Today’s Gospel reading is the Parable of the Evil Tenants (Matthew 21: 33-46). Jesus starts, “Listen to another parable.” He could have said, “get ready for another confrontation between the Pharisees and me.” Regardless of what you think about the Pharisees, you’ve got to give them some credit today. They got it. They understood the parable. They heard Jesus. They realized that he was talking about them. Jesus held before them a truth they did not like, and they wanted to put a stop to it. They wanted to arrest him.
This is neither Jesus’ first nor his last confrontation with the Pharisees. We tend to avoid those with whom we have conflict and confrontation. Not Jesus. He just keeps on coming. At every turn he is offending, aggravating, and confronting the Pharisees: He eats with the wrong people. He won’t directly answer their questions. He taunts them by breaking the law and healing on the Sabbath. He calls them hypocrites and blind leaders. He escapes their traps. He compares them to a disobedient son who will not work in the vineyard. They just can’t catch a break with Jesus. He never lets up!
Why can’t he just let go of them. And what does that have to do with us?
Is Jesus looking for a fight? I don’t think so. Is his primary motivation to expose and condemn those who do not follow him? I don’t think so. Is he keeping score and naming all the attitudes and behaviors of the Pharisees that he considers wrong? I don’t think so. Is Jesus trying to exclude from the Kingdom of God the religious leaders of his day? I don’t think so.
Here is what I think these confrontations are about. Jesus is unwilling to give up on the Pharisees, or anyone else for that matter. Jesus is unwilling to give up on you or me. He just keeps on coming. That is the good news, the hope, and the joy in today’s parable. This is not so much a parable about exclusion or condemnation as it is a parable about Jesus’ unwillingness to give up. His unwillingness to give up on us often confronts us with the truth about our lives that is almost always difficult to hear and to accept. We might hear his words, but do we realize that he is talking about us?
This parable, and the confrontation this parable provokes, are like a mirror held before us so that we might see and recognize in ourselves what Jesus sees and recognizes. This is not to condemn us but his attempt to recover us from the place of our self-exclusion from God, to call us back to life, and to lead us home.
Jesus doesn’t exclude us or anyone else from the kingdom of God. He doesn’t have to. We do it to ourselves and we’re pretty good at it. That is what the Pharisees have done. The Pharisees have excluded themselves.
“The Kingdom of God will be taken away from you,” Jesus says to them. This is not so much a punishment for failing to produce for the Kingdom its fruits. It is, rather, the recognition of what already is. They were given the vineyard and failed to produce and share the fruits of the Kingdom. Jesus is just naming the reality, the truth. They have excluded themselves. In the same way, the Kingdom of God will be given to those who are already producing Kingdom fruits. This is not a reward, it is a recognition of what already is. Where the fruit is, there also is the Kingdom.
If you want to know what the fruits of the Kingdom look like, then look at the life of God revealed in Jesus Christ. What do you see? Love, intimacy, mercy, forgiveness, justice, generosity, compassion, presence, wisdom, truth, healing, reconciliation, self-surrender, joy, thanksgiving, peace, obedience, humility. I’m not talking about abstract ideas, but the realities of our lives in the vineyards of our lives.
We’ve all been given vineyards. They are the people, relationships, circumstances, and events of our lives that God has entrusted to our care. That means our spouse and marriage, our children and our family, our work, our church, our daily decisions and choices, our hopes, our dreams, and our concerns are the vineyards in which we are to reveal the presence and life of God, where we work to produce the fruits of the Kingdom. The vineyards, our work in those vineyards, and the fruit produced come together to show us to be sharers in God’s kingdom. Or not.
To the degree we are not producing Kingdom fruits we have excluded ourselves from and rejected our share of the Kingdom. We are living neither as the people God knows us to be nor as the people we truly want to be. In some way we have stepped outside of ourselves and sidestepped our own life. That is the truth with which Jesus confronted the Pharisees. It is the same truth with which Jesus confronts us.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!