Three Parables for the Chief Priests and Elders

For the past three Sundays, we have proclaimed a series of parables from St. Matthew’s Gospel.  Two weeks ago, we heard a parable about a man and his two sons, one of whom said he would work in his father’s vineyard but failed to do so and the other who said “no” to his father’s request but then decided to obey.  Last week we heard a parable about a rich landowner who planted a vineyard, walled it in, built a tower and dug a vat in it and then gave it to some tenant farmers who plotted against the landowner, even going so far as to kill his son and heir.  This Sunday we hear a parable of a king who gives his son a wedding banquet.

All three of these parables are addressed to the same audience; namely, the chief priests and elders of the people.  After the first two parables, St. Matthew writes: “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they knew that he was speaking about them. And although they were attempting to arrest him, they feared the crowds, for they regarded him as a prophet.” St. Matthew presses on, however, and adds the parable that we hear today. When they hear this third parable, St. Matthew tells us, “Then the Pharisees went off and plotted how they might entrap him in speech.” Spoiler alert: we will hear the stories of how they tried to trip him up in his speech on the next two Sundays.

I have deliberately reviewed these two chapters of St. Matthew’s Gospel so that we can understand the context of these parables and stories.  Reading a short passage from the Gospel every Sunday, while beneficial, fails to give us a sense of the narrative that is playing out.  These stories all take place after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.  A few short days after that entry, he was arrested, tried and crucified.  So these parables and stories have to be read as a prelude to the passion and death of Jesus.  When we place them in that context, the stories become much clearer.  Jesus is speaking of himself and the way he is treated by the chief priests and elders. In last Sunday’s parable and in this Sunday’s parable, the tenant farmers and the invited guests of the king’s banquet murder the messengers and the son of the tenant farmer just as the chief priests and elders murdered the prophets and crucified Jesus, God’s only-begotten Son.

So it can also be said that another character in these parable is death – the death of the prophets and the death of Jesus. However, the point of the parables is that death does not win the day.  In the reading from the Prophet Isaiah today, also set in the context of a banquet – this time on God’s holy mountain – the message of the prophet is very clear. “On this mountain he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death forever.”

Death is a powerful force in our human lives. Most of us fear death and will do anything to push it off to some unknown day in the future. Medical science tries to prolong our lives. When a loved one dies, we grieve their loss. If the person who dies is young, our grief is compounded. Lately, we have heard stories of people dying in earthquakes, hurricanes, in wild fires, and at the hands of a madman with automatic weapons. The evening news brings us so many stories of people perishing that it is difficult to ignore them.  Yet the Scriptures tell us that God has destroyed death.  So we are led to ask questions just as believers and disciples of Jesus have asked ever since Jesus returned to the Father. Have we been misled?  Did God really conquer the forces of death?

For those of us who live in the Western World, death is a particular, punctiliar moment. One moment we are alive; the next moment we are dead. However, this is not how the Scriptures or the people of the Middle East think of death. After Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, they are told that they would die. In fact, death as they understand it overcomes them then and there. They are expelled from the garden.  No longer can Adam walk with God in the evening, enjoying the breeze in the garden. He loses access to God. This is what the Scriptures mean by death – separation from God, being without access to God.  To be dead means to be without hope of ever being in God’s presence again. It is precisely this kind of death, this kind of dying, that the Scriptures speak of when they tell us that God has defeated death.  For those who believe in Jesus as Lord, for those who live their lives in accord with the Gospels, access to God is restored. Yes, our mortal lives will end as all created things eventually come to an end.  Our bodies will eventually fail.  However, we shall live forever, with God or without God, dependent upon whether we believe.

The son who refuses to work in his father’s vineyard, the tenant farmers who plot to steal the inheritance from the rich land owner, and the guests who refuse to attend the king’s banquet in honor of his son are all examples of those who fail to believe in the words of Jesus, who fail to accept the Gospel.  They are presented to us as a warning. The chief priests and the elders realized that Jesus was talking about them; however, my brothers and sisters, he is also talking about us. The vineyard is God’s, not ours. The wedding banquet is God’s feast, not ours. We are invited, for God always invites. God never forces us. We can choose to obey our Father and work in the vineyard as he asks.  We can choose to offer God the fruit of our labor.  We can choose to attend the wedding banquet. We can choose to live with God and allow God to destroy the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations, or we can continue go our own way and follow our own will.

Down through the history of the Church, believers have been attacked for their faith.  Many were tortured and put to death.  Martyrdom is still present in our world today.  However, in his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul writes: “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Note that all important word: “separate.”  For believers, nothing can separate us from God.

As we come to the altar this morning, we are given a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.  We are given food for the journey.  We receive the very body and life blood of Jesus to sustain us with God’s grace, God’s gift of life in the face of the death that surrounds us in the world in which we live. Jesus has promised us that we who eat his body and drink his blood shall have life everlasting.  He has destroyed the web and the veil that cover all mortals, all nations.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator