The parable we just heard is set in a vineyard that the landowner prepared for planting, put a fence around and built a watchtower over.
Often it’s risky to turn parables into allegories, associating each character in the parable to something, or someone, in the world where we live. But there’s widespread agreement that this parable is an allegory. Matthew has taken the text from Mark and told this story in a way that would speak to his community, a community of Jesus followers living after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD.
In Christianity, this text has been misused dangerously and inaccurately to suggest a supersessionist view where God replaces a disobedient Israel with faithful Gentiles. But Matthew’s community were Jewish Christians, not Gentiles, so that doesn’t make sense; it also assumes that the Gentile church has been more faithful than the Jews and, sadly, history refutes that claim.[i]
Listening to this parable, Matthew’s audience would have immediately recognized that the vineyard represents Israel.
We didn’t hear it but today’s Old Testament reading is the “Song of the Unfruitful Vineyard” from Isaiah 5, a poem and allegory that “expresses the divine pain at the people’s failure to live out the relationship with their God.”[ii] “God richly blessed and tended God's "vineyard," the chosen people, giving them everything they needed to thrive. But instead of grapes, God got wild grapes, so the vineyard must be radically pruned.”[iii]
In Matthew’s parable, the landowner is God and the two groups of servants reflect the “typical Jewish groupings of the Scriptures into the “former” prophets [which are Joshua through Kings] and the “latter” prophets [which are Isaiah through Malachi].”[iv]
Of course, the son, and heir, is Jesus himself, who was sent by God to God’s people, and then arrested and executed.
And the tenants, well, the tenants, are the people of God, the ones entrusted to care for God’s kingdom; and in the parable, the tenants are the Pharisees, the chief priests and elders. They ignore the landowner’s authority over them in favor of their own plans, and instead of responding with gratitude for the plentiful harvest, or recognizing the abundance they’ve been given, instead of returning to God a portion of what God had provided them, the tenants act out of greed and self-interest. Their “attitude of selfishness that has no need for God” leads them to violence and murder.
Matthew, Luke and Mark all include a version of this parable and say that that when the chief priests and the Pharisees realized Jesus was speaking about them, they wanted to arrest him but they didn’t for fear of the crowds. (Matt. 21:45-46, Mark 12:12, Luke 20:19)
Jesus didn’t avoid conflict but called the religious leaders and the people of Israel to be accountable as God’s people. Then as now, being God’s people means that we follow God’s commands for our relationship with God and with each other. As Luther states throughout his catechism, we are first “to fear and love God so that” our actions will reflect God.
Today, when we hear this parable and understand ourselves as the tenants, we may think of our congregation as the vineyard, a bountiful place where we build a fence or hedge around us for protection, and add a watchtower to alert us to those who might cause trouble.
The parable then is a warning, because the fence and watchtower only separated the tenants farther from the rest of the world. The community became one of insiders and outsiders and the tenants felt threatened by people they didn’t know who came to the vineyard.
I recently heard Pastor Kelly Chatman from North Minneapolis describe his congregation there, and he said, one time, when some people from the neighborhood came to worship for the first time, someone complained because they saw the visitors eating potato chips in the back of the sanctuary. Even Pastor Kelly said he started to say something, to gently correct them, but he caught himself because he recognized what was happening in that moment: there were visitors eating potato chips in the back of the sanctuary because there were people coming to church who didn’t already know the rules, they didn’t know all the words to the prayers or the hymns, when to stand and when to sit, and they’d come anyway.
They saw something in that congregation that made them want to be a part of it. They saw Jesus there.
And, that is Good News.
If we’re serious about working for the kingdom of God, then the vineyard is “all the places where we have been called by God to produce the fruits of the kingdom.”[v] And when we use that definition, the whole world opens up. The kingdom isn’t limited to one congregation, or even one denomination or doctrine, but the whole world.
Following Jesus, we all are entrusted with God’s kingdom and that includes the ways we live out the kingdom of God in our homes and places of business, our schools and neighborhoods, our friend groups and associations, as well as our congregation.
And when we see the expansive kingdom of God, the watchtower is transformed into a lighthouse illuminating God’s love for our neighbors and guiding us to those places where we may be in service in our community and world.
Let us pray…
Good and gracious God,
Thank you for sending Your Son Jesus to us, and for your forgiveness when we do not receive him and we reject your love for us.
Help us to see all that we are and all that we have is because of your abundant grace for us.
Send us out into your kingdom, into all the places of our lives,
That the world would see Jesus.
We pray in the name of Your Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
[i] Donald Senior. Matthew. 238-244.
[ii] Charles Aaron, Jr. “Commentary on Isaiah 5:1-7.” Luther Seminary. Workingpreacher.org
[iii] Fred Gaiser. “Isaiah.” Luther Seminary. EntertheBible.org
[iv] Donald Senior. Matthew. 239.
[v] Brian Stoffregen. “Exegetical notes on Matthew 21:33-46."
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