Tag: Proper 22A (RCL)

The vineyard and its tenants

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost; 8 October 2023; Proper 22A (RCL); Exodus20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Psalm 19; Philippians3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46.

I dread this parable. If there were any passage I could excise from scripture, it would be the parable of the vineyard and its tenants. All three synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke) include a version of it. It happens in the narrative context of Jesus teaching in the Temple after he has expelled the sellers of animals and overturned the tables of the money changers, so the Temple cult is in view. And any parable about vineyards or vines occurs against the background of Old Testament passages like Isaiah 5:1-7 and Psalm 80:8-19, in which Israel is compared to a vineyard or a vine.

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Whose vineyard?

8 October 2017
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 22A (RCL)
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Psalm 19
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46

Urrrf. This ‘parable’ clearly promotes a supercessionist understanding of the relationship of Christianity to Judaism. For Israel’s failure to render the fruit of the vineyard to God, God will give the vineyard to other tenants. The vineyard, of course, refers to Isaiah 5:1-7, and the fruit of the vineyard is to be justice and peace. The stream of servants who come to ask for the fruit lines up with the prophets in the Wisdom myth. Israel persecuted the prophets (cf. the Jerusalem, Jerusalem saying in Matthew’s Gospel). Continue reading “Whose vineyard?”