Tenants in the vineyard

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.

Matthew 21:45

That’s what verse 45 of our reading from Matthew 21 says. But how, I wonder — how did they know that?

Let’s remember the context; that might help. Jesus had ridden into Jerusalem in lowly pomp on an ass, the foal of a donkey. He had been preaching in the temple courts pretty steadily over Passover, and had made a hullabaloo when he went through the money changers’ area with a whip, upturning tables. He had just finished teaching the parable of the two sons, which we heard last week. So I suppose he had made it pretty clear that he was speaking about the religious leaders, about God’s people the Israelites, and about himself.

In this parable, the actions of the owner of the vineyard are actually quite normal. In the time of Jesus, Palestine was a troubled place with little luxury, and there were plenty of absentee landlords who let out their estates and were interested only in collecting the profits at the right time. The rent might be paid in any of three ways: as money, as a fixed amount of the crop no matter what the crop was, or as an agreed-upon percentage of the crop.

Even the action of the cultivators was not uncommon. The country was seething with economic unrest. The working people were discontented and rebellious, and the cultivators’ attempt to eliminate the son was by no means impossible.

So we have the vineyard as the nation of Israel, and its owner is God. The cultivators are the religious leaders of Israel who, as it were, had charge for God of the welfare of the nation. The messengers who were sent one after another are the prophets, sent by God and often rejected and killed. And the son who came later is none other than Jesus himself.

Now, there’s no doubt — no doubt — that the priests and Pharisees knew the law. Nobody knew it better. From the time Moses brought the Ten Commandments down from Sinai, the priests were responsible for the safekeeping of the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies, right through to the Babylonian destruction of the First Temple. They continued to lead and instruct in the Second Temple once Cyrus of Persia freed the Israelites from exile. They knew all about the commandment against coveting land or crops or anything that belonged to someone else. They knew all about how wrong it was to murder servants, or the landowner’s son.

But the priests and the Pharisees took the original Ten Commandments and transformed them into hundreds of laws. The Pharisees would have judged the covetous and murderous behaviour of the tenants in the story very harshly. Those folks in the story definitely weren’t among the righteous — the word Paul uses to describe his own history as a Pharisee, before he came to believe that righteousness comes through faith and by grace. The priests and the Pharisees would never have behaved the way the evil tenants do in Jesus’s story — or so they think in their own minds, blinded by the very rules they have created. So they condemn the evil tenants, and in so doing, condemn themselves.

This parable, and the religious leaders’ response to it, clearly tells us that the priests and the Pharisees knew who Jesus was. They knew who Jesus was saying he was — ahead of the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, ahead of the midnight trial and the involvement of Pilate, ahead of the crucifixion and the resurrection. Jesus flatly says he is the Son, and they don’t argue with that. They don’t argue with it. It also clearly tells us that they knew Jesus was condemning their actions as they led the Jewish people.

I have to say, there are a lot of ways we’ve used this story, and many others, over the past two millennia as proof that God’s covenant with the Israelites was replaced by God’s covenant with Christ’s followers. That’s simply not true. Jesus is not condemning the Jewish people. But he is clearly calling out the leaders for persecuting and putting to death the prophets of old, and he is clearly prophesying his own death.

So I started this sermon by quoting the verse in Matthew: when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized he was speaking about them. And I asked, how did they know? They knew because they understood the context of the story. That’s why critical thought and investigation of Scripture are so important, even today. We need to understand the context of what we’re reading.

So here’s my question for us this morning: do we realize who we are in this story? We too are tenants in God’s vineyard, grafted, as Paul puts it in Romans, into the covenant. So how do we treat God’s prophets today? How do we treat the Son of God when he comes into the vineyard? Are we honourable tenants, or selfish tenants, more concerned with our own security and gain than with being grateful to be God’s workers? Do we defend tradition, or justify behaviours, based on standards that have nothing to do with what Jesus taught? Our institutions, whether secular or religious, are full of modern-day Pharisees. Do we side with them, or stand with Jesus?

We are blessed to live in abundance in this land. As we approach Thanksgiving and share with the least among us, may we be willing to share more than we covet, care more than we protect, and uplift more than we defend — so that all may come to know the owner of the vineyard, God, and celebrate the presence of the Son, made visible through our actions. Amen.