Out of Sight, Out of Mind

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Today’s Gospel is a difficult one to unpack. Scholars who have written on the parable of the landowner and the vineyard agree that it presents the story of Israel as one of human failure and divine grace.

The vineyard is said to be the people of Israel, the landowner God, and the servant messengers are the prophets, rejected, as always. The son—well, we know that this is Jesus.

The Russian historian Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote: “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

As I see it, this is the problem with the way the Islamic State (IS) views its mission: they know what is right; everyone who does not agree must be eliminated.

If only it were all so simple! 

Jesus counseled his followers, “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5: 44-45).

This is the first difficulty, then, that we want to identify with those good servants who come to collect what belongs to the landowner, when the fact is, we are just as likely to be like those tenants who resented the landowner and wanted the vineyard for themselves.

A second difficulty has to do with the absurdity of some of the elements of the parable. If we think about it, the most bizarre thing about the whole story is that the landowner would send his own son, after the tenants had treated others so badly (recall that they stoned and even killed some).

Finally, there is the stupidity of the tenants who think they can get away with their plot to eliminate the heir and inherit the vineyard.

Have you heard the old saying, “Out of sight, out of mind.”?

By telling this parable, Jesus is saying that God the landowner, has planted the vineyard Israel and then gone off with very high expectations for them as moral and ethical leaders. God went off, probably to plant new vineyards, and expected that, in his absence, goodness would abound.

The dark side of the story is that, more often than not, we, like the tenants, think that with God away on other errands, we can do whatever we want and that the fruit of our labor does not belong to God but is our rightful inheritance.

Out of sight, out of mind is the delusion that our infinitely good and gracious God does not see the bad we do, and thus cannot hold us accountable.

Consider the recent example of the tens of thousands of people demonstrating peacefully for democracy in Hong Kong. Their displays of freedom are carefully kept out of sight and out of mind elsewhere in China.

Human rights groups may report that Chinese activists are being detained or intimidated for supporting the Hong Kong protests, but the media coverage is being limited to short, negative reports, in hopes that out of sight will mean out of world scrutiny.

Online, Chinese censors have even removed information and images about the protests.

This is not unlike the tenants who seized God’s messengers, beat one, killed another, and stoned another. They were hoping that God’s collective consciouness would not hear the real story.

But they were wrong.

God is persistent.

And God persists today. Although the old guard in China is trying to suppress what is going on in Hong Kong, there is an insatiable hunger for goodness and freedom driving students, professors, business leaders, intellectuals, and just common folk like you and me to have their voices heard. These good folks are trying to build vineyards in the fertile soil of opportunity without fear of punishment for God’s gift of free will.

There are other ways to interpret today’s gospel story. One analysis is that God was a fool to choose those particular tenants, and that God knew what they were going to do, and that while God expected that good would be done, God did not choose the best people for the job.

I wouldn’t say that God was foolish in his choice of tenants because I believe that God has given each of us the strength to be good and do good in this world.

One of history’s good tenants was commemorated in the church calendar yesterday.

The man who came to be known as Francis of Assisi was a rich young man who gave up all worldly possessions because he heard the voice of God calling him to a life of service to others. It is said that Francis heard a sermon from Matthew’s Gospel in which Christ tells his followers they should go forth and proclaim that the Kingdom of Heaven was upon them, that they should take no money with them, not even a walking stick or shoes for the road. This experience inspired Francis to devote himself to a life of poverty and service. Through the gentle plains and into the rugged hillsides of Umbria in Italy, Francis would minister to the poor and needy, build and rebuild small churches, and preach to both rich and poor that they should follow in the footsteps of Jesus.

One by one, young men and women were drawn to Francis, and he instilled in them the ethic that following Jesus was not about commercial wealth or political control, but about doing God’s work, and cultivating and nurturing goodness in those around them.

I believe that today’s gospel is an important reminder that we are both the vinedressers and the fruit of God’s vineyard.

Tending a vineyard in the right way means sharing healthy food with others. A good tenant is one who understands that all beings are created by God to live in harmony with the divine source of their lives. Such a way of living depends on seeing ourselves and our points of view as part of a whole picture, not with ourselves as central like the tenants in the vineyard, or government leaders trying to silence protesters in Hong Kong.

Friends, today’s gospel message is clear: we are called inwardly and spiritually to be good tenants of God’s holy vineyard, reaching out to all whom we meet. Let us remember the words of Jesus: the landowner’s only son, who said, "What you do to the least of these, you do to me."  And let us remember other scriptures like the Qu'ran that say things like, “Whichever way you turn, there is the face of God.”  Isn't this what Francis said as well? Didn't Mother Theresa say something similar? 

Let us see the face of God in all we meet, even the animals we bless in services on October 4. Let us recall that whatever we do to another creature, we do to God, for we are all connected, each to one another.

We may think we are out of God’s sight, be we are never out of God’s mind, God’s heart, or God’s love. Amen.