27th Week in Ord. Time, Sunday – 4th October 2020 — Gospel: Mt 21,33-43
Rejecting God’s Son
When people in authority challenged Jesus, he often responded to their challenges with a parable. If those challenging him didn’t get the first parable, he would give them a second one. Today’s gospel is the second parable addressed to the chief priests and elders who had questioned Jesus about his source of authority (Mt 21,23-27). In this subsequent parable, Jesus does give an indirect answer. Jesus’ opponents understand the parable, but they reject its truth.
In this context, to call this parable as, “the parable of the wicked tenants” is misleading. Though the tenants play a major role, but the parable intends mainly to clarify who Jesus is, for those who listen. The story gives the synopsis of the entire Gospel. Therefore we might call it as, “the parable of the rejected and vindicated son.” According to this parable, who is Jesus? He is the Son who has come to reclaim what rightfully belongs to his Father. He is the Son whose mission is violently rejected by the Father’s own tenants. He is the Son whose rejection is vindicated by the Father. And he is the Son whose vindication prompts the final judgement of the unfaithful tenants.
In coming to claim back what rightly belongs to his Father, the Son sets out to restore the world through his ministry. His ministry needs to be looked at this way: the sick are made well, the sinners are restored, and God is glorified (Mt 9,8). In short, Jesus brings wholeness to a broken world, by providing glimpses of the future “kingdom of heaven.” But the restoration of God’s creation is opposed by the tenants, i.e., the chief priests and elders, who are questioning Jesus’ of his authority and who will soon seek his destruction (along with Pharisees, Mt 21,45). However, Jesus’ acknowledges implicitly that they have been appointed by God. In the parable, they are hired by the landowner to protect and maintain the vineyard.
The tenants have broken the landowner’s trust. They have mistaken their leadership over the vineyard by claiming that which does not rightfully belong to them. In reference to Israel as God’s vineyard (Is 3,14; 5,1-7; 27,2; Jer 12,10) the chief priests and elders have out rightly taken over the ownership of Israel. Jesus highlights this aspect to his opponents by raising a question at the end of the parable. The answer is obviously blaming the tenants, while the chief priests and elders see themselves in the role of the landowner. In fact, they are in a position to own land, and to have others manage it for them while they were busy with their administrative tasks in Jerusalem. They would see the servants as their subordinates and themselves as the real victims of the unscrupulous tenants. And they would be ready and even eager to pronounce judgement on them. However, their selfish rebellion blinded their acceptance of Jesus as God’s Son. Instead, they perceived that Jesus “claimed” to be the Son. Therefore, the parable serves to show how the temple leaders have been entrusted by God and how they have rebelled against God. It also prophesies their violent rejection of the Son. Jesus’ opponents understand the parable this way: “Yes, we are God’s tenants, but we are not those tenants; and you are not certainly God’s Son.”
The issue is not fundamentally one of “leadership”, although the conflict is apparent in the parable. The focus is one of rendering to God what belongs to God (Mt 22,21). For anyone called by God to a particular ministry will face the temptation to claim ownership of that ministry and to confuse service with privilege and power. In a nutshell, these are Jesus’ own temptations (Mt 4,1-11). The moment a sense of power creeps into our ministry is the moment we have closed ourselves off to what Jesus is doing in the world. In that scenario, we no longer serve Jesus; we protect ourselves from him. In our blindness, unknowingly we reject God’s Son like the chief priests and elders.
