“In the Vineyard” — Reflection by Rev. Brent Gundlah
First Reading (Isaiah 5:1-7, NRSVUE)
Gospel Reading (Matthew 21:33-46, NRSVUE)
‘Tis the season. Not that season (which is still a few months away), the other season — COVID shot season. The new vaccine generally comes out right about this time every year, and so for me it’s just a question of figuring out exactly when it makes sense to get it in order to minimize the impact that the possible side effects will have on my everyday life.
But last Friday night I ended up stopping at Walgreens to pick up something and made an decision that, at least for me, was uncharacteristically impulsive. Walking by the pharmacy counter and seeing no one waiting there, I call a play at the line and opted to get my COVID shot right then and there.
On balance, this proved to be a good idea. After all, it is a truth widely acknowledged that the anticipation of doing something you’re not looking forward to is often worse than actually doing it, and my strategy did away with that problem. But I still felt like you-know-what for a couple of days, so I apologize if I seemed a little off last Sunday morning. It wasn’t exactly what I’d call a pleasant experience overall, but know I’m better off for having endured it.
And that’s more or less how I felt after wrestling with today’s passage from Matthew’s Gospel, which is commonly known as the Parable of the Wicked Tenants. Thankfully, this one only comes around every three years — far less frequently than my COVID shot does — which is just fine by me because, I have to tell you, it isn’t all that fun to deal with; honestly, I don’t think you’d find too many pastors who look at it and say, “Wow, I really can’t wait to preach this one!” Mark and Luke tell their own versions of this story, but this one is the cringiest of the three.
In Matthew, this is the second in a series of parables that Jesus shares soon after his arrival in Jerusalem (and it immediately follows the Parable of the Two Sons that we looked at last week). All of these stories are clearly directed towards the powers that be in that place and time — last week at the civic and religious leaders (the chief priests and the elders of the people), and both this week and next week at the religious leaders alone (the chief priests and the Pharisees).
Jesus’s parables are often complicated and vexing, but it wouldn’t have been difficult for these folks to figure out that he was talking about them and condemning their leadership skills (they may not have been the nicest guys but they weren’t stupid); indeed, at the very end of today’s reading Matthew tells us they realized what Jesus was really driving at. In fact, the priests and Pharisees are so unhappy about what Jesus had said to them and about them that they want to arrest him, but they’re too afraid of the crowds to do that — at least for right now.
Anyway, here’s how today’s parable goes: A landowner plants a vineyard, fences it in, sets up equipment to make wine, and builds a watchtower in order to protect his investment. For reasons we do not know, he leaves the country and leases the vineyard to some tenants while he’s away. As part of this arrangement the landowner is entitled to a share of what the land produces.
When the landowner sends some of his slaves to collect what he is owed, the tenants attack them — beating one of them, killing another, and stoning yet another. The landowner then decides to send a bigger group of slaves to collect the debt that is due to him, and they end up meeting the same fate as the first group.
Finally, the landowner chooses to send his son to do his bidding, assuming that the violent tenants will treat him with respect. Instead the tenants kill the son with the hopes of getting his inheritance.
Jesus then abruptly ends the story, turns to these religious authorities, and poses a provocative question; he asks these priests and Pharisees: “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
The priests and elders don’t skip a beat before giving Jesus their response: “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 harvest time.’” Their answer isn’t at all surprising; as we’ll soon find out, they also have a tendency toward violent retribution.
And so what does Jesus do next? Well, he doesn’t ever actually say whether their was answer was right or wrong. He simply recites part of the One-hundred-and-eighteenth Psalm, which talks about the stone that the builders rejected becoming the cornerstone, and then goes on to tell the priests and elders — quite directly, in fact — that the kingdom of God will be taken away from them “and given to a people that produces the fruit of the kingdom.”
This whole passage seems, at least on the surface, to be a pretty straightforward allegory — a story in which the characters and happenings are meant to symbolize real world figures and events. And while the connections between fiction and reality here are reasonably obvious, let’s just tally them up:
The landowner represents God;
the vineyard represents the Promised Land of Israel;
the slaves represent the long line of Old Testament prophets who called the people to account and were punished for it;
the vicious tenants represent the religious establishment;
and the son represents Jesus, who also came to collect what was due and was killed.
But there’s a point in Matthew’s version of this story at which things become a bit more complicated.
When Jesus asks what the landowner will do to the tenants after they’ve concluded their violent spree, Matthew has the answer to that question come from the mouths of the priests and elders themselves. Mark and Luke, in contrast, place it upon Jesus’s lips. And, in Matthew, that answer is way more violent: “He will put those wretches to a miserable death,” is how it begins. This is kind of a big deal.
You see, Matthew had no great love for the Jewish authorities of his time — the chief priests, scribes, elders and Pharisees — who seem to oppose Jesus and his ministry at every turn. So it’s no shock that Matthew makes them look pretty bad throughout his version of the gospel.
And this is what makes today’s story so awful to deal with even now. Matthew’s harsh portrayal of the Jewish leaders has led to it being used a prooftext for what’s known as “supercessionism” or “replacement theology” — the misplaced belief that Christians supplanted the Jews as God’s chosen people. Unsurprisingly, this became the justification for all sorts of antisemitic words and actions over the past two thousand years.
But this interpretation of this passage couldn’t be more wrong, which is clear when you stop and think about the context in which it was written.
I mean, we can’t forget that Jesus was a Jew (not a Catholic or a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian), and his disciples were Jews too;
we can’t forget that Paul, perhaps Jesus’s most ardent follower after his death and resurrection, was a Pharisee;
we can’t forget that Matthew’s very first audience consisted largely of Jewish followers of Jesus;
and we can’t forget that Christianity wasn’t even a thing at this point — neither the concept of “Christianity” nor the word “Christian” even existed when all of this stuff happened or when Matthew wrote about it years later.
What Matthew is describing here is Jesus is an intramural struggle for the soul of Judaism — a struggle that Matthew and his readers would continue to engage in long after Jesus was gone.
The point is that this was not some kind of interfaith holy war and it shouldn’t ever be construed as such; it was a movement of a subset of Jews directed against their own religious leaders: leaders who were not living into what they said they believed; not abiding by the spirit of God’s law; leaders who needed to be replaced. And it’s clear that Matthew didn’t like them.
So it really isn’t all that surprising that Matthew doubles down on his feelings for these leaders by choosing to have them condemn themselves in today’s story rather than having Jesus do it for them.
But maybe there’s a little more to it than that — maybe more than even Matthew, blinded by his own contempt, could see at the time.
Jesus asks the priests and scribes, “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” And because the symbolism in this story isn’t really all that complicated; it’s obvious that Jesus is asking them what God will do to those who failed to properly tend to God’s kingdom, what God will do to those who rejected and killed the prophets, and who will soon reject and kill God’s only Son.
The reply that the authorities give to Jesus’s question says not only a lot about them, but also a lot about how they understand God: “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,” is what they say. This vengeful and violent answer, coming as it does from the mouths of the priests and Pharisees, and not Jesus, seems to invite yet another question: Is this really how God would respond, or is it just how they would respond (and thus expect God to respond)?
Sadly, the answer the authorities give is the one we expect; vengeance and violence often seem to be, as we all well know, the way of the world — and it was certainly the way of their world. But it’s not God’s way — and that’s kind of the point of all this.
God is, after all, the one who came to live among us as one of us, to die as one of us, to rise again, to show us all the way to eternal life. The slave, the son — and yes, even the wicked tenants — God loves them all.
We know what the wicked tenants in Jesus’s story — these religious authorities — are going to do next in real like; they’re going to kill the Son — God’s Son — in the hopes of securing his inheritance. What they don’t realize is that they already have it, and that nothing — not even their own horrible actions — can take it away from them.
This is not to say that our actions don’t matter to God. It’s pretty clear throughout the Bible that our lack of faith in God’s promises, and what we do because of that lack of faith, sadden and trouble God immensely. But God also never gives up on us. Not ever.
And when we finally realize that God’s not going anywhere — when we finally get it through our hard hearts and thick skulls that God has already provided us with all that we need — maybe we’ll stop lying and cheating and stealing and killing in order to get it;
maybe we’ll choose to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves as God has always loved us, and as God has always called us to do.
This isn’t always the easiest thing for us to do, but we’ll all be better off for having done it.