Leo Tolstoy tells the story of a rich man who was never satisfied. He always wanted more. One day he heard about an opportunity to get more land. For just 1,000 rubles he could have all that he was able to walk around in a single day. The only catch was that he had to make it back to the starting point by the end of the day or he would lose everything. So, he arose early in the morning and set out. He walked and walked, thinking that he could get just a little more land if he kept going. But he went so far that he began to realize that if he wanted to get back to where he began so he could claim the land, he was going to have to start walking faster. As the sun went lower in the sky, he quickened his pace. He began to run. When he came within sight of his starting point, he exerted himself completely and plunged over the finish line. He fell to the ground and died. So, his servant took a shovel and dug his grave. He made it just long enough and wide enough to bury him. Do you know the title of Tolstoy’s story? “How much land does a man need?” He ends the story with this line: “Six feet from his head to his heels was all that man needed.”

It’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it? Jesus was famous for telling stories that challenge our perspective. You might say they force us to think beyond our very human point of view so that we might come closer to seeing reality from God’s point of view.

If you’ve been with us over the past several weeks, you know that we’re working our way through a section of Matthew’s gospel that consists of one of these stories after another. They’re called parables. Today’s parable immediately follows the parable we heard last week.

You may recall how that one was about a guy who had two sons. When he went to his first son and asked him to go and work in the vineyard, the son said he wouldn’t, but later, he changed his mind and he went. The second son, on the other hand, said he would go to work, but he didn’t follow through. Instead he sat around on his duff all day. Jesus asked his listeners which of the sons they thought did the will of his father. When they answered, “the first” Jesus told them flat out: “Truly, I tell you, the tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” Jesus was challenging their conventional perspective on reality.

And then, when Jesus could see that they clearly didn’t have a clue what he was saying to them, he followed up with another parable. This time, with a point his listeners couldn’t miss.

It’s about a landowner who builds a vineyard. Immediately, Jesus’ listeners would have identified the metaphor he’s using. Being the good Jews that they were, they knew that in the scriptures the vineyard always represented God’s people, Israel. We can see that in our reading today from Isaiah.

Well, in today’s parable, there is this landowner who builds a lovely vineyard. He puts a fence around it, installs a state-of-the-art wine-press, and even has a watch tower put in place. Then he leases it to tenants and goes to live in another country. When harvest comes, and it’s time for the landowner to receive his share of the profits, he sends a few slaves to collect for him. But instead of paying what they owe, the tenants beat one of the slaves, they kill the second one and stone the third. So, the landowner then sends more slaves, and they get treated the same way. And then, not to be deterred, the landowner decides to send his own son to do the job. He reasons, “Surely they will respect my son.” After all those despicable tenants have done, I don’t know why he would think this, but he does. So, he sends his son. And to say he gets no respect is an understatement. The tenants see this as a golden opportunity. They figure that if they kill the son, there will be no heir to the property. And if the owner never returns, it’s all theirs. That’s the way things worked back then. And that’s what they’re counting on. So they kill the son. The End.

That’s how Jesus ends the parable. Because it’s one of those you-choose-the-ending kind of stories. He turns to his listeners and he asks them, “What do you think will happen to those tenants when the owner of the property returns?”

And here’s what they said, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at harvest time.”

That’s how they would end the parable. In other words, those evil doers will get what’s coming to them. From their very human point of view, logically, that’s the only way for the story to end.
Notice that’s NOT what Jesus says. It’s how his listeners assume it will all turn out. But it’s not what Jesus says. And he doesn’t commend them for their ending to the story.

It’s all a matter of perspective. Jesus’ listeners are focusing on the actions of the tenants. But that doesn’t seem to be the perspective Jesus takes at all. In my Bible, this story is entitled, “The Parable of the Wicked Tenants,” which is a very human perspective of the story. But, from Jesus’ perspective, it might be better entitled “The Parable of the Persistent Landowner.”

If you focus on the landowner in this story, you can see that he goes way beyond what any rational person would do to connect with the tenants. He gives them one chance after another. It’s so important to him that he’s willing to risk everything. I mean, what father in his right mind would knowingly send his own son into such a volatile situation? It’s crazy.

From the perspective of Jesus’ listeners, there could only be one ending. The father was going to come and personally give those wicked tenants exactly what they deserve. They assumed it would end this way because they weren’t paying attention. They failed to notice the essence of the landowner in the story. Just as the tenants in the story weren’t paying attention. The tenants were counting on the fact that the landowner wouldn’t return at all. That after they killed his heir, he would just not care anymore and let them have the vineyard without any interference. And Jesus’ listeners assumed the landowner would return and destroy them.

Neither understood the landowner’s driving motivation in the story. His overwhelming desire was to connect with his tenants. And he never gave up on them. He wasn’t about to disengage from them. And he wasn’t about to exercise retribution for all they had done against him. He was persistent, even desperate to restore a relationship with them.

Of course, Jesus was telling them something about God here, wasn’t he? This story is really an allegory and the landowner is God. It tells us that God’s overwhelming desire is to be in relationship with us. And God never gives up on us. He’s not about to disengage from us. And he’s not about to exercise retribution for all that we’ve done against him. No matter what we do, God never gives up on us. He is persistent, yes, even desperate, to restore us to a relationship with him. So desperate, in fact, that he would send his son on his behalf, to restore us to a relationship with him. We might reject him, and kill him, but even that won’t change the faithfulness of God. In fact, God can turn the killing of his own son into a loving act of sacrifice for our sake. That’s the depth of his love for us.

It appears irrational because it doesn’t make sense from our very human point of view. And it calls us into a different way of seeing the world, which may seem counterintuitive to us. It doesn’t make sense because seeing things from a Jesus perspective means living in a different reality, one that defies the logic of the world and turns it on its head. We see with this radically different perspective when we’re living in the Kingdom of God.

Consider the logic of this. In the Kingdom of God, the one who is rejected actually becomes the one on whom everything else rests. The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. That’s the way God works. If you don’t get this, Jesus tells his listeners, you don’t get what it means to be a part of the Kingdom of God.

It’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it?

Paul talks about this in his letter to the Philippians. He clearly lays out what matters most in this life. “If anybody would have a reason to think they’re hot stuff in the eyes of God, it would be me,” he says. “I have done everything right. I was circumcised on the eighth day. I’m a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews. I was trained in every minute detail of the law as a Pharisee. I was the most zealous Jew around, and worked to snuff out the followers of Jesus who I was convinced were not on God’s side. I followed all of God’s laws exactly. You would be hard pressed to find anything that I ever did that wasn’t according to God’s law.”

All of that, Paul says, and yet… AND YET. None of it matters a hill of beans. Actually, he’s a little more colorful in his language than that. In our translation it says, I regard it all as rubbish. And even that’s too polite. In the original Greek, the word was dung. (aka, bullshit)

What matters is the relationship we have with Jesus. And anyone who is in a relationship with Jesus can see that, he says. It’s all a matter of perspective.

What perspective do you take when you consider your life? Do you see it from the perspective of the world? Or do you see it from the perspective of God’s kingdom? Yes, it’s all a matter of perspective. And perspective matters.

Pastor Nancy Kraft
Holy Trinity Lutheran Church
Charlotte NC