This coming Sunday is the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The climax of the “Lord’s Vineyard” parable comes with the unexpected involvement of the landowner’s son following the servants. If the servants are the OT prophets, it is interesting to note that in Hebrews 1:1–2 “a son” as God’s last word follows prophets. Within the framework of the story the sending of the son is clearly a last resort, short of the owner returning himself (as he will eventually do in v. 40). When the son goes as his father’s messenger he goes with all his father’s authority, and so deserves “respect” and obedience. To reject the son’s demand is therefore the climax of rebellion. But to kill him is to add injury to insult. As a bid for independence and an attempt to gain possession for themselves it was hardly likely to succeed in a society under the rule of law, and it reads more as a spontaneous and ill-conceived impulse than as a calculated policy. But a parable does not have to fit into real life, and the points at which it becomes improbable are usually meant to draw attention.

The leaders of Jerusalem, I would suspect, understand the “son” to be a reference to Jesus and draw a conclusion of treasonous rebellion against the leaders of the Temple, as well as Roman rule. However, the Christian reader cannot fail to understand Jesus as the Son of God and the heir of the vineyard of Israel. For the Christian reader, Jesus’ death becomes Israel’s culminating act of rebellion, and may well reflect on how futile it was to try to escape from under God’s rule. To kill the son is an act of defiance to the father that will bring a cry for justice..

As mentioned above this expression might point to new people of God arising out of Jesus’ ministry and characterized by faith in him. We previously saw such a motif outlined in 8:11–12 and in the rabble of tax-collectors and prostitutes who “go ahead of” the chief priests and elders into the kingdom of God (vv. 31–32). The term ethnos, “nation,” calls for some such understanding, takes us beyond a change of leadership to a reconstitution of the people of God whom the current leaders have represented.

But on the other hand the singular ethnos does not carry the specific connotations of its articular plural, ta ethnē, “the Gentiles.” We may rightly conclude from 8:11–12 that this new “nation” will contain many Gentiles, but we saw also at that point that this is not to the exclusion of Jews as such but only of those whose lack of faith has debarred them from the kingdom of heaven. The vineyard, which is Israel, is not itself destroyed, but rather given a new lease of life, embodied now in a new “nation.” This “nation” is neither Israel nor the Gentiles, but a new entity, drawn from both, which is characterized not by ethnic origin but by faith in Jesus.

Some see an echo of Dan 7:27: “Then the kingship and dominion and majesty of all the kingdoms under the heavens shall be given to the people of the holy ones of the Most High, Whose kingship shall be an everlasting kingship, whom all dominions shall serve and obey.” If so, there is a poignant force in the transfer of this image to a different “people” which is not now simply Israel as Daniel had known it but which fulfills the role of the vineyard that is Israel.

What is lost by the current leadership and gained by the new “nation” is “the kingdom of God” represented by the personal authority of the landowner. The quotation in v. 42 has spoken directly of what “the Lord” has done in vindicating his Son. Israel, they have assumed, is where God rules, but they have rejected his will and so will find themselves outside his domain. At the same time, God will rule over a reconstituted “Israel” which acknowledges his sovereignty.

Image credit The Parable of the Wicked Tenants, Maarten Van Valckenborch, c. 1585, Kunsthistorisches Museum | Public Domain PD-US

This coming Sunday is the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The traditional interpretation holds that the parable is a symbolic account of the history of Israel, whose leadership (tenants of v.34) has rejected God’s earlier prophetic messengers (cf. Jer 7:25–27 seen in servants of vv.34-35). In v.37 the parable leaves Israel’s past and intuits the events of the Passion and Crucifixion that lay in the days to come. Indeed, the leaders of Jerusalem will seize Jesus and crucify him outside Jerusalem (cf. v.39). Where the traditional interpretation begins to waver starts in v.43 taking on a different direction from its OT parallel in Is 5:1-7:

Now, I will let you know what I mean to do with my vineyard: take away its hedge, give it to grazing, break through its wall, let it be trampled! Yes, I will make it a ruin: it shall not be pruned or hoed, but overgrown with thorns and briers; I will command the clouds not to send rain upon it. (Is 5)

Where the owner seems to abandon the vineyard in the OT telling, here in the Gospel according to Matthew, we are told of a very different outcome:  “Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.” (v.43)  In a scene reminiscent of the encounter of the prophet Nathan and King David, Jesus confirms what the Jerusalem leaders have already offered: “lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times” (v.41)

What does this imply? The whole parable might then be interpreted as a prediction of imminent régime change in Jerusalem. But if the tenants are the Jerusalem leadership, the new tenants are a “people.” In the Greek text, the word used is ethnos, “nation.” When a “nation” replaces the chief priests and elders there may well be something more radical implied, just as the withering of the fig tree symbolized the destruction of the temple, not merely its reorganization, and that same destruction (“deserted,” 23:38; “not one stone on another,” 24:2) is the conclusion to which the present confrontation is heading. More on this later.

A further clue to what sort of new régime may be expected is provided by the quotation from Ps 118:22: “‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes’?” Psalm 118:22–23, quoted exactly according to the LXX version, is part of the climax to the Hallel psalm which has already featured in Jesus’ royal ride to the city (v. 9, alluding to vv. 25 and 26). The speaker is probably the king, speaking on behalf of the nation, and the vindication of the rejected stone represents Israel’s triumph over the enemies who despised her. Thus the text does not in itself require a messianic application, but we have seen in 2:15 and 4:1–11 how naturally it comes to Matthew (and presumably to the wider Christian tradition within which this parable was handed on) to present Jesus as the personal embodiment of Israel, the “son of God.”

After the tenants’ rejection of the son in the parable the builders’ rejection of the stone is not hard to interpret. If the same stone that is rejected will become the cornerstone, then the son who is rejected may also be expected to be vindicated and to replace the present leadership. The addition of this quotation points us beyond the death of Jesus to his resurrection, which is “wonderful in our eyes.” The new “nation” of v. 43 may be understood as the people who follow the risen Jesus, just as the “something greater than the temple” in 12:6 appears to point beyond Jesus himself to a whole new régime focused on him.

Image credit The Parable of the Wicked Tenants, Maarten Van Valckenborch, c. 1585, Kunsthistorisches Museum | Public Domain PD-US