When I first moved to Philadelphia, six years ago, I lived in a third floor apartment, in the front of an old townhouse on Pine Street, almost at the corner of 19th Street. It was a great old building. It’s one of those wide old row-houses that has three large windows across the front on every floor. And it faced south, so we got a lot of sunlight in all those windows. My landlord had grown up in the house when it was a single family home, with his father’s doctor’s office on the ground floor. As a child, my landlord had planted - in a patch of soil at the front of the house that could not be more than a square foot: probably less – a vine of unidentified type.
I suppose the vine must have flowered during the spring or summer, but its flowers were not its distinctive trait. The vine was (and still is) a prolific grower. During the spring and summer of my first year in that apartment I watched it grow from its tiny dirt patch at street level up to my third floor windows, by which point it had spread out across the entire width of the building. The branches of the vine had, by summer’s end, encased the air conditioner in one of my windows and had sent tendrils up into the spaces around the unit so that green shoots were wending their way into my living room.
For a while, I thought this was charming: the vine was a welcome burst of green in the brick-scape of my block, (and the plaster walls of my apartment). But eventually (when it came time to take the A/C out of the window) the vine began to look less charming to me and more like a nuisance. And my landlord, who had never been particularly attentive to small repairs or general maintenance in the building, began to seem somewhat negligent to me.
It was a crisp, fall day when I took the air conditioner out of my window, opened the other two windows in the front of the apartment and leaned out as far as I could with some kind of improvised pruning shears. The vine had done a good job of attaching itself to the brick and the cable TV wire, and old hardware still on the façade of the building by the windows. It was holding on tight! And I ripped long strands of it by the handful, snipped them with my shears, and tossed them to the ground, shouting to warn passers-by as I did. And a great heap of green and brown strands of vine piled up, down there on the sidewalk.
Of course, I hadn’t eliminated the vine altogether. I’d gotten the widest, topmost portion, and torn it off, down to about the top of the second story windows. But I’d gotten that vine out of my windows and out of my life… at least until the next year!
And I felt so good about taking matters into my own hands. I felt a silly kind of accomplishment at such a simple task. I felt a sillier kind of pride in putting that vine in its place! And I felt a kind of superiority to both the vine and the landlord, both of which were starting to bother me. But where was the vine now? Not climbing in my window any longer! I was no one to be trifled with!
A single theme runs through most of the readings we’ve been given from Scripture this morning: a vine (or, in the Gospel reading, a vineyard, where there were lots of vines). The vine is a well-known biblical image. Jesus would use it to talk about himself: I am the vine and ye are the branches, he said. But before Jesus, it was the Jewish nation, the children of Israel, who identified with the vine. The psalmist reminds God of this image:
You have brought a vine our of Egypt;
you cast out the nations and planted it.
You prepared the ground for it;
it took root and filled the land…
…you stretched out its tendrils to the sea
and its branches to the river…
But despite her heritage, the vine of Israel was so often abused: attacked by her neighbors; hacked at by enemies; ripped apart by strife without and within. The psalmist questions God about his care for this vine, Israel:
Why have you broken down its wall,
so that all who pass by pluck off its grapes?
… Turn now, O God of hosts,
look down from heaven;
behold and tend this vine;
preserve what your right hand has planted.
Behold and tend this vine.
Where has the landlord gone? Why does he not show more concern for this vine, planted by his own hand, so long ago? These same questions lurk behind the parable that Jesus tells: “There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country.”
You remember what happens. It comes time for the harvest – time to collect his rent, his portion of what is due – and rather than give up so much as a bunch of grapes from the vine, the tenants brutalize the landlord’s messengers. Twice this happens before the landlord decides to send his son to collect, on the theory that the tenants will respect him. But of course, the tenants decide that possession is nine-tenths of the law, and to hell with the other tenth. They kill the landlord’s son, pour themselves a beer, and start to work out a plan to claim ownership of the vineyard and all its vines.
I imagine that the tenants felt a sense of accomplishment, when they had disposed of the body of the landlord’s son: a kind of pride in what they’d done. I imagine they felt quite superior to the landlord and his son.
Jesus was a good storyteller; he does not tell his listeners the end of the story, he lets them tell it themselves when he asks, “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” It was not hard to provide an answer: He will make them pay!
Why have you broken down its wall,
so that all who pass by pluck off its grapes?
… Turn now, O God of hosts,
look down from heaven;
behold and tend this vine;
preserve what your right hand has planted.
Why has God made it so easy for us to brutalize everything he’s given us: the earth, one another, even his own Son? Why did he make us so ready to take matters into our own hands that with glee we will pull down the vines that he himself planted? Why has he planted a vineyard, with a wall and a winepress and a watchtower - to protect it and ensue its productivity – and then made it so easy for us to thwart his designs?
I do not know the answers to these questions. What I know is that God has planted a vine.
And I remember with what purposeful pride did I tear down the vine outside my windows; with what self-righteous resentment toward my landlord. And I know that it was OK to cut that vine back. But I also know there are other vines that God has planted in my life that I could just as easily cut down, that would be better left to grow and to bear fruit. And I know I’d have had a word or two for my landlord, had he challenged me about my rights to cut back that vine. “Well, where have you been? Why have you not been taking care of it?
Why have you broken down its wall,
so that all who pass by pluck off its grapes?
… Turn now, O God of hosts,
look down from heaven;
behold and tend this vine;
preserve what your right hand has planted.
Turn now, O God of hosts, look down from heaven; behold and tend this vine.
My friends, God has placed us in a vineyard, and we, his people, are what the prophet called the “pleasant planting” of the Lord. We are the cuttings from the true vine from which all good things come. And it is part of the mysterious ways of God that in so many ways he allows us to tell the ends of stories ourselves.
Why do we spend so much time leaning out of windows with pruning shears in our hands when there are grapes to be harvested, if only we would look for them?
God has placed us in a vineyard. When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to us tenants? It is up to us to tell the end of that story. What will we do with all that God has given to us?
There is a vine running through the story of our lives that was planted by God. Some years its grapes are sweeter than others; some years they taste pretty sour. We would so like to have God take care of it: look down from heaven; behold and tend this vine! But God has planted the vine of his loving kindness in a tiny patch of soil just outside your windows and mine. And it is trying to get inside. And it’s up to you and me to tend this vine.
The good news, of course, is that we can never really destroy the vine. The best we can do is prune it away from our windows, cut it back, down to the tops of the windows below us – avoid its creeping advances for another year.
And despite our regular frustration that God is too much an absentee landlord in our lives, who lets things get out of hand and doesn’t come around to fix them, the vine he has planted will keep coming back year after year, trying hard to invade our space, work its tendrils through the cracks in our windows, and finally wrap its gentle arms around us in a green embrace of heavenly love…
… until the day comes when we finally welcome the true vine into our lives, and just let it take over. And we eat its sweet grapes, from which we will also make wine – which is why God planted it in the first place: a gift to be fermented and transformed into something more complex than it appears to be.
But Christ lets us tell the end of the story, ourselves. He sends the vine into the windows of our lives to see what we will do with it. And then he asks: When the owner of the vine comes, and the time of judgment is here, and the measure of our lives is taken, what will he do to us, his tenants?
And I suppose that depends a lot on what he finds out on the sidewalk of our lives: a pile of decaying branches that we have cut down? Or a barrel of wine made from the grapes that we tended from the vine that God planted.
I know what it’s like to cut down the vine, but now, I think I’d rather have wine, and I hope you would too! And I think that if we look together we will find grapes on the vine that are ripe and ready to be pressed. Thanks be to God!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
5 October 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia
I suppose the vine must have flowered during the spring or summer, but its flowers were not its distinctive trait. The vine was (and still is) a prolific grower. During the spring and summer of my first year in that apartment I watched it grow from its tiny dirt patch at street level up to my third floor windows, by which point it had spread out across the entire width of the building. The branches of the vine had, by summer’s end, encased the air conditioner in one of my windows and had sent tendrils up into the spaces around the unit so that green shoots were wending their way into my living room.
For a while, I thought this was charming: the vine was a welcome burst of green in the brick-scape of my block, (and the plaster walls of my apartment). But eventually (when it came time to take the A/C out of the window) the vine began to look less charming to me and more like a nuisance. And my landlord, who had never been particularly attentive to small repairs or general maintenance in the building, began to seem somewhat negligent to me.
It was a crisp, fall day when I took the air conditioner out of my window, opened the other two windows in the front of the apartment and leaned out as far as I could with some kind of improvised pruning shears. The vine had done a good job of attaching itself to the brick and the cable TV wire, and old hardware still on the façade of the building by the windows. It was holding on tight! And I ripped long strands of it by the handful, snipped them with my shears, and tossed them to the ground, shouting to warn passers-by as I did. And a great heap of green and brown strands of vine piled up, down there on the sidewalk.
Of course, I hadn’t eliminated the vine altogether. I’d gotten the widest, topmost portion, and torn it off, down to about the top of the second story windows. But I’d gotten that vine out of my windows and out of my life… at least until the next year!
And I felt so good about taking matters into my own hands. I felt a silly kind of accomplishment at such a simple task. I felt a sillier kind of pride in putting that vine in its place! And I felt a kind of superiority to both the vine and the landlord, both of which were starting to bother me. But where was the vine now? Not climbing in my window any longer! I was no one to be trifled with!
A single theme runs through most of the readings we’ve been given from Scripture this morning: a vine (or, in the Gospel reading, a vineyard, where there were lots of vines). The vine is a well-known biblical image. Jesus would use it to talk about himself: I am the vine and ye are the branches, he said. But before Jesus, it was the Jewish nation, the children of Israel, who identified with the vine. The psalmist reminds God of this image:
You have brought a vine our of Egypt;
you cast out the nations and planted it.
You prepared the ground for it;
it took root and filled the land…
…you stretched out its tendrils to the sea
and its branches to the river…
But despite her heritage, the vine of Israel was so often abused: attacked by her neighbors; hacked at by enemies; ripped apart by strife without and within. The psalmist questions God about his care for this vine, Israel:
Why have you broken down its wall,
so that all who pass by pluck off its grapes?
… Turn now, O God of hosts,
look down from heaven;
behold and tend this vine;
preserve what your right hand has planted.
Behold and tend this vine.
Where has the landlord gone? Why does he not show more concern for this vine, planted by his own hand, so long ago? These same questions lurk behind the parable that Jesus tells: “There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country.”
You remember what happens. It comes time for the harvest – time to collect his rent, his portion of what is due – and rather than give up so much as a bunch of grapes from the vine, the tenants brutalize the landlord’s messengers. Twice this happens before the landlord decides to send his son to collect, on the theory that the tenants will respect him. But of course, the tenants decide that possession is nine-tenths of the law, and to hell with the other tenth. They kill the landlord’s son, pour themselves a beer, and start to work out a plan to claim ownership of the vineyard and all its vines.
I imagine that the tenants felt a sense of accomplishment, when they had disposed of the body of the landlord’s son: a kind of pride in what they’d done. I imagine they felt quite superior to the landlord and his son.
Jesus was a good storyteller; he does not tell his listeners the end of the story, he lets them tell it themselves when he asks, “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” It was not hard to provide an answer: He will make them pay!
Why have you broken down its wall,
so that all who pass by pluck off its grapes?
… Turn now, O God of hosts,
look down from heaven;
behold and tend this vine;
preserve what your right hand has planted.
Why has God made it so easy for us to brutalize everything he’s given us: the earth, one another, even his own Son? Why did he make us so ready to take matters into our own hands that with glee we will pull down the vines that he himself planted? Why has he planted a vineyard, with a wall and a winepress and a watchtower - to protect it and ensue its productivity – and then made it so easy for us to thwart his designs?
I do not know the answers to these questions. What I know is that God has planted a vine.
And I remember with what purposeful pride did I tear down the vine outside my windows; with what self-righteous resentment toward my landlord. And I know that it was OK to cut that vine back. But I also know there are other vines that God has planted in my life that I could just as easily cut down, that would be better left to grow and to bear fruit. And I know I’d have had a word or two for my landlord, had he challenged me about my rights to cut back that vine. “Well, where have you been? Why have you not been taking care of it?
Why have you broken down its wall,
so that all who pass by pluck off its grapes?
… Turn now, O God of hosts,
look down from heaven;
behold and tend this vine;
preserve what your right hand has planted.
Turn now, O God of hosts, look down from heaven; behold and tend this vine.
My friends, God has placed us in a vineyard, and we, his people, are what the prophet called the “pleasant planting” of the Lord. We are the cuttings from the true vine from which all good things come. And it is part of the mysterious ways of God that in so many ways he allows us to tell the ends of stories ourselves.
Why do we spend so much time leaning out of windows with pruning shears in our hands when there are grapes to be harvested, if only we would look for them?
God has placed us in a vineyard. When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to us tenants? It is up to us to tell the end of that story. What will we do with all that God has given to us?
There is a vine running through the story of our lives that was planted by God. Some years its grapes are sweeter than others; some years they taste pretty sour. We would so like to have God take care of it: look down from heaven; behold and tend this vine! But God has planted the vine of his loving kindness in a tiny patch of soil just outside your windows and mine. And it is trying to get inside. And it’s up to you and me to tend this vine.
The good news, of course, is that we can never really destroy the vine. The best we can do is prune it away from our windows, cut it back, down to the tops of the windows below us – avoid its creeping advances for another year.
And despite our regular frustration that God is too much an absentee landlord in our lives, who lets things get out of hand and doesn’t come around to fix them, the vine he has planted will keep coming back year after year, trying hard to invade our space, work its tendrils through the cracks in our windows, and finally wrap its gentle arms around us in a green embrace of heavenly love…
… until the day comes when we finally welcome the true vine into our lives, and just let it take over. And we eat its sweet grapes, from which we will also make wine – which is why God planted it in the first place: a gift to be fermented and transformed into something more complex than it appears to be.
But Christ lets us tell the end of the story, ourselves. He sends the vine into the windows of our lives to see what we will do with it. And then he asks: When the owner of the vine comes, and the time of judgment is here, and the measure of our lives is taken, what will he do to us, his tenants?
And I suppose that depends a lot on what he finds out on the sidewalk of our lives: a pile of decaying branches that we have cut down? Or a barrel of wine made from the grapes that we tended from the vine that God planted.
I know what it’s like to cut down the vine, but now, I think I’d rather have wine, and I hope you would too! And I think that if we look together we will find grapes on the vine that are ripe and ready to be pressed. Thanks be to God!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
5 October 2008
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia