Botrytis Cinerea

Matthew 21:33-46

“Listen to another parable. 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. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He 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 said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

We are now three for three in winemaking Gospel lessons.  Some might say that’s because Jesus “just happens” to have stopped outside a vineyard… that if he had stopped outside a Brussels Sprouts farm all these Gospels would have been about Brussels Sprouts.  But here’s the thing.  I don’t like Brussels Sprouts.  Plus, I think there’s something to the interplay of art and science with winemaking that you just don’t get with those smelly mini-cabbages on a stick!  So I’m sticking with wine!

Two weeks ago we talked about the good scientific calculations needed to pick grapes at just the right balance of sugar and acidity.  Good scientific calculations, it turns out, do work most of the time and not just in winemaking.  This past Wednesday, for example, the good scientific calculations that the 5G Emergency Broadcast on our cellphones would NOT activate a secret virus hidden in our COVID vaccines and we would NOT, in fact, turn into zombies, as some believed, also turned out to be correct.  So good scientific calculations do work MOST of the time.  MOST of the time.  This week’s parable reminds us, however, that there are always exceptions that prove the rule.  

This week the vineyard owner calculated that sending his servants and a son to get what was expected from his tenants… calculations made on a lifetime of observations… suddenly turned out to be deadly wrong.  The tenant’s calculations… also based on a lifetime of observations that “might-makes-right” is how our world works, calculated that they could somehow inherit the vineyard through assault and murder.  But as the examples show, even calculations made from centuries of observations, don’t always add up.  

The folks listening to Jesus were also living out of their scientific calculations and their own centuries of observations.  From those calculations and observations Jesus was CLEARLY not the Messiah.  They had calculated that the genuine Messiah would come and work by the numbers… work the way they had all come to understand the world to work.  They wanted, and they expected, a Messiah that would knock heads together and boot out the Romans.  Might makes right is the world’s tried and true scientific formula, and they were committed to the world’s formula.

  

But in grape growing, and in abundant life growing, scientific calculations aren’t always everything.  Sometimes in both, there is work to be done on the other side of the brain… the artsy side… or else we humans run the risk of missing God doing a new thing and worse… winemakers run the risk of making predictable and boring wine!  God, this parable reminds us, is constantly leaning toward the artistic side when it comes to helping humans grow toward abundant life.  God is always looking to do a new thing with us. That’s why God didn’t send a by-the-numbers, tally sheet marking, knock heads together, sort of Messiah.  God sent Jesus, who simply invited the people to follow his artsy fartsy Way of walking through this life guided by the principle of loving God and loving neighbor.  Jesus told this parable to remind us to expect the unexpected from God, and that the unexpected CAN be an incredible blessing, even if at first the unexpected looks like “CHANGE” which we all know is  pretty much always very, very wrong.  

The unexpected turning into a blessing, even when it looks at first glance like something has gone horribly wrong also happens in winemaking.  Such is the case with Botrytis Cinerea, or Bunch Rot… a fungus among us that gives you dark and hairy shriveled up grapes.  Can you imagine the first winemaker to see it?  The science side of their brain screaming, “NOPE, nope, that’s a big, hairy, gross, shriveled up NOPE” and at the same time the artistic side of her brain saying, “WHOA!  THAT is SUPER weird.  LET’S THROW ‘EM IN AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS!”  Now, I don’t know which side won that first time around, but at some point the artsy side of the brain DID win and those hairy, gross, shriveled up grapes got thrown in and when the wine was finally tasted… it was something so unbelievably wonderful, that gross hairy fungus became known as the “Noble Rot” because in the olden days, only the Nobility could afford wine made with those grapes.  It was that good!  

A Messiah who would suffer and die rather than fight and win, was just as impossible as gross, hairy, shriveled up grapes making great wine!  The Chief Priests and Pharisees could not grasp God working this way.  They could not wrap their minds around their by-the-numbers-God sending a throw-the-math-out-artistic-loser named Jesus as the Messiah. 

That is really the message in the Gospel for today.  We are being invited to accept and embrace a Messiah that doesn’t add up.  We are being invited to accept and embrace a completely unexpected Savior that makes absolutely no sense in a world run on a fundamentalist following of the might-makes-right formula.  We are being invited to accept and embrace the One called Jesus, who gathers up all our hairy, gross, and shriveled up selves and transforms us into Nobility!  Brothers and Sisters of the King of King and Lord of Lords!  Gifted positions of Nobility that make us fit for the surprisingly abundant, joy filled, and everlasting life God first created us all to live.  Amen.