MT 21: 33-46 

Matthew in the Margins…18th S. After Pentecost…Revised 2017  

Can we almost hear Jesus singing Isaiah’s beautiful old love poem about YHWH & His vine -yard to His critics today? His critics certainly recognise the poem. And, like those long before them fail to recognise themselves in it. Can’t grasp that when it turns into a lament it’s doing so because they in their turn have become the villains in the piece.

Rather than holding a post-mortem on what was happening in Isaiah’s time & comes to a head in Jesus’ day, we need to find ourselves in the story too. Today. Are our spiritual ears tuned well enough to God for us to be faithful servants, slaves, even? Can we hear the warning in the lament & heed it if it applies to us? By this stage of His ministry Jesus is identifying with the Son who falls victim to rebellious share-farmers in His Father’s vineyard. The powers-that-be are dismissive of Him because they’re too sure of themselves. Religiously learned, maybe, but religiously ignorant. Best we discern the key Jesus is singing in to us & sing along in the key our part calls for.

Politicians are probably the ones who most obviously appear today as those who have an exalted view of themselves & their self-entitlement. They’re not the only ones, of course, but they’re easy targets when they get their comeuppance - or should that be come-downance? - for rorting the public purse, for instance. The fall from grace & power of those caught out comes to mind as I meditate on Jesus’ yarn. It is a tale, but how well He captures the vineyard lease-holders sense of self-entitlement! There’s no way they’re ever going to inherit that vineyard! Do we have any such air of self-entitlement as we go about whatever job God calls us to do in His vineyard in partnership with Him? If the answer is, ‘Yes, we do have such a sense’, we have work to do! We have work to let God do on us & in us as part of the vineyard, too!

Though portrayed in this parable / riddle as an absentee landlord, God is not, & never has been separated from His world. Creation is a labour of love on God’s part. Labour in which God calls us to be joint-venturers. Faithfully joint-venturing with God keeps us celebrating God, rather than usurping Him in any jumped-up way.

Does God have any more to show for His investment in the vineyard of Creation with us as under-managers, than under the older regime? Let no false sense of entitlement on our part mean we’re simply trampling the grapes of wrath all over again.