The gospel for Sunday, September 20, is the parable of the workers in the vineyard, Matthew 20:1-16. When I encounter the various parables that describe vineyards, I often think of grape vines back home. I'm especially thinking of them as I write this because this is peak muscadine season in Georgia.
My grandmother had a lot of scuppernong vines in a small vineyard on her farm. Really, she had a lot of muscadine vines: some were black muscadines, and some were golden scuppernongs, a variety of muscadines. She gave cuttings to my parents, and soon we had our own black and bronze grapes growing at Sweetbriar, my homeplace, less than a mile away from grandmother's.
I prefer the golden scuppernongs, personally. They are big, bronze-colored delights of a Southern early autumn. Their fragrance is ambrosial. They are among the things I missed during my years living in Japan. Then, lo and behold, I discovered a Japanese grape cultivated across many acres outside the small town in the mountains of Hiroshima where I lived. It was very similar to a scuppernong. It was called Aki Queen (Autumn Queen).
What's the point of this brief essay on nostalgic viticulture? Only to say that we find similar varieties of produce in very far-flung places. And to note that whatever the size of the vineyard, whatever type of grapes it may produce, and whoever it belongs to, it requires tending. And that tending is done by workers.
After my Dad died in 2010, one of the many homeplace chores I inherited was the annual pruning of our muscadine and scuppernong vines. Uncle Si taught me how to do it. It's a time-intensive, almost meditative practice. To prune properly, the worker needs to unravel, explore, and analyze the many vines. Only then can one determine the best place to cut each vine. This pruning allows the removal of vines no longer able to bear fruit and stimulates the growth of new fruit-bearing vines.
Now those vines at Sweetbriar belong to me and Becky. It's a tiny vineyard. The vineyard that is the whole world belongs to God. It's an expansive vineyard. We are blessed to be called as workers in our corner of it.
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