Matthew 21:33-46 (NRSV Updated Edition)
“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. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. Then he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” 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.”
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord's doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?
“Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.
~
"Our parable is not about the end of the Jewish religion. To read it this way is to engage in anti-Semitism. The parable today does indeed have a salvation historical referent in the vineyard metaphor (cf Isa 5). And it is addressed to Jewish leadership, more so, it is addressed specifically to leaders of the sacrificial system, the substitutionary mechanism whereby violence becomes its own remedy.
[...]
"This parable can, perhaps must, be preached [also] as the demise of sacrificial Christianity. Are we not able to find scores of contemporary examples of Christian leaders justifying extrusion, expelling and even murder? Are there not a plethora of examples of Christian churches and denominations engaging in the sacrifice of others based upon race, religion, gender, political affiliation or sexual orientation? Is it possible to suggest that modern Christian theology is also implicated in this destructuring of victimage when it contends that God is violent or in need of sacrifice?
[...]
"Matthew has the judgment saying stem from the interlocutors in keeping with his hermeneutic whereby judgment is self-referential (cf 7:1-5). Mark and Luke focus on the son's deconstructing of the sacrificial mechanism of the Temple. In neither case are we dealing with Jesus' condemning people as persons, or religions as faith traditions, but in all cases the texts are foretelling the son's role in bringing about the apocalyptic crisis of the end of the sacrificial powers represented by the Temple and religious authorities. In short this parable is about the death of God, the god of sacrifice and violence and the role of the death of the son in displacing the god of violence with a new vision of God.
[...]
"We rejoice that the Prince of Peace will finally stop the human project and announce the restoration of all things, including especially humanity, humanity assumed in the incarnation and vindicated and empowered in the resurrection. Yes indeed, we rejoice for we know that even as our cultural systems break down further and further and as anarchy and chaos break out, there is one who is more powerful than death. He is the Life. And in the chaos, confusion and darkness, He is the Way. And among all the lies of the guilt, blame and shame of victimage and violence, He is the Truth."
- Michael Hardin, from Liturgical Resources/Commentary on Matthew 21:33-46 (https://www.thedudeoftheology.com/uploads/1/5/3/5/153578215/matthew_21.33-46.pdf)
~
"[The priests and Pharisees] go along with the vengeful version of [the prophetic writing that the parable is most clearly referencing, The Song of the Unfruitful Vineyard, Isaiah 5:1-7], and with the obvious reading of the stupid tenants [who should have known that the owner would come and destroy them]. But this is the time when there's a pause, and then Jesus says 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’?”
"Because of course, if he is the Son and Heir, and the God who has sent him, the one who set up Israel, is not this vengeful figure, then something entirely different is going on here. He is coming into their midst, allowing himself to be killed, knowing that it's only by occupying the space of death and enabling us to be moved out of that shame, that violence, that fear, that hatred - it's only by occupying that space that we'd actually be able to grow at all.
"If he's done that, then that's the gift that's the wonderful thing. And he's actually pleading on behalf of the wicked tenants, he's saying, “Yep, okay, they were going to do this, but for anyone who's able to accept this as a way of being forgiven that's how you're going to produce the fruits I'm actually giving you. I, the heir, I'm coming in as the one who you are going to kill so that you can have the vineyard. You will be able to produce its fruits. You won't owe any more tithes to the temple, you will be able to produce its fruits. You will be the temple. I will have been the priest, the altar, the sacrifice, all in one so that you can be the new temple.”
"In other words, he's doing something which the temple authorities seem to be unable to imagine..."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 27 in Ordinary Time Year A' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NoiFj8OUp8)
[For further discussion and resources on all of this week's lectionary texts, see: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper22a/]
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