Preached on the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 22A), October 4, 2026, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington by The Reverend Kelly Moody.
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:7-14
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46
Landscape with Tower in Ruin, by Thomas Cole
I want to invite you to take a deep dive into the text with me, with the help of the late French scholar René Girard, in order to explore what Jesus is doing in this parable about the vineyard and the wicked tenants¹.
Girard was a professor of French literature and history at Stanford University, and he famously articulated a “triangular theory of desire,” which is also known as mimetic theory. His idea is that we rarely want what we want because it simply appeals to us. We want it because someone else wants it, and their desire provokes our own. Ask anyone with a sibling, and they will affirm that this is true. The entire advertising and influencing industry is based on the idea that if we see someone else wanting something, we will want it, too.
Maybe we never even knew that breed of dog existed, or this handbag, or that pair of shoes, but now we want it.
Can't get it out of our minds.
That’s mimetic theory. We want what we want because we saw someone else want it.
But Girard also suggests that when mimetic desire creates rivalry or envy, by drawing us to desire something that is not available to us, we find release by pulling in a third party- a scapegoat- to blame, or cast out. Finding and exiling a scapegoat relieves the tension between us for a little while. But when the tension builds again, the violent process repeats.
Some scholars have suggested that religious sacrifices are simply a way of managing this kind of rivalry in communities. But actually, when we look more carefully, we see that Jewish and Christian scriptures consistently confront the horror of these violent patterns, critiquing themselves by telling the story of their rivalry as well as their scapegoats. Think of Cain and Abel, or Jacob and Esau, or Sarah and Hagar. Or Jonah.
So with that in mind, what do you think Jesus is doing with this parable about the vineyard, and the wicked tenants? What do these wicked tenants want, and how might the story Jesus tells work to change what listeners want?
This is the second in a series of parables, told to a very particular audience in Jerusalem, not long before Jesus is arrested.
And he tells it in response to the questions they ask him. Their questions were, “Do you hear what they are saying?” and “By what authority do you do these things?”
The crowd asking these questions included theologically progressive pharisees, theologically conservative temple officials, priests, scribes, and ordinary people, all of whom had just witnessed Jesus fulfill all the signs of David by turning over the tables in the Temple, healing people on the Temple mount, and teaching to the tune of crowds singing “Hosanna to the son of David.”
So each of these groups from their own social locations and perspectives were asking Jesus, “do you hear what they are saying? By what authority do you do these things?”
So as to let them decide for themselves, Jesus answered by telling them the parable of two sons, also known as the prodigal son. You know it. The son who stayed home had never wanted a fatted calf or a party until he saw his brother get one. The son who came home learned to want what he once had, and in returning, got even more than he asked for. And Jesus’s answer to their questions, tucked neatly into the story, was essentially this: Sons who do the will of their fathers carry the authority of their fathers. So if you see what I am doing as God’s will, accept that it is by God’s merciful authority that I do it.
Then, Jesus told the parable of these tenants in the vineyard, and an owner who sends for his fruit. It was a way of turning the questions back on his listeners. “What do you think the landowner will do to the tenants when he returns?” Jesus asks. And perhaps it is another way of asking “so, what do you want me to do for you?”
Now in the Ancient Roman Empire, absentee landowners were quite common. So it was also common for tenants, or caretakers of the land to work the land on behalf of the landowner. Even in fruitful years, the tenants lived at subsistence level at best, and the fruit of their labor was sold for the sake of the landowner. And as you can imagine, this system perpetuated injustices….injustices with which the people of Israel were well-acquainted. After all, their land was occupied by Romans, claimed by absentee officials, who were represented by authorities like King Herod, or Pontius Pilate. An absentee landowner would not have been an immediate protagonist in anybody’s story, because people would have easily seen themselves in the tenants.
But these were wicked tenants…so maybe that set some distance between them. And because God’s people had been likened to a vineyard throughout Hebrew texts, in this parable, the absentee landowner could have also been perceived as God, who was the rightful owner of this vineyard. God brought a vine out of Egypt, planted and tended it for a season, and it flourished, but then God left it to the care of others. As a result, it was trampled by wild beasts and overgrown with weeds and wild things. So the people of Israel longed for God, the rightful landowner, to return to them, and vindicate them by driving out the wicked, and restoring their vineyard.
The Pharisees imagined that coming to pass in a particular way, and Temple officials in another, and scribes in yet another, and ordinary people longed for it, too, but in their own ways. And those distinctions produced rivalry, and mimetic desire among them.
So Jesus asks this conflicted crowd of people “what do you think the owner will do to the tenants when he returns?”
But maybe what Jesus was really getting at was, “Who do you blame for the situation you are in? What do you want me to do for you?”
And maybe, when the crowd answered, they were thinking mostly of the ones they blamed and opposed most in the crowd alongside them, when they said “he will put them to a miserable death!”
And there it was. Mimetic desire. A scapegoat who deserved it.
But Jesus, so aware of the ancient texts that critique this kind of rivalry, said or maybe he almost whispered, “Have you never read in the scriptures, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, it is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes?”
To put anyone in the position of the tenants deserving of death in Jesus’s story was to judge oneself, too.
The restoration they were longing for had come in the form of a man who was willing to be rejected for doing the will of his father. A man whose desires would not be shaped or influenced by the envy and rivalry of others. A man who knew what he wanted: to do the will of his father for the sake of the whole world. Those who could bear the fruit of that truth were to become co-heirs in the vineyard of God.
I imagine those first listeners were drawn in beyond their ability to escape by then, drawn into their own schemes to enthrone or kill this man as he said words they knew, words that were so familiar but in a context that was so different…. Jesus was doing the will of his father, and even if they killed him for it, God’s reign would prevail. Jesus was going to identify as the scapegoat, and he seemed to be saying that this terrible scapegoating ritual that was about to be done to him was truly terrible, but that he was uniquely blessed beyond all the violence he would absorb, and he intended to share that blessing.
It is because he shared that blessing, free from rivalry and fear, and abounding in mercy, that we encounter Christ here today.
I don’t know whose desire we are mimicking when we demand a scapegoat for all our injuries, rivalries, and envy.
But I know that this question Jesus asks his listeners has the power to change the desires we mimic. To engage with Jesus is to stumble and fall and break open our true motives, and in the middle of it all, to begin mimicking God’s desires until blessedly, mercifully, they become our own.
Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen².
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¹ I am indebted to Catholic theologian and former priest James Alison for explaining Renė Girard’s theory in relation to this parable at a gathering I attended. He spoke about it at St. Leo’s Catholic Church in April of 2016. You can find his sermons and talks on related subjects here.
² Collect for Proper 22, The Book of Common Prayer, p. 234