Introduction
Jesus’s parables, spoken to a targeted audience of an ancient society, are meant to interrupt those who are listening. The imagery intwined with the story line, the twists and bends, the upheavals and reversals, create a verbal encounter for the hearer. As mentioned before, the goal Jesus’s parables are to bring the hearer to a conclusion that they would not have come to on their own. The parable is an encounter with God in the event of faith; the one who is addressed by the parable (slowly) begins to realize that the reign of God and this man called Jesus are different. In uttering a parable, Jesus is bringing the kingdom of humanity into conflict and crisis as it collides (head on) with the reign of God; in loosening a parable into the world, Jesus is bringing those who hear—their common sense and ideologies—into conflict and crisis with himself (the word of God). In other words, if one really does have the ears to hear they will hear what Jesus is saying; in hearing, they will be forever altered and changed precisely because they have heard and, by the power of the Spirit, have understood. And we all know that once that happens there’s no going back; bc #iykyk.
The issue for us; we have history in the way. So, when we read the parables of Jesus either we have enough Sunday School to apply the right conclusion, or we have the events of Christ’s life past tense providing the right framework through which to come to the right conclusion. And, we have access to the times where Jesus speaks a parable and then, gazing upon his confused band of disciples, proceeds to explain; therein, for us, is lost the power of the parable to sit and linger, festering images and words creating an infection in our spirit of divine proportions, something only the great celestial Medic could heal by their Spirit. So, are the parable of Jesus the Christ lost on and for us, today?
No, I don’t think so. Like the first audience, there is plenty in the parables to challenge us, to bring us into a head-on collision with God in Jesus Christ and the reign of God in the world, to bring us to their conclusion even if we know how it makes sense and what happens. All we need to do is allow our curiosity a front seat as we listen and hear as if this story is being told to us (because it is). Rather than being lookers-on, let us be addressed…
Jamie reads the gospel
“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]
Matthew 21:33-46
In this portion of Matthew, Jesus is sharing parable upon parable to describe the reign of God and of heaven. Jesus must use parables because there is nothing on earth controlled by the kingdom of humanity that is like God’s reign. (God’s reign being interruptive and disruptive to the kingdom of humanity.) Thus, Jesus speaks in story and narrative to communicate the radical and otherworldliness of God’s reign.
Jesus begins, writes Matthew, telling the chief priests and the elders of the people (21:23) to listen to another parable (21:33a). This parable is the second of three parables meant to bring his audience to the conclusion that the chief priests and elders of the people refuse to come to when Jesus asks them, “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” (21:25a).
There was a person, a landowner, who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, built a tower, and leased it to vinedressers; he then went abroad. Now, when the time of the fruit came near, he sent forth his slaves to the vinedressers to receive his fruit. And after the vinedressers received his slaves, they thrashed one, they killed one, and they stoned one (vv33b-35).
Jesus begins this second of three parables speaking telling of rebellious vinedressers against the land/vineyard owner. In a desperate event of violence, the vinedressers—the ones under contract to care for and harvest the fruit during the (familiar and common[ii]) absence of the vineyard owner—reject the slaves and the authority invested in them to retrieve the owner’s portion of the harvest. Considering the details of the story so far, we can assume that the vineyard owner is wealthy:[iii] 1. He builds and plants a vineyard, 2. It takes a few years to produce financially productive crops, 3. He can hire vinedressers to care for the land and crops for years before they can earn their portion of profit from the fruit, and 4. He can live abroad without needing a harvest to satisfy his economic needs.
Something must be up when the landowner never receives his slaves (and the harvest). So, he sends another but bigger group of slaves, and, according to Matthew’s Jesus, the vinedressers did to them in like manner (v36). Again, this group does not return; no slaves and no harvest. Curious. Now, the landowner decides to take serious measures[iv] to secure his portion of the harvest from the vinedressers. Jesus tells the crowd of religious leaders,[v]
Now, finally, he sent to them his son saying, “They will give respect to my son.” But after seeing the son, the vinedressers said to themselves, “This one is the heir, come! Let us kill him! Let us have his inheritance!” And after receiving him they threw him outside the vineyard and killed him (vv37-39).
The vinedressers have gone too far; the son is the representative according to law who can literally stand in for the father, the landowner. In an impulsive moment,[vi] the vinedressers decide to take matters into their own hand to seize the land from the landowner via insurrection;[vii] they decide to take over ownership of the vineyard and take the son’s inheritance as their own by killing the son. The owner of the vineyard will have to respond penally.[viii]
And like a spot light, this dark narrative is directed at the religious leaders of Israel, the ones who were covenanted to care for the people and the land for God and for the wellbeing of all the nations.[ix] The fruit of being a blessing to the nations and the work of righting wrongs has gone ignored by Israel’s religious leaders; Israel, the vineyard, has been hijacked by those who have decided to seize the blessings for themselves and redefine who gets the inheritance.[x] Jesus is pointedly telling them what they are going to do to him. But this targeted and dark address doesn’t stop here. Jesus goes on,
Then, whenever the lord of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vinedressers? (v40).
We can imagine a pregnant pause, a contemplative silence, an oppressive quiet as those whom Jesus addressed consider their answer…carefully. Maybe after a moment of looking askance at each other they quietly discussed their answer and came to an agreed upon response,
They say to him, “He will utterly destroy those wretched, and he will lease the vineyard to other vinedressers, ones who will return to him the produce in the season of the fruit” (v41).
Let’s imagine another moment of pause, silence, and quiet as Jesus lets their answer sit in for a minute before going on with his comments. They have just pronounced their own verdict and sentence. Then Jesus intensifies it all and makes it crystal,
Have you never read in the scriptures, “The stone the ones who build rejected, this one has become the corner of the head; this has happened from the Lord, and it is wonderful in our eyes”? Therefore, I say to you that the reign of God will be lifted up from you, and it will be given to a people producing its fruit. And the one who falls upon this stone will be broken to pieces; upon whom it might fall it will grind him to dust (vv42-44).
The chief priests and the elders have the moral of the story spelled out for them. If they didn’t get it before, they get it now and are ticked (v45): they are the ones who are the vinedressers and they are the ones who will kill the Son and be the ones who forfeit the reign of God.[xi] But Jesus’s Psalm quotation lets the audience know that there is vindication for the son in death just as there is vindication for the stone rejected by the builders:[xii] God wins over human sin, life wins over death.[xiii] God is coming, says Jesus, to take the vineyard (Israel[xiv]) away from the chief priests and elders and give it to another people,[xv] an entirely new entity (not the church but a people a varied people group lead by Christ) who will be grounded in God, do what God desires, and who will participate in the divine mission of the revolution of love, life, and liberation.[xvi]
Conclusion
We are left with a divine gift of self-reflection and awareness. While we know (and have known) this parable is about Jesus telling the chief priests and the elders of Israel what is going to happen, we have a moment to be self-aware in this space and currently and reflect. How much are we like the murderous vinedressers, rejecting the will and desires of the vineyard owner? It might be tempting to see how we, like Israel, are held captive by both the rulers and ideologies of the kingdom of humanity, forced into awkward and compromising positions of complicity. This is true, in part. It is also true that sometimes we blatantly and intentionally act in ways aligning us more with the wretched vinedressers. So, we, honestly and humbly, must ask that question and look long and hard in the mirror.
The good news is that Jesus is born, lived, died, raised, and ascended to the right hand of God. And, like the woman at the well, when we are thusly exposed as the vinedressers, we are received and not rejected. This is Jesus’s promise at the very end of this parable (as bad as those words sounded in our ears). Our exposure in the divine light of truth is a falling on and under the cornerstone (Jesus), and we are both broken to pieces and ground to dust in that exposure and encounter. Ye, because of Easter morning, we know that light triumphs over darkness, liberation collapses captivity, God’s grace and mercy over human sin, and life wins over death. We do not stay broken and ground, but rise in new life now and in the future because Jesus Christ is both risen today and tomorrow.
[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.
[ii] R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 808-809. “The story of an absentee landowner reflets a familiar economic situation at the time; some of the chief priests and elders to whom Jesus is speaking would probably have owned land away from Jerusalem.”
[iii] France, Matthew, 809. “The landowner must be a wealthy man in that a newly planted vineyard could not be expected to produce fruit for at least four years, during which he would have no return on his capital outlay. Once the vines began to produce fruit, there would be an agreed proportion of the crop due to the owner, leaving the tenants to derive their living from the rest.”
[iv] France, Matthew, 813. “Within the framework of the story the sending of the son is clearly a last resort, short of the owner returning himself (as he will eventually do in v. 40).”
[v] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 255. “Jesus’ ‘target’ is the religious leaders, not Isael as such. It is unlikely that Matthew of his (predominantly Jewish) community would have promoted this idea, setting Jew against Gentile in their shared community of faith.”
[vi] France, Matthew, 813. “As a bid for independence and an attempt to gain possession for themselves it was hardly likely to succeed in a society under the rule of law, and it reads more like a spontaneous and ill-conceived impulse than like a calculated policy.”
[vii] France, Matthew, 813. “When the son goes as this father’s messenger, he goes with all his father’s authority, and so deserves ‘respect’ and obedience. To reject the son’s demand is therefore the climax of rebellion. But to kill him is to add injury to insult.”
[viii] France, Matthew, 814. “To kill the son is an act of defiance to the father, and he cannot be expected to let them get away with it.”
[ix] France, Matthew, 809. “The fault of the tenants in withholding the due produce (and in the violence perpetrated on the slaves) is massively compounded by their decision to murder the owner’s son and so to attempt to take over the property. At this point the story has moved away from everyday reality…and…apparently invaded the story line: the murder of the son represents the forthcoming execution of Jesus.”
[x] France, Matthew, 812. v.33 “Israel’s Failure to produce the fruit God required in Isaiah’s day is now being repeated, but on a more disastrous level, as the parable will go on to explain.”
[xi] France, Matthew, 817. “Israel, they have assumed, is where God rules, but they have rejected his will and so will find themselves outside his domain, while he will rule over a reconstituted ‘Israel’ which acknowledges his sovereignty.”
[xii] France, Matthew, 811. “In that case the psalm quotation adds an element which is missing from the story: if the same stone which is rejected will become the cornerstone, then the son who is rejected may also be expected to be vindicated and to replace the present leadership.”
[xiii] France, Matthew, 811. “There is thus inherent in this parable with its appended psalm quotation a bold Christology of rejection and vindication, of death and resurrection, and it is focused in the parable character of the owner’s son.”
[xiv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 255. “There is much more reason to believe Matthew is associating Israel with the vineyard itself…It is a change in the leaders that is needed; replacing the unfaithful with faithful leaders. The landowner in the parable seeks more obedient sons and better tenant for the care of his beloved vineyard. He does not go seeking a new vineyard.”
[xv] France, Matthew, 808. “This last is the most significant of his adaptions: the mention of another ‘nation’ to replace ‘you’ in the tenancy of the vineyard takes us to the heart of the issue of the true Israel which underlies this whole section of the gospel, and in conjunction with the other two parables in the group it enables the reader to reach a more far-reaching understanding of what the vineyard parable implies than is possible from Mark and Luke when they record it alone.”
[xvi] France, Matthew, 811. “The addition of this quotation thus points us beyond the death of Jesus to his resurrection, which is the amazing thing which the Lord will do. In that case the new ‘nation’ of v. 43 may be understood as the people who follow the risen Jesu, just as the ‘something greater than the temple” in 12:6 appears to point beyond Jesus himself to a whole new regime focused in him.”
