Friday, Week of 2 Lent

“There was a householder who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to tenants, and went into another country” (Matthew 21:33).

This passage is part of the parable of the vineyard: the owner sends people to collect the fruit from his vineyard, and those to whom he let out the land reject all of them – even killing his son – so that they can keep the fruit for themselves. When Jesus asks his listeners what will happen to those wicked tenants, the people reply that the owner of the vineyard will kill them, and replace them with others who will give him his fruit in due season.

The Pharisees and chief priests believe the parable is about them and, in an obvious way, it is. Jesus is come to say that the old religion of the temple is falling aside, to be replaced by a new movement founded on commandments that are written on the heart and a new relationship with God. The Pharisees, like any other religious leaders, have a responsibility to God for those over whom they have been given authority. If they are not providing the fruit to God, and kill his son rather than hand it over, then they will be replaced.

But I think that, in a deeper sense, the parable is about what happens to the vineyard. Through it all, the owner is concerned about the harvest which is his. He sends many servants to collect it, and remains undaunted when they are beaten, sent away, and killed. The householder wants the fruit so badly he even sends his own son. The end of the parable predicts that the owner will replace the evil tenants with new ones, who will give him the harvest he so desires.

Through all of its criminal mismanagement, the owner of the vineyard never seeks to destroy it. He could have had the vineyard burnt to remove the harvest from those who kept it from him. He could have chosen to destroy it, forcing the bad workers out with nothing. He could even have given up on the harvest, and started anew somewhere else.

But the owner did not abandon what was his, even though the cost of regaining it was so dear. He risked – and lost – his own son in an attempt to secure his harvest.

We are like the harvest the owner of the vineyard seeks to gather in. God has planted us and we belong to him, and the harvest is good and plentiful. Something evil has befallen it: in our case, the evil is in the harvest itself, because it is we who have failed to use it to its intended purpose. The bad will be destroyed – the mismanagement, the attempt to corrupt the harvest – but the good fruit will be gathered in to God regardless of what stands in his way. The good fruit of us will be God’s, for “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39). God will have what is His, for the harvest was planted for God and not the tenants.

This Lent, we see that Jesus is the Son who dies for the harvest, out of love for the Father and for that which will be gathered in.