PENTECOST XVII 2014

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

The Gospel for this week is yet another parable set in a vineyard. Strictly, it is an allegory since it is not simply a story with a message, but one in which the participants can be directly correlated with the people to whom, and about whom, the story is told.

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”.

The continuity between Jew and Christian is essential to the Gospel message Paul preaches. It carries this implication, however. If the ancient Pharisees forfeited their spiritual inheritance because of arrogance and complacency, a similar attitude can rob modern Christians of theirs.