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Thoughts of a saint and slave
by Sam Isaacson
The parable we’ll be looking at this week is a challenge. It also feels a little like an enormous pointing finger coming down out of the sky, coupled with a booming voice saying, ‘it’s you!’ but not in a good way.
‘“There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first. And they did the same to them. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”’ (Matthew 21:33-41)
The vineyard
Firstly it would be useful to determine what this vineyard represents. The concept of a piece of land being operated by tenants while the landowner lives in another country was commonplace in Palestine at this time, so the picture would have made a great deal of sense to Jesus’ audience. It would have been natural for the listeners to compare this picture with the picture of the Kingdom of God. God owns the ‘vineyard’, yet it is lived in and operated by those that it has been entrusted to, i.e. Israel. Suffice it to say that Jesus’ Jewish audience would no doubt have felt more than a little accused by this parable, and rightly so.
The tenants and the servants
If the tenants are Israel, then the servants sent by the master represent the prophets sent by God throughout the Old Testament. Time and time again God’s mouthpieces would be beaten, killed, or stoned. Just as an example check out Jeremiah 20:2, in which ‘Pashhur beat Jeremiah the prophet’. On one occasion, ‘when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord, Obadiah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifties in a cave and fed them with bread and water.’ (1 Kings 18:4)
It’s all about Jesus
The reference to ‘the son’ is an unambiguous reference to Jesus. He appeared to the Jews, who killed him. As a result the Kingdom changed hands. The keys to the Kingdom are no longer found in the Jewish genealogy, but rather belong to those whose faith is in Jesus. The reward for this new tribe of ‘Christians’ is simple: we receive ‘the fruits in their seasons’. What a privilege and a joy! The consequences for those who reject the son? Simple: ‘a miserable death’. Let’s leave it there for this week.
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