Monday 9/29/14

This week’s Monday Morning Bible Breakdown is from yesterday’s Gospel: Matthew 21:28-32.

Jesus said to the chief priests and elders of the people:
"What is your opinion?
A man had two sons.
He came to the first and said,
'Son, go out and work in the vineyard today.'
He said in reply, 'I will not, '
but afterwards changed his mind and went.
The man came to the other son and gave the same order.
He said in reply, 'Yes, sir, ‘but did not go.
Which of the two did his father's will?"
They answered, "The first."
Jesus said to them, "Amen, I say to you,
tax collectors and prostitutes
are entering the kingdom of God before you.
When John came to you in the way of righteousness,
you did not believe him;
but tax collectors and prostitutes did.
Yet even when you saw that,
you did not later change your minds and believe him."

As Father Chris mentioned last night in his homily, this parable is an easy one to relate to. How many of us have been asked to do something and said no, only to later feel guilty and do it? How often we are asked to do something and say yes, and then come up short. I won’t belabor the point about how we should do what we say we will do, especially when the mandate comes from our parents or other legitimate authority figure. Instead, I want to write a little more about the specifics of the parable: who Jesus is talking to, and what his words meant for them.

We will start with Christ’s audience: “the chief priests and elders of the people.” These were some powerful folks. Even though Jerusalem was under Roman control at the time of Christ, the chief priests and elders had the hearts and minds of the common people. These are valuable assets during an occupation. It gave them a little power over the Romans. If they were not appeased, they could stir up revolution. Here Jesus is being a good prophet. He is speaking truth to power. The message he delivers to them is not a happy one. He is telling the people who the entire culture look to as Holy Men that they are worse than tax collectors and prostitutes.

The insult only sort of makes sense to the modern reader. We can understand why someone would be insulted by being called worse than a prostitute, but a tax collector? The reason goes back to the Roman occupation. Most Jewish people were not happy about the occupation. They wanted freedom from the Romans. The tax collectors were Jewish people who cooperated with the Romans. They were sell outs. They turned their back on their own people to make a buck. They were “prostitutes” that sold their soul rather than their bodies. On top of it all, many of them were corrupt. Jesus was not making any powerful friends with this story when he compared the sinners to the first son and Holy Men to the second.

One of the wonderful things about Jesus’ parables is that he does not waste any words. He takes out every detail that might cloud up the meaning of the story, and leaves only the necessary ones. The result is that we can trust the details to reveal a deep truth. The use of the phrase “in the vineyard today” is a good example of this. Jesus could have just said that the father told the son, “go out and work,” but he doesn’t. There must be some meaning.

When Jesus talks about the vineyard, it is usually in reference to the harvest. The vineyard is a metaphor for the world, and the harvest is the gathering of people for God. In this phrase, Jesus is saying that the time for the harvest is now. He is saying that people need to go out and preach the good news. The high priests and elders were not doing this. They had agreed to be workers for Yahweh, but were instead using their positions of power to have banquets and live large while condemning the sinful unwashed masses. The repentant prostitutes and tax collectors, on the other hand, were harvesting souls. They were going out into the world and telling people what John the Baptist had told them to; that the Messiah was coming. Now the Messiah was standing right before the powerful people, and they did not recognize him, but the sinners did because they had listened.

The important question to ask ourselves is, “which of the two groups do we represent?” Have we told Jesus “yes” a long time ago and have since stopped harvesting, or are we repentant sinners who have changed our ways and gone out into the vineyard to work? The father in the parable does not ask them if they worked yesterday, or if they will work again tomorrow. The father asks his sons to work today.