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Matthew 21:33-46
The Parable of the Tenants
33 “Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. 34 When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.
35 “The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. 36 Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. 37 Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.
38 “But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ 39 So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
40 “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
41 “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”
42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:
“‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?
43 “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.44 Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”
45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. 46 They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.
As you might remember, our readings have been coming from the portion of the gospel according to Matthew that tells us about the last week of Jesus’ life and earthly ministry. This was a time of increasing tension between Jesus and his people’s religious leadership, which would eventually lead to their insistence on his arrest and crucifixion.
You might also remember that in a Reflection from a few days ago, we pointed out that the fig tree was one of the symbols for the Hebrew people, and especially for their religious establishment, which operated out of the temple in Jerusalem. Our reading for today focuses on another of the common symbols for the religious life of the covenant people. The Hebrew people thought of their land as ‘God’s vineyard,’ and In our passage for today, Jesus employs that symbol as the basis for a parable that implies condemnation of the religious leadership in that vineyard.
He starts out by reminding his listeners of all the things that have to be done in the course of establishing a vineyard. In addition to planting the grape vines, you have to build a wall to protect them, dig a winepress and put up a watchtower. There’s a lot of work involved, and Jesus is making the point that God has been working for centuries to establish the covenant people in their promised land. He had “planted” them in the promised land, then had nurtured and protected them.
My sense is that many of those listening to Jesus would have recognized the connection between the parable and the history of their people. I imagine that there might have been a few nodding heads among his listeners.
In the parable, the owner of a vineyard (presumably meant to represent God) rents the vineyard to some tenants and goes on his way. At harvest time, the owner of the vineyard sends servants to collect the share of the fruit he was due as his ‘rent.’ But instead of paying the owner his share, the tenants abuse and even murder his servants. The scholars say Jesus probably meant these servants to symbolize the prophets God had sent to speak to his people throughout history. These prophets were sent to call the covenant people to be more ‘fruitful,’ but a lot of them had been abused and even killed by the people and their leaders.
In the parable, the owner eventually sends his own son, thinking the tenants would respect him, but the son meets the same violent fate as a number of the other servants – he too is murdered.
When he’s done telling the parable, Jesus does something that he does in other parts of the Bible – and something the prophet Nathan did in the case of King David, when he was confronting him after David’s sins with Bathsheba. Jesus asks the religious leaders who had heard the parable to pass judgment on the characters in it. He asks them what the vineyard owner should do in response to the tenants’ crimes. The religious leaders say he should “bring those wretches to a wretched end,” and “rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”
And in saying that, of course, the religious leaders are condemning themselves.
It seems that the point Jesus was making was that the religious leaders of the covenant people – religious leaders who were supposed to have devoted their lives to serving God – had somehow become so corrupted and sinful that they saw the kingdom of God as an entitlement they could exploit for their own benefit.
It seems to me that there’s a warning here for those of us who follow Jesus – and especially for anyone in a leadership role – to guard against allowing ourselves to think that the church is somehow “about us.” Each of us is called to labor in the vineyard for a while, to serve in God’s vineyard while we’re here, but this parable reminds us that it’s always God’s church, never ours. So when it comes to the church – our local congregation as well as the one church in the world – our concern should be to bear fruit for God through it, not to see what benefits we might get from our service in it.
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for all the ways you have nurtured and tended your people throughout history – first as the covenant people of Israel and now as the church. Help us always to be committed to being fruitful, to making your vineyard productive for you. Guard us against thinking of that vineyard with a spirit of entitlement. Amen.
Every Blessing,
Henry
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