By the time Matthew wrote his Gospel, Jesus had died, risen,
and ascended, so Matthew’s community is fully aware that the son referred to in
Jesus’ parable to the chief priests and elders this week prefigures Jesus himself, sent
by the Father and killed by the tenants working in his vineyard. In the gospel, the Pharisees are all too ready to kill God’s
Son; they have turned their vision away from God and look only to their own
comfort and gain. Yet even here, Jesus
is not condemning anyone: he is simply
inviting the people – and the chief priests and elders in particular – to
rethink what they are doing, urging them to try to be true to God’s love for
them, open to the grace God would like to bestow upon them. But the Pharisees have set up walls that keep
them from seeing God’s plan, barriers that block out all vision of Jesus himself, and so
the kingdom of heaven will be taken away
from them, and given to a people that
will produce its fruit.
You would think that, if nothing else, the elders would
understand Jesus’s quote from the Scriptures:
The stone which the builders
rejected has become the cornerstone (Psalm 118). They are the erudite teachers and leaders;
they should know that The vineyard of the
Lord is the house of Israel (Psalm 80), and that, in spite of all God did
for his vineyard in Isaiah’s time – he
spaded it, cleared it of stones, and planted the choicest vines – the
vineyard would be destroyed because of the infidelity of the people of Israel. But their vision is too cloudy to see even the
texts through which they were educated.
Post-Resurrection, Paul’s message to the Philippians echoes
that of Jesus to the chief priests and elders:
do not close yourselves to God behind walls of anxiety; rather, open yourselves daily to God’s ongoing care and
grace, welcoming the peace of God and
acknowledging all the good God’s love effects in your life. Every deed, every word, every thought we
enjoy must be rooted first and foremost in God’s excellence rather than in human understanding: contemplate whatever is true, whatever is honorable,
whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious. Keep God always in your vision, and the
kingdom of God, in your hands, will produce
much fruit….
This post is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture class.
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