On a Harsh Critique of Leadership
October 4, 2026
Rev. Tracey May Kalvaitis
Isaiah 5:1-7
I will sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded rotten grapes. And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield rotten grapes? And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a wasteland; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his cherished garden; he expected justice but saw bloodshed; righteousness but heard a cry!
Matthew 21:33-46
[Jesus said] “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went away. 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. Then 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 its fruits.” 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.
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Today’s sermon is titled, On a Critique of Leadership.
Well, Jesus is at it again, Friends. His days on earth in human form are numbered and he is letting it rip in the Jerusalem temple. In the style of the prophets of old, Jesus is calling the leadership to account for not taking better care of the Jewish people who are suffering under excessive taxes. Believe it or not, the Jewish people in Jesus’s time had three levels of taxation very similar to our local, state and federal tax system. There were imperial taxes that went to the occupying Roman government. Regional taxes were collected to fund infrastructure and policing and then there were the temple taxes, three of them in total. The average citizen could expect 40% or more of their holdings to be demanded of them.*
We learned last week about the daily sacrifice offered to the Roman Emperor…over a thousand animals were sacrificed each year in that one alone. The amount of potential food that it required was one thing, but the biggest offense for the Jewish community was that a daily sacrifice to the Roman Emperor elevated that Emperor to the status of a god. The fact that the Jewish leaders were complicit in this daily sacrifice was one of the primary charges against them.
Friends, before we get too far into this, I caution us against making any sweeping judgements about the ancient leadership in Israel. I am quite certain that there were Chief Priests and Elders, Pharisees, Sadducees and Scribes that were pushing back against Roman overreach, just as I am sure that there were Romans in Jerusalem who were conflicted about the orders they were given from Rome. I suggest that we take this view into ancient Israel that we are offered and see what we can learn from it because the very same dynamic continues to plague our society…namely, the consolidation of wealth and power that is supported by a system of economic oppression for the general population. Leadership that supports such a model is the same leadership that Jesus is calling to account in his parable for today, leadership that benefits from a system of economic oppression.
The leadership of the Temple are among the audience who hears the parable from our reading today. Those highly educated leaders would have picked up on some parallels that are not so obvious to our ears. First and foremost would have been the watchtower that Jesus mentions at the very beginning of the parable. Jesus begins, “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower.” I learned this past week that watchtowers were common in biblical times, built as a practical way to keep watch over the fields but also as a shelter for the workers.** I quote here in reference to watchtowers as symbols from the Jewish scriptures, watchtowers “often represent vigilance and the duty to watch over God’s people. The prophet Habakkuk speaks of standing at his watch: ‘I will stand at my guard post and station myself on the ramparts; I will watch to see what He will say to me, and how I should answer when corrected’ (Habakkuk 2:1).”
In choosing to include the watchtower in his parable, Jesus was sending a direct message to temple leadership and the message was this: you are failing the people you have vowed to serve. Many in Jesus’s audience would have heard immediate parallels with the passage from the prophet Isaiah that was in our readings this morning. Isaiah, was a most beloved prophet and a tireless defender and advocate for the Jewish people. Isaiah speaks about a vineyard planted on a very fertile hill, with a watchtower (for shelter and protection) and a wine press. Note, this is exactly the same way Jesus begins his parable. Both parables take a dark turn.
In Isaiah’s parable, the protagonist who is the voice of God asks in exasperation, “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield rotten grapes? And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a wasteland; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his cherished garden; he expected justice but saw bloodshed; (he expected) righteousness but heard a cry!
Isaiah leaves nothing to be lost in interpretation here. God provided all that the people needed and in return expected justice and righteousness, but saw only bloodshed. And the bloodshed continues still, not only in Israel and Gaza, but in Iran, Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar and elsewhere among the estimated 130 active armed conflicts in our world today.***
I’d like to wrap this up by bringing these teachings back down to a personal level because that is where we have the most power to make change. We can see, in Jesus’s critique of the leadership in the temple, a critique of all human systems where the benefit of some come at the expense of the many. We would be served to look within ourselves and see if there are ways we hold power over others in unhealthy ways. There are many ways we can undermine one another with words, with unspoken expectations, with judgements, with criticisms. It’s no wonder that Jesus pulled from ancient Jewish wisdom the two most important commands, love God and love one another. On these two hang all the laws, he said, and all the teachings of the prophets.
Now, you may think of yourself as a loving, open-minded, non-judgmental person and, honestly, I hope you do. I think of myself that way and as long as I surround myself with like-minded people who share my values and my beliefs I can maintain that I am very loving and open-minded and non-judgemental. I can be very comfortable with myself and yet remain very critical of the systems around me that perpetuate injustice and discrimination while never feeling the need to look within.
I will close with a little story, a true story, from my life this week. On my way down to Boston on Tuesday to pick up my family from Logan, I stopped off at a walk-in EZ Pass center in Nashua. This was an unplanned stop intended to save me the effort of writing a check and mailing it or spending time on-line to get an EZ Pass transponder for my car. I was directed to sign in at a computer kiosk and then line up against the wall to wait my turn which was estimated to be 15 minutes. Standing with my back against the wall, I had a clear view of the door, just 10 feet away. The building doubled as a DMV so there was a steady stream of people entering and exiting. I found myself having all kinds of thoughts and judgements about the vast array of humanity represented in Nashua, NH. Fortunately, I caught myself and decided to try and override my tendency to make judgments and instead lean into my belief that we are all children of God…broken, yes, burdened, yes, but alike in our brokenness and alike in our bearing of burdens; we are alike.
As we turn now to our sharing in Communion, I lift up our awareness of our alikeness and I pray that leaders everywhere, on every level, experience moments where they are aware of the alikeness between themselves and those they have power over. I pray for all those who are running for office and preparing to be potential leaders in our government. When leaders are able to see themselves in others and others in themselves, they can truly lead with the aim of peace, justice and prosperity for all, just as Jesus imagined. So be it. Amen.
*https://byustudies.byu.edu/online-book/charting-the-new-testament/chart-2-6-taxes-in-judea
**https://biblehub.com/topical/w/watch-towers.htm#google_vignette
***https://www.npr.org/2026/06/09/nx-s1-5850355/data-highest-conflicts-iran-israel-ukraine-russia-world-war-ii
Pastoral Prayer
Holy Spirit of God, I thank you for this church community where we have freedom to worship as we choose. We pray for those communities of every faith, around the world, that are not so fortunate. On this World Communion Sunday, I offer a prayer for the children of the world…a prayer for their well being. May they know a love that is true and kind and protective and may that love be a guiding light for their young hearts and minds. Help us, Lord, to not lose touch with a love such as that, for regardless of age or position, we are all in need of something, some healing, some comfort, some assurance. Strengthen us to serve when we are called to serve, and soften us to receive when we are offered assistance. For those that are suffering, Lord, grant them peace; for those that are fearful, grant them assurance that nothing can separate us from the love of God. May we use the power of prayer to ease our minds and hearts, and to offer ourselves in spiritual support of those in our prayers. This we ask in Christ’s name. Amen.
Benediction
I leave you with these words of advice from the book of Proverbs, Chapter 3:
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart; on your own intelligence rely not; in all your ways be mindful and God will make straight your paths.”