Vineyard Harvest Micaela Eleutheriade (1900-82) |
- Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 and Psalm 19 •
- Isaiah 5:1-7 and Psalm 80:7-15 •
- Philippians 3:4b-14 •
- Matthew 21:33-46
On
the surface, the parallels are not hard to see. God is the owner of the
vineyard. The tenants are those entrusted with witnessing to his
lordship. The slaves are the Old Testament prophets sent by God, time
and again, to recall his people to faithful obedience. In the face of
their repeated rejection the landlord’s own son – Jesus – is sent to the
vineyard. His murder at the hands of the tenants brings God’s wrath
upon them, and custody of the vineyard is placed in other hands.
Israel Jean David (1908-1993) |
Who
exactly are these first tenants? It is easy to misidentify them as the
Jews, and hence suppose that the new tenants are the Christians. The
lesson from Isaiah puts us right on this score: “the vineyard of the
LORD of hosts is the house of Israel”. It is not the tenants, but the
vineyard itself – God’s fertile ground – that is to be identified with
the Chosen People. The first tenants are the leaders of Israel.
Forgetting their obligation to God, they claim the headship of Israel
for their own nationalistic purposes. It is in order to rescue Israel,
not to abandon it, that God sends his Son. This means that the new
tenants do not mark a radical break with the past. Rather, they are
called to be more faithful stewards of the same God.
Paul’s
Epistle for this Sunday can be seen to reflect this interpretation of
the allegory. He emphatically underlines his own Jewishness, and neither
discounts nor disowns it. But, he says, “whatever gains I had, these I
have come to regard as loss . . . because of the surpassing value of
knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”.