Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: “Hear another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey. When vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce. But the tenants seized the servants and one they beat, another they killed, and a third they stoned. Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones, but they treated them in the same way. Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.’ They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?” They answered him, “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times.” Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes? Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.” (Matthew 21.33-43)
As the Gospel of Matthew inches towards its conclusion, the controversies between Jesus and the Jewish leaders accelerates, the antagonism now in the open air. As we saw last Sunday, once Jesus enters Jerusalem for the final time, the chief priests and the elders are intent on silencing this thorn in their side from Galilee. They try to corner him like a chased animal, but he continually outwits them, putting them in a corner instead.
The selection for this 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time picks up where last Sunday’s reading of the parable of the two sons ended. In that parable, Jesus drew a direct parallel between the second son who refuses to comply with his father’s request to work in the vineyard with the headstrong religious leaders who also refuse to do the will of the Heavenly Father.
In this section, Jesus does much the same, this time drawing a comparison between the religious leaders and wicked tenant farmers in another parable that he tells them. Matthew allows the transition between the two parables with the words, “Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people, “Hear another parable.” He then offers the story of a landowner who leased his vineyard to tenants while he was away on a journey.
When it came time for the harvest, the landowner sent servants to obtain the landowner’s rightful part of the produce, but the tenant farmers refused to turn over any of the produce, instead, “seizing the servants and one they beat, another they killed, and a third they stoned.” Clearly, these are mean-spirited and self-serving tenants.
A second attempt is made by the vineyard owner and the results are the same. So, he sends his son, thinking to himself that surely the tenants will respect his direct descendant. But they do not. Rather, upon seeing the son, they connive not only to remove the son but also to steal his inheritance from the landowner. “Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance,” they say to themselves.
As we heard, they follow through on the plot, seizing the son, throwing him out of the vineyard, and killing him. Jesus ends the story with a question, much the same as he did with the earlier parable. Here, he asks the religious leaders, “What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?” They have no choice but to answer rightfully, “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death.”
Jesus allows their words to condemn themselves, informing the chief priests and the elders of the people that “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.” We have to credit the religious leaders here. They may be blind, but they aren’t stupid. Matthew ends the scene with these words, “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they knew that he was speaking about them.” They were right.
Overall, the parable is simple, as were almost all of Jesus’ stories. Like the first parable, the vineyard in this second parable refers to the nation of Israel. It was a customary image for the people. Isaiah the prophet used it in the sixth century when he forthrightly stated, “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel” (5.7). Jesus is straightforwardly borrowing from the ancient prophets in using this image. And, like them, he wants to show how far short those entrusted with the vineyard have fallen.
As we have seen, the story has a stairstep escalation. First, the landowner sends servants who are beaten, killed, and stoned. He sends more servants who are treated in the same vicious manner. Finally, he sends his own son to remedy the situation. Jesus clearly intends the servants to refer to the prophets that the Lord God called into his service to demand that the house of Israel get its act together, realigning themselves with the ways of God, not with the ways of the wicked.
Likewise, the sending of the son as a last ditch effort to convince those responsible for the fall from grace to return to the right path is a clear reference to Jesus himself, sent by his Heavenly Father to confront those in authority and to demand that they comply with the will of the Most High God, serving his will, not themselves and their interests.
There is nothing particularly confusing about the parable that Jesus tells. It is intended to put before the religious leaders the trajectory of their continuous rejection of God and of those he called to communicate his will to the house of Israel. It shows that the brutal mistreatment of God’s messengers has a long history and the assault upon Jesus and his person is but the latest example of the wrongheadedness and willful disobedience of those who were supposed to be in close harmony with the Most High God.
So, rejection is front and center in the parable, putting before us the constant battle between those who do the will of God and those who want to substitute their own will for the will of God. It makes no attempt to undersale the ugliness of the fight, clearly pointing out the harsh and brutal treatment inflicted upon God’s messengers by those in power.
Writing decades after the death of Jesus, Matthew also points to the killing of Jesus, describing the tenant farmers as seizing the son, throwing him out of the vineyard, and killing him. The reference to throwing him out of the vineyard is important, wanting us to see that Jesus was killed outside the walls of Jerusalem, leaving no doubt in our minds as to who the son of the vineyard owner is.
Various attempts have been made over time to decide to whom Jesus is referring when he tells the religious leaders that “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.” Who were these people? Often, as in Matthew’s own time, the phrase was understood as referring to the newly founded church composed of Gentile believers and a handful of Jewish-Christian believers. They would now be in charge of the vineyard that previously had belonged to the house of Israel.
There is no argument against that interpretation except to point out that Jesus has placed a condition on the new tenants. They are seen as producing fruit, another favorite Mathaen theme, one that pops its head above ground with regularity in his gospel. That condition is important to keep front and center because it makes clear that the kingdom of God belongs to those who produce its fruit, not necessarily to those who happen to be recognized placeholders at the moment.
In other words, the leaders of the Jewish Christian community in Matthew’s time could claim rightful charge of the vineyard only so long as they were producing fruit. If and when they fail to evidence their faithfulness to the will of God, then the vineyard will be taken from them also and will be given to a people that will produce its fruit.
That point should not be overlooked because a claim to the vineyard can be made only so long as there is fruit to show that the tenants are actually doing the work as called for by the Most High God. That right ends when those who would claim to be handling the vineyard for the landowner have nothing to show, proving themselves to be little different from the house of Israel. In other words, a change in lineage, but not a change in character.
For us living in these times, the parable continues to have relevance, even if spoken to a specific audience at a specific time. Jesus addresses us as much as he addresses the chief priests and elders of the people, his parable reminding us that we do not acquit ourselves of rejecting the ways of God simply by claiming that the vineyard is now in our possession. That would be the height of foolishness, Jesus’ own words a haunting reminder that cocksure and conceited persons have a comeuppance when he points out, “Tax collectors and the prostitutes will enter the kingdom of God ahead of you.”
In other words, it is just as easy for us to reject the will of God as it was for the chief priests and leaders of the people in Jesus’ time, and it is just as easy for us to be blind to our own willfulness and stubbornness as it was for them. Just because there are place cards at the table that bear our names means next to nothing if we are failing to do the will of God and instead are intent on rejecting his words and his ways as the leaders of the Jewish people did.
We wrongly assume that we have been given a coat of many colors that bestows upon us favoritism and rank, requiring little to nothing of us, choosing to ignore the honest truth that our lives must evidence the fruit that Jesus demands of those who would be doing the will of the Heavenly Father. That coat can prove us to be charlatans as much as it communicates our special status. It all depends on how we live our lives and whether our stay in the vineyard produces good fruit.
We do a grave injustice to the text and to Jesus’ message if we strictly read it with a condescending and accusing eye to the chief priests and elders of the people, harshly criticizing them and pointing fingers because of their ignorance and arrogance. It is always the easiest win in the Devil’s playbook, having us shift the focus from our own failures to those of others, in this way closing off any chance of our own conversion because our time is spent on judging others, not in recognizing our own complicity and complacency.
In other words, while the reading of the parable is easy, the practical implications are not. As we hear the parable told, we might want to listen more closely to Jesus’ last words as he ends the story. He says, “I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.” When he says “you” that’s who he means. You and me, not them and those other people.
–Jeremy Myers
