Matthew 21.33-45

PARABLE OF THE VINEYARD

(Matthew 21.33-45)

The Parable of the Vineyard is quite unique, in so far as it is the only parable recorded which is an allegory.

All the parables of Jesus seek to make one point, and one point only, and if one finishes up with more than one point, most New Testament scholars would suggest that we have interpreted the parable incorrectly.

However, the Parable of the Vineyard is the exception since every feature of the story symbolises some particular aspect of the interpretation.

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So let us look at this parable as told by Jesus in St Matthew's Gospel, and try and see what it meant originally for Jesus, what it meant for Christians living at the end of the first century to whom Matthew wrote his gospel, and what it might mean for us today.

We are told that a landowner planted a vineyard and put a fence around it, dug out a wine press and built a watch tower.

He then leased out the vineyard to local tenants, whilst the owner went to live in another country. This was a practice which the original hearers would have understood, since it was the common practice in Galilee in the first century.

However, when the owner sent his slaves to collect a proportion of the produce as rent, the tenants beat up one, killed another and stoned another.

Eventually, out of desperation, the owner sent his only son, expecting the tenants to respect him. But they did not. In fact they killed him, and threw his body outside the vineyard, hoping now to be able to claim the vineyard as their own.

Finally, the owner of the vineyard turned up himself. He put to death the tenants of the vineyard and hired new tenants who would produce suitable fruit at harvest time.

Now that is basically the story.

But why did Jesus tell it? What was its purpose?

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The image of the vineyard would have been very familiar to his audience brought up on the Old Testament. They would have recalled that it is used by the prophet Isaiah as a description of Israel.

In Isaiah 5.1-7, the prophet tells his readers that God, the owner of the vineyard expected his people to produce grapes but instead it produced 'Wild grapes'. This refers to the behaviour of the Israelites as God's chosen race. And the prophet concludes: ‘He expected justice but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry’. Isaiah 5.7.

In other words, the Jewish people had failed to live up to his expectations as his chosen people.

So God sends his servants, the prophets, to encourage them to amend their ways and produce fruits of righteousness. But they would not. They preferred to close their ears to their message by beating, stoning and killing them.

Finally, in desperation, he sent his only Son, confident that they would at least listen to him. But again, they would not. In fact they killed him throwing his body outside the walls of the vineyard, said Jesus, prefiguring his own death outside the city walls of Jerusalem.

This will prove too much for the patience of God, warns Jesus, and he will take away the vineyard from the Jews and give it to the Gentiles.

The parable, if you like, is the story of Israel's relationship with God.

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If that is the reason why Jesus told that story of the vineyard, why did Matthew choose to include it in his Gospel for an early Gentile Christian audience towards the end of the first century?

The answer is very simple. Note where he places it in his gospel narrative. He places it just before he begins to tell the story of the passion of Jesus. In other words, he is seeking to give a reason why the Jews turned against Jesus and crucified him.

In fact, to make it even more specific, he suggests in his gospel narrative, that Jesus first told the story to the chief priests and elders of the people. They were very critical of Jesus mixing freely with tax collectors and prostitutes. In other words, he was mixing with the socially undesirables who were excluded from respectable Jewish society, who were to become the New Israel. They were to become the new tenants of the vineyard.

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If that then is the reason why Matthew has included the parable of the vineyard in his gospel narrative, what is its relevance for us today, some twenty centuries later? Why do we need to hear this parable, told originally by Jesus to his Jewish audience.

The parable challenges us to ask whether we, as the New Israel, the Christian Church, bear fruits of repentance in our own lives, or do we yield "wild grapes"?

This is a very serious question, because, unlike the Old Israel, the Jewish nation, we have the example of Jesus Christ to remind us of what God expects from us. Furthermore, we have had, throughout the centuries, the servants of God, not just his teachers and preachers, but also the saints of God who have reminded us what God expects from us. Alas, their message has often been too painful to bear, and we have put some to death in order to silence them, and to quieten our consciences.

We have often put off until tomorrow what we know should be done today, assuming that God is a person of infinite patience. But he is not. There is a limit to his patience, as the parable of the vineyard reminds us. There will come a time when he will wait no more. He will come to his people and judge whether they have produced fruits of righteousness in their lives, or whether, like the Jews of the Old Testament, they have only produced "wild grapes'. In which case, we run the risk of being cut off from God.

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My friends, let us always be mindful of what God expects of us as members of the New Israel. Let us live lives which bear the fruits of repentance and not 'wild grapes'.

And now to the God who has graciously chosen us to be members of the New Israel, the Christian Church, be all honour and might, today and always. Amen .