A text – Matthew 21:33-46
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.
A reflection:
Jesus’s parables get unmistakably clearer, more dire, in his preaching during the final week of his ministry. That makes sense. Why else would the Temple leaders seek his death? Jesus is trying to get their attention, to shake them up, wake them up, or at least alert his own followers to the shakeup in leadership that would follow his death and resurrection. And when Jerusalem fell 50-70 years later, the leadership was exiled along with much of the population, and it really never was the same after that.
But Jesus is calling here for the Pharisees and Sadducees and scribes and elders to recognize that they were going to kill yet another prophet, but one even more important than those who had come before (like the series of slave emissaries in the parable). They were killing the son of the Owner (God). The leaders would have known clearly that this is what Jesus meant, because God is often the Landowner in parables and psalms and prophesies. So why didn’t the Temple leaders wake up? Why could they not see who Jesus was, the way that his followers in many towns, from many backgrounds, in many circumstances, had seen?
Jesus was not after recognition and worship for himself. He often told the faithful to look at him, on his level, to get up, to go on their way, not stay and worship. He appreciated their gratitude for miracles, but that is not what he was after. He especially wanted the leadership to not miss the signs, to not ignore (to their own peril) the fact that Jesus was in the world to point to faith in the Father, adoration of God, giving blessing to the Creator of all life in the world. Everything Jesus taught was to lift people into direct relationship with God, and when the leaders did not see and follow him, Jesus knew they were missing the most obvious sign of all. Why did they miss the sign? Their sense of self-importance? Their greed for riches and power? Their ambition for position? Even their strict adherence to rules and regulations, so much that they could not see freedom when it stood right in front of them? And why do we not see him? Are we just not looking?
A prayer:
Lord God, thank you for loving us. Thank you for Jesus, who stood right in front of us and talked about you in so many ways. Help us to see Jesus and to see you in his stories. Help us to see. Amen.
