The Parable of the Tenants in the Vineyard

The last couple of parables we’ve looked at here in Matthew have threaded the line between grace and judgment. But today we move headlong into the parables of judgment, with the Parable of the Tenants in the Vineyard. It’s a text that’s important to me, but also one that has a long history of antisemitic rhetoric attached to it, so a good deal of care is required to give it its proper due.

Text

This parable is found in very similar forms in all three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 21.33-44; Mark 12.1-12; Luke 20.89-18), as well as in the noncanonical Gospel of Thomas 65-66. I’ll be commenting primarily on Matthew’s account:

[21.33] Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, placed a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. He then leased it to tenant-farmers and went away to another country. [33] When the harvest time arrived, he sent his slaves to the tenant-farmers to receive the harvest. [35] But the farmers seized, his slaves, beat one, killed another, and stoned another. [36] Again he sent other slaves, more than the first time; and they treated them likewise. [37] At last, he sent them his son, saying, “They will respect my son.” [38]But when the farmers saw the son, they said to themselves, “This man is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” [39] So they seized him and threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. [40] Now when the lord over the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenant-farmers?

[41] They said to him: “He will give those bad men a bad death, and rent the vineyard to other tenant-farmers, who will give him the harvest at 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] I tell you: This is why the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. [44] And, the one who falls on this stone will be crushed, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”

Experience

Like the Good Samaritan, this is a parable for which I feel I have some skin in the game. I have previously called it Jesus’ clearest interpretation of his own ministry and work, and placed it at the centre of my argument in favour of the ‘nonviolent atonement’.

While it’s never been a big part of my reading of the parable, the tag at the end with its strong ethnic sentiment stuck out to me this time. Whereas most of the time, I can brush off the charges against the parables of antisemitism very easily, since Jesus clearly seems to have a particular kind of leadership in his crosshairs, this is more generalized and therefore more dangerous.

Encounter

From the broader context of the parable, Jesus is speaking to a mixed audience, which includes members of the Jerusalem religious establishment against whom the parable seems to be directed.

In the parable, the two main characters are a wealthy landowner and his tenant farmers (who operate as a single character). Other people, such as the servants and son, are plot devises rather than characters.

Explore

Literary Context

As we saw with the Parable of the Great Banquet, which is found in the next chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, this parable is impossible to understand well outside of its narrative context. In chapter 21 alone, Jesus has entered Jerusalem to a lavish and deeply symbolic display by the crowds, cleansed the Temple of those participating in the ‘Temple-Industrial Complex’, and cursed the fig tree for not bearing good fruit. Challenged by the Temple authorities about the authority upon which he’s acting, Jesus tells three parables: 1.The Parable of the Two Sons, in which one who appears disobedient but does what is right is preferred over the one who performs obedience but doesn’t follow through; 2. This present parable; and 3. The Parable of the Wedding Banquet. In between the second and third parables, Matthew notes that the “chief priests and the Pharisees” — hardly natural allies — “realized that he was speaking about them” and begin to plot his arrest (21.45f).

Two things are important to note here: First, this is an intense and increasingly dangerous situation for everyone. Jerusalem is over-filled with pilgrims for the Passover and everyone — the people, the religious leaders, and Roman authorities — is on edge. Jesus’ triumphal entry and attack on the operation of the Temple have only served to turn up the heat. And second, the question at hand in these parables is by what authority Jesus is acting (Capon; Nuechterlein Proper 22A).*^

Literary Precedents

We saw the other day how the vineyard was an important symbol for Israel as God’s people, originating in Isaiah 5. This parable is even more evocative of that oracle, since both stories ultimately involve God’s judgment based on not receiving good fruit from the vineyard (Bailey (2008) 413; Wilson 202; Marr 129; Lischer 141; SBL). But where Isaiah’s oracle has God rejecting the vineyard itself for bearing bad fruit, Jesus twists it so that God rejects not the vineyard but those who are working it (Bailey (2008) 414). God is still very much in the vineyard business.

Associating the parable with Isaiah 5 is also suggested by a rabbinic parable that uses a similar set of stock characters. There, a king removes tenant after tenant from a vineyard, replacing each with their children, until he has finally had enough and evicts them (Stern, quoting Sifrei Devarim 312). Interestingly, the explanation of that rabbinic parable refers to Israel as “the tribe of the LORD’s inheritance,” a theme that also appears towards the end of our parable. Overall, the similarities of function and symbol strongly suggest that both parables worked within an existing supply of references (Stern).

While not a detail in Matthew’s version of the story, Mark refers to the son specifically as the “beloved son,” which calls back to the story of Jesus’ baptism and therefore reinforces the traditional interpretations of this parable as a prediction of Jesus’ own death at the hands of the religious establishment.

Meaning

Nothing in this study has challenged a more-or-less traditional interpretation: The land-owner who has entrusted his vineyard to a group of tenant-farmers who respond with defiance and violence to his reasonable expectation of receiving a harvest of good fruit is like God, who has entrusted his people to leaders who have likewise not produced the good fruit expected of them and have responded violently to the prophets, from ancient times through John the Baptist and Jesus himself (Case-Winters 253). As Scott notes, it patterns closely with other parables in which a high-status individual entrusts valuable things to lower-status individuals: These parables involve a test of stewardship (Scott 249).

Here, not only do the tenants refuse to hand over the produce, but they feel entitled to the land itself (Marr 118). This sets up a rivalry between them and the owner in which they want what is not rightfully theirs and will do everything they can to get it, including killing their lord’s heir. All this fits in perfectly with a Girardian reading of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus: The cycle of mimetic violence and its scapegoat mechanism repeats itself until it is broken by the resurrection (Nuechterlein; cf. Girard 43).

Psalm 118

Uniquely among his parables, Jesus appends a Scripture verse here, from Psalm 118.22-23:“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.” Not only is this a very common reference in the New Testament, but, as Bailey points out, the triumphal entry story alludes extensively to this Psalm, referencing entering city gates, festal processions with branches, and the phrase, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD” (Bailey (2008) 423).

While it’s unclear whether the ‘cornerstone’ here imagines the capstone of an arch or the first foundation stone, around which the rest of a building was built, it amounts to the same thing: a misshapen stone can wreck the whole structure. In the Psalm, and the parable, that which is rejected as being unsuitable by the leadership ends up being the key to everything (Stern). On its own, it seems out of place in the Psalm, but read through the lens of Jesus’ teachings about God’s preference for the lost and the least, and his own story of rejection by the authorities, it’s no wonder it was such a popular image for the apostles (Nuechterlein; Marr 131).

Jesus further ties this rejected stone to the ‘stumbling block’, another popular New Testament concept, which comes from Isaiah 8.14:

This psalm verse confirms the parable’s message that an act of collective violence seems imminent. Jesus goes on to call this stone a … a stumbling block: “The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls” (Mt. 21:44). This refers to Isaiah’s prophecy that the Lord of Hosts will became “a stone one strikes up against,” that God will become “a rock one stumbles over” (Isa. 8:14). Jesus is saying then, that the weak stone is stumbled over when it is rejected by those who think they are strong. (Marr 131)

Challenge

Subversion of First-Century Expectations

By this point in the story, Jesus is past subverting expectations and into pure provocation. Everything he has done since arriving in Jerusalem has provoked a response from the religious leaders. They know he’s talking about them and from this point on, are actively conspiring to have him killed.

This parable further acts to subvert the expectation of anyone who felt too comfortable in their identity as one of God’s people. While it’s clear that it’s the authorities who are Jesus’ main target, his reference at the end of replacing the tenants with “another nation (ethnos)” is certainly startling (France 808). While it’s hard not to read this outside of our dark centuries of antisemitism and supercessionism, such a warning is consistent with Jesus’ teaching elsewhere: After all, he claimed God could create new children for Abraham apart from them (Matthew 3.9; Luke 3.8 (cf. John 8.39; Romans 9.7-8). And the prospect of having the land taken from the people for a lack of faithfulness was also very much in the cards in the Hebrew Scriptures, as was devastatingly enacted in the Exile. So there is likely a genuine threat here, but it’s spoken from one faithful Jewish man to his siblings in faith and neighbours under the Law (Case-Winters 255).

Contemporary Challenges

But again, those words hit very differently today, and we would do well to be very cautious in how we interpret them so we don’t fall into tired, damaging, and theologically incorrect tropes that have born a lot of bad fruit over the centuries. The key here is that what God wants is good fruit. That was and is true of Jews, and it is true of Christians, and it is true of all of the world’s peoples. It’s not a story about Christians replacing Jews as the heirs of God’s kingdom, but about those who bear good fruit gaining priority over those who do not. This should be chilling for everyone, irrespective of their faith tradition (France 808; Scott 241f; Case-Winters 255; Nuechterlein).

Beyond this threading of the needle that acknowledges the genuine urgency in Jesus’ words while avoiding overly simplistic and damaging interpretations, the interpretation of this parable is also challenged by those advocating for socioeconomic and nonviolent readings.

As sympathetic as I am to the interests of socioeconomic hermeneutics, I’ve been very critical of such readings throughout this series, primarily because they insist that the story cannot be about anything other than the words themselves. And, as easy as it is to see the power dynamics described in the parable as exploitative and “so flagrantly unjust [to be] bound to lead to violence,” there’s simply nothing other than our discomfort with the givens of the stories to support such readings (Herzog; Lischer 141f). In fact, as the midrash mentioned above demonstrates, there is good evidence to support the opposite claim.

Even within the parable, there are no cues to suggest the landowner is in the wrong: no indication that the rents are exorbitant or that he’s prone to unreasonable reactions. To the contrary, his behaviour is marked by “patience, longsuffering, risk-taking, compassion and self-emptying,” and “vulnerability” (Bailey (2008) 411, 418; cf. Capon). And the shocking element of the parable is not the expectation that he receive the harvest, but his tenants’ refusal to pay up (Scott 249).

And it’s hard to wring hands too much about the violence of the owner at the end when the parable works so well in favour of nonviolent interpretations of the atonement. As we’ve seen throughout this series, Jesus’ parables often use the violent and retributive language of Apocalyptic, even as his teaching and example subvert that same language. As Raymund Schwager correctly notes:

The heavenly Father in his Easter “judgment” acted differently from the master of the vineyard in the parable. Even the murder of his son did not provoke in him a reaction of vengeful retribution, but he sent the risen one back with the message “Peace be with you!” … The judge’s verdict at Easter was consequently not only a retrospective confirmation of the message of Jesus, but it also contained a completely new element, namely, forgiveness of those who had rejected the offer of pure forgiveness itself and persecuted the Son.(quoted by Nuechterlein)

Ultimately, against the more violent imagery of the parables of judgment, the resurrection reveals that God’s justice is an unexpected justice of mercy and forgiveness.

Expand

The reading that has emerged in this study promotes growth in love and faith by rightly focusing on fruitfulness as God’s ultimate aim and our demonstration of being ‘true heirs’ of the Kingdom. This removes any sense of parochialism or tribalism from our application of the parable. And, recognizing that God’s judgment is revealed to play out differently from the retributive imagery found in the parables also helps to properly orient our faith towards mercy and compassion, where it belongs.

Summary & Conclusions

As the situation in Jerusalem grows more tense and Jesus’ authority is questioned, he tells a parable loaded in symbolism, in which tenant farmers refuse to hand over the harvest to the land’s rightful owner, to the point of harming his messengers and killing his son. This represents not just a summary of biblical history, in which God’s people have consistently proven to be unfaithful and to reject God’s messengers (which ultimately ends, foreshadowed here, in killing Jesus), but also an encapsulation of all human history and our tendency towards rivalry, scapegoating, and violence. But God does not care about our identities or human allegiances per se, but only how we embody and live them out: We are, every one of us, called to be fruitful in the world, and it’s on that account that we will be judged.

 

* For full references, please see the series bibliography.

^ All references to Nuechterlein in this post refer to his post for Proper 22A.