Lesson 89
July 30, 2010
Luke 20:9-19, The Parable of the Tenants
This is
a really interesting parable - maybe one of the most interesting and challenging of all the parables Jesus used in his teaching.
But it takes a little work to get at the real heart of it, so let's dig right in.
First of all, we need to take a minute
to think about the fact that this parable takes the form of an allegory. Now, if you remember your Freshman Composition (and
if you do, you've got a better memory than I do), an allegory is a story in which each part of the story has a separate meaning
on its own. And for most of the life of the church, Christians have interpreted just about all of Jesus' parables as allegories.
For
instance, let's imagine we were talking about the Parable of the Good Samaritan. If you were going to interpret it allegorically,
you might say, "Well, the traveler represents a person of faith, and walking down the road represents trying to grow
in faith, and the road to Jericho represents traditional teachings, and the robbers represent modern society . . ." See
what I mean? The traditional interpretations have tried to attach separate meanings to each part of the parable. But the problem
is, most of Jesus' parables weren't meant to be interpreted that way. Most of them were just simple stories intended to teach
one spiritual lesson.
But this parable, the Parable of the Tenants, really is an allegory.
The parts of this story really do correspond to important themes Jesus wanted to raise.
First of all, there's
the vineyard. Now, back in Bible times (or even now, for that matter), a vineyard takes some real effort and investment to
get started. You had to plant the grapevines, and build structures for them to grow on. You had to prune and water the plants.
If you wanted to keep wild animals from eating all the grapes, you had to build a wall around your vineyard. And what's more,
a vineyard doesn't usually start producing any fruit to speak of for at least four or five years.
Now, in the traditions
of Israel, the vineyard was a symbol of the covenant people - the Hebrew people themselves. It was understood that God had
‘planted' them in the promised land, and then encouraged and nurtured them and offered protection while they were getting
started. Israel understood itself to be, in a manner of speaking, ‘God's vineyard.'
As a matter of fact, in telling
this parable, Jesus was using some well-known language from the fifth chapter of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. Isaiah was
one of the most important prophets of the Hebrew tradition, and he had used this idea of Israel as God's vineyard hundreds
of years before Jesus.
Now, in the Greco-Roman world, and later in the world of the Jews, an absentee owner would turn
the vineyard over to tenants who would be what we might call ‘share-croppers.' They would take care of the vineyard
in exchange for a portion of the fruit. And, like many people who planted a vineyard in ancient times, God had placed
this divine vineyard under the care of tenants. The tenants of God were understood to be the covenant people: the Jews. And
the responsibility for this tenant relationship was especially placed upon the leaders, both religious and civil, that God
had placed over his people.
Questions: If you had to put this story in a more modern setting, what would you
use? Can you think of any contemporary relationships that are like the owner-tenant arrangement described in this parable?
In the parable, the day came when the owner of the vineyard was owed his share of the grapes being grown in
his vineyard. So he sent a servant to collect that share, but the tenants beat up the servant and sent him away empty-handed.
Then the owner tried twice more, but the tenants reacted with greater and greater violence, each time refusing to hand over
the fruit the owner was entitled to.
Jewish listeners would have heard this parable as a description of the way God
had sent his spokesmen (the prophets) to call the covenant people to live ‘fruitfully' - to be the kind of faithful
and obedient people who would be a blessing to all the earth. But, like the servants in the parable, many of the prophets
had been treated shamefully by the people of Israel. Many had even been murdered - sometimes with the approval of the leaders
God had placed over his people.
And then, in the parable, the owner settles on a kind of all-out strategy: He sends
his own son, hoping the tenants will acknowledge the respect owed to this son and heir of the owner. But of course, the greedy
tenants treat the son even more violently than the servants, in the desperate hope that they might be able to seize control
of the vineyard for their own enrichment.
It doesn't take much theological reflection to see where Jesus is going with
this - especially from the perspective of 2,000 years of Christian teaching. Jesus even refers to the son in the parable as
"my son, whom I love." That's the very same wording that God uses to designate Jesus at his baptism back in Luke
3. (And, in some versions of the original Greek, it's the same language used by God at the Transfiguration.)
So the
point of the parable becomes pretty clear: Jesus is interpreting in advance the meaning of the death he was about to suffer
at the hands of the leaders of the Hebrew people. After centuries of refusing God the fruitful life he had been asking of
them, after centuries of abusing those who came calling them to that fruitful life, now the tenants God had placed in this
privileged place were about to kill God's beloved Son.
So, Jesus asks in concluding the parable, "What then will
the owner do to them? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others."
Now, it's interesting
to note that there were two distinct groups of people listening to this parable. One group was average listeners, disciples
and others who were engaged by Jesus' teaching. The other group was the chief priests and the teachers of the law. It's pretty
obvious from the account here in Luke that both groups immediately got the point Jesus was making. The average people (who
were nearly all Jews, of course) were horrified by the thought of God's vineyard being given to others. But the leadership
saw that it was really "against them" that Jesus had spoken this parable. And they wanted to arrest Jesus on the
spot, but the large crowd of admiring listeners around Jesus intimidated the leadership.
Questions: What does
it say to you that the average people and their leaders reacted so differently to Jesus' teaching about this? Can you see
parallels with our own time? Who are the ‘prophetic voices' in the faith world of our time?
There are
some interesting things to think about as we reflect on this parable, beyond the obvious conflict between Jesus and the corrupted
leadership of the covenant people in his day. First of all, it's worth taking a minute to remember that the Gospel of Luke
is thought to have been published shortly after 70 AD, which was the year of the fall of Jerusalem after a four-year war of
rebellion against the Roman Empire. The first readers of Luke lived in a world where the Jewish leadership had been crushed
by the Romans, the temple was gone, and the Jewish faith as the people had known it for a thousand years had ended forever.
So Jesus' words would ring in peoples' ears as tragically prophetic.
The second thing that might strike us about this
parable is the parallel it suggests with one of the most famous stories from Hebrew scriptures: the story of David and Bathsheba.
In both cases, sin creeps into what could have been a situation of great blessing. At first sin takes the form of coveting
something to which the sinner is not entitled - all of the grapes in one case, someone else's wife in the other. But in both
cases, once sin is allowed to take hold, it gradually becomes more and more violent, eventually ending in murder and tragedy
for all involved.
Finally, this parable might be understood to present a challenge for contemporary Christians today.
We understand that, in a sense, the vineyard was given to the followers of Jesus after his death and resurrection. But are
we bearing the fruit God has in mind? Or are we just using the faith as a kind of "magic talisman" for our country,
our military, our political party, etc? Once Europe and North America were the center of Christian life. But today, the church
is growing powerfully in Africa and Asia, and shrinking here.
Should we see in these trends a latter-day case of God's
vineyard being given to another? Maybe not, but at least this parable provides a sharp reminder that the privilege of being
God's people carries with it now - as it always has - the obligation to live fruitful lives, helping to bring about God's
kingdom on earth, as it already exists in heaven.
Questions to leave with: What questions or challenges do you
hear this parable speaking to Christians of our time? And how about this: Can you think of any ways we might interpret this
parable that might be displeasing to God?
Grace and Peace, Henry