbrellas and walk out freely into the rain with up-turned faces and outstretched arms. Amen.
Tags: giving to God
