Matthew 21:33 "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 moved to another place. 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, but 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.
With this week's reading we finish out Matthew 21.
There is great continuity between what we have this week along with what's gone before. The overall setting remains the same. Matthew brought Jesus into Jerusalem via his "triumphal entry" at the beginning of chapter 21; this was followed by the 'cleansing of the temple;' and then by last week's parable of the 2 sons. A noteworthy outcome of last week's parable was that Jesus told the religious elite that tax collectors and prostitutes were entering the kingdom "ahead of" or "before" them. Immediately on the heals of that parable, Jesus then tells this parable of the wicked tenants--culminating with the phrase in vs 43 addressed to the same religious elite: Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce fruit.
Vss 33-39: This group of verses actually constitutes **the parable. It's a scenario that would be very well known in Jesus' day--the scenario of the absentee landowner. Indeed, in one of the opening scenes of Leon Uris's _The Haj_--a novel that begins in the early 1920's--an emissary of an absentee landowner drives up in a car in order to collect the yearly rents. What seems odd in the story right away is that the workers of the vineyard are prone to revolt. At first we're not told *why. Culturally speaking, one wonders how likely this would've been. Revolt was common enough in Jesus' day, but it was usually directed against political authority (Rome, the Herods)....or outright oppression of some sort. In Jesus' story the landowner has provided everything needed for the vineyard. Up to vs 34 it seems clear enough that the vineyard has everything needed for both the absentee landowner AND the workers to receive their due.....their rightful expectation.
Yet, the story begins taking a twist when the landowner sends his emissaries to collect. In vss 35 & 36 those emissaries are beaten and/or killed. Why? We don't know yet, but at the very least the workers appear to be taking extreme measures for the purpose of AVOIDING PAYING the landowner his due.
At this point I should mention that some modern commentators differ from the traditional line of thought. The traditional line of thought is that the absentee landowner is a righteous God-figure in the story & that the hearers of Jesus' parable would side with **him in the dispute; they would see *him as the one wronged. Some these days, however, like to point out that the peasant class that followed Jesus would hardly have identified well with a rich absentee landowner, and they would've been cheering, as it were, for the underdogs revolting. While I'll admit that I **love the insight that some of the modern guys can give us, I'd have to disagree with them in *this instance--if for no other reason, due to the fact that the primary/intended 'audience' of this parable was not the Galilean peasant class, but rather the Temple/religious elite. *THEY, definitely (as indicated by their response in vs 41) were able to identify with the rich absentee landowner.
Vss 38-39 constitute the closest thing to a disclosed motive for the actions of the workers. They seem to have it in their heads that the vineyard could become THEIRS. Commentators point out that this **could be a feasible plan if, for instance, they assumed the landowner had died & his son was the only living heir. At that point, kill the son, and *perhaps they could claim some sort of joint ownership of the property. The feasibility question aside, it's in these verses that the true mindset of the workers is revealed: they are not only rebelling against the covenant they had entered (do the work, pay the owner, keep the leftovers); but they actually want to do away with the owner and take over everything for themselves.
APPLICATION:
The application of parables like this is always a tricky question. Jesus meant the parable to be very narrowly applied; he was addressing the Temple elite of 1st c. Judaism. In a prophetic sense, he was basically telling them that as God's spokesperson, he (and God) had found them wanting; he and God had found them to be greedy, self-serving, rebellious and prideful. He was telling them that their days were numbered; that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce fruit. It is NOTEWORTHY that Jesus is not addressing the nation of Israel; he's not addressing all Jews, etc. etc.; he's addressing the Temple elite. Of course as a *prophecy, we could say that this statement came true with the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70AD. At that point the high-priestly Temple elite class **vanishes from the scene and Judaism becomes a much different religion. For Matthew and his readers in the late 1st century, the intent was probably to lift up the Apostolic & post-Apostolic community of Jesus-followers as the true leadership of God's covenant people.
Regardless, while that may be interesting from a historical perspective, the question remains as to how to apply the teaching to our day. My own approach is to simply look for the 'timeless truths' aspects and go from there. The temple elite were being told that they were prideful, arrogant, ...interested in doing things their way as opposed to God's way; etc. etc. These are things that did *not originate in 1st century Jerusalem, nor did they end there. From Adam to present day people who have claimed the name of God for themselves have been susceptible to arrogantly abusing the religion and--just like the wicked vineyard workers--(a) wanting to wrest it away from God and (b) remake it into something along the lines of their own image.
The million $$ question is, when have WE been tempted to act like that??
cheers
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