Vacating the Leadership Team—Lectionary Reflection for Pentecost 19A/Proper 22A (Matthew 21)

Matthew 21:33-46 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

³³ “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went away. ³⁴ When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. ³⁵ But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. ³⁶ Again he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. ³⁷ Then he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ ³⁸ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ ³⁹ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. ⁴⁰ Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” ⁴¹ They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”

⁴² Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:

‘The stone that the builders rejected

    has become the cornerstone;

this was the Lord’s doing,

    and it is amazing in our eyes’?

⁴³ “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits. ⁴⁴ The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”

⁴⁵ When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. ⁴⁶ They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

*************

                Leadership teams, whether in politics, business, or sports, get changed occasionally. Baseball managers as well as coaches in other sports are always on a short leash unless you’re a legend. The Gospel reading for the week takes us back to Matthew 21, a chapter that begins with Jesus’ triumphal entry. It’s an action on Jesus’ part that makes the religious leaders in Jerusalem nervous. Not only did Jesus enact a prophetic word from Zechariah that caused the people to hail him as the Son of David (i.e., the Messiah), but he followed that up by entering the Table and turning the tables of the moneylenders. He then declared that God’s house of prayer had been turned into a den of thieves. Besides taking that action he healed the blind and the lame. After doing all of this, the leadership demanded that Jesus tell them what gave him the right to do these things. They demanded to know: What are your credentials? This discussion of Jesus’ authority was the topic of the previous week’s reading from Matthew 21, a conversation that led to Jesus sharing the parable of the two sons. That conversation concluded that prostitutes and tax collectors would enter God’s realm before the religious leaders.

                This week we focus our attention on the second of three parables that Jesus tells in response to the question of his authority. In this parable, which has an allegorical element to it, Jesus returns to the vineyard. In recognizing the allegorical dimension of this parable, where each element has meaning, we need to acknowledge the limits of allegory. In this parable, when Jesus speaks of the vineyard it is good to remember that the vineyard is understood (allegorically) to refer to the nation of Israel. What we read here reflects the message of Isaiah 5, where we encounter God planting a vineyard, while building a watchtower and wine vat (Isa. 5:1-7). This connection between the parable and Isaiah 5 needs to be kept in mind as we move forward. While God doesn’t take away the vineyard from Israel, might God remove the people charged with tending the vineyard due to their intransigence?

In the context of the parable, Matthew has in mind God’s realm. The question is whether the current religious leadership is willing to receive Jesus’ position in the realm or see him as a threat to their leadership and the stability of their society. As we see from the larger narrative, they resist him. They even plot to kill him. What we see happening in this parable is Jesus seeking to out the leadership because of their unfaithfulness.  

The parable before us, which has parallels in Mark 12:1-12 and Luke 20:9-19, begins by telling us that a landowner planted a vineyard, fenced it, dug a wine press, and set up a watch tower. The landowner (is this God?) leases the vineyard out to tenants who are to watch over the vineyard in the landowner’s absence. Now, tenant farmers know they owe the landowner a return on the investment. Yes, they get to keep some of their produce, but they don’t get to keep it all. So, in the parable, the landowner goes away to a place that isn’t revealed to us.

When harvest time arrives, the landowner sends his slaves to receive the owner’s share. Remember this is his vineyard. But, instead of giving the expected share to the slaves, they seized the slaves, beating one and killing another. The landowner sends a second set of slaves to collect what was due to him. Again, they treat this second set of slaves the same as before. As we read this in the context of Matthew 21, it is good to remember that when asked to tell the leaders the basis of his authority he mentioned John the Baptist, asking whether John’s baptism was from heaven or not. They didn’t answer (Mt. 21:23-27) but remember that John was killed because of his challenges not only to the religious leadership but the political leadership as well. Finally, the landowner decides to send his son, figuring that the tenants would respect this representative. But they don’t. They say to themselves—this is the heir. Let’s kill him and take his inheritance. Why they think they could take the inheritance by killing the heir is a bit mystifying, but that’s their conclusion. So, they seize him, throw him out of his father’s vineyard and kill him. Here’s the question Jesus raises: what do you think the landowner will do with them after they kill his son? That’s the question Jesus asks his audience. They respond to the question by suggesting that the landowner will put this group of tenants to death and rent the vineyards out to others. That’s the parable.

Now for the interpretation. Jesus asks those listening to him whether they had read the scriptures that reveal: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing” (Matt. 21:42). In other words, according to Jesus, God is going to take the kingdom of God away from those to whom it had been entrusted and turn it over to others who will produce the “fruits of the kingdom.”

As we ponder this parable it seems relevant to identify who Jesus has in mind. It’s clear that the slaves the landowner sends to the vineyard are the prophets God sends to Israel. The prophets didn’t fare well when it came to longevity. They were often mistreated and killed by those to whom they were sent. As for the identity of the son, the reader of Matthew’s gospel will know that this is Jesus, whom God sent to receive the harvest but whom the people killed. In this parable, Jesus reminds the readers that religious leaders often resist challenges to the status quo. However, they do get replaced. As the parable comes to a close, Jesus tells us that the landowner seized the tenants and put them to a miserable death, and gave the vineyard to others. As to whom the vineyard was given, an answer isn’t given.

In his interpretation of the parable, Jesus points to a Psalm that speaks of the “stone that the builders rejected,” which “becomes the cornerstone” (Psalm 118:22-23). With the Psalm in mind, Jesus tells the audience that the kingdom of God will be taken from them and given to another that will produce the fruit of the kingdom. As for those who reject the stone, it will fall on them and crush them. The danger here is that this passage and others like it have been used in supersessionist ways to suggest that God has rejected Israel and the Jews in favor of Christianity. The truth is, Jesus never rejects Judaism, but he does critique the leadership, whom he essentially accuses of hypocrisy. It is appropriate to note that the chief priests and Pharisees heard the parable they understood that Jesus was speaking of them. Therefore, they decide to arrest him. But as with John the Baptist, they feared the crowd who thought Jesus was a prophet of God. So, they must wait for another opening.

The parable shared here calls into question the faithfulness of religious and political leadership. They were entrusted with the care of the vineyard (Israel) but they failed to live out their calling. Instead of acting on behalf of the landowner they acted for their own benefit believing they could, by killing the landowner’s representatives and even the landowner's son, gain control of the vineyard. As we see here, things ended badly for them. Bringing the question of leadership to the present, what might we hear Matthew’s Jesus saying to us? By us, I mean all of us and not just the religious leaders Jesus spoke to in the parable. Are we resisting Jesus’ authority and message? Are we ready to hear a new message from God for our times? In the current context, we’re seeing a strong backlash against equal rights and protections for LGBTQ folks. Racial equity is also facing strong backlash. The same is true for women. This is happening in the churches and in the broader society. This “anti-woke” activism seeks to undermine decades of advancement so that we can go back to the way things were. There might also be a word to us about greed that often ends up embracing violence. 

Are we open to a prophetic word calling us to embrace Jesus’ vision for God’s realm that embraces equity and equality for all? With that question in mind, Richard Spalding offers us a fitting reflection on the implications of the message here for our day.

For us, in a century that has seen far too much of the death and persecution of the messengers of justice, it is only a small step into the allegory. We know too well that God has always had to risk violence in order to be in relationship with humanity. As we begin to recognize the messengers who have risked or sacrificed their lives while exhorting us to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly, perhaps the allegory may drill down to the recognition of some all-to-familiar hubris among the current tenants of the vineyard where—in Christ—God has prepared everything we need for fruitful living. It is this same hubris that makes us vulnerable to the violence and judgment we have too often brought down upon ourselves.  [Feasting on the Word, p. 144].

The number of prophets struck down is many. We can think of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Oscar Romero to name but two. So, again the word from Jesus to us asks us to consider whether we are ready to embrace Jesus’ vision for God’s realm or whether we will try to overthrow him so we can impose our own vision, one that lacks God’s vision of justice, mercy, and kindness. 

Image Attribution: Gogh, Vincent van, 1853-1890. Vineyards with a View of Auvers, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55980 [retrieved October 1, 2023]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vineyards_with_a_View_of_Auvers_1890_Vincent_van_Gogh.jpg.