The Song of the Vineyard

Isaiah 5:1-7 ‘The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel.’

Philippians 4:6-9 ‘Practise these things, and the God of peace will be with you.’

Matthew 21:33-43 ‘He will let out the vineyard to other tenants.’

 

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Today is the last of three Sundays of which the Gospel reading concerns a vineyard.

Two Sundays ago it was the parable of the labourers being hired to work in the vineyard, last Sunday it was the two sons asked by their father to work in the vineyard and this week it is the parable of the wicked tenants.

All speak of men and women called to the vineyard of God’s love and life.

To get the most from this parable we need to go to our first reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah.

We’ve noted that the vineyard signifies Israel, God’s first called people, it signifies the Church, and it signifies the human soul.

But something else Jesus’ first hearers would have been very well aware of is that the vineyard also signified the bride.

Take for example The Song of Songs, in which the vineyard is the setting for the wooing of the bride:

let us go out early to the vineyards
    and see whether the vines have budded,
whether the grape blossoms have opened
    and the pomegranates are in bloom.
There I will give you my love. (Song of Songs 7.12)

This is about a love affair of the bridegroom seeking his bride; and that, St Paul reminds us in Ephesians, is the mystery of Christ and his Church, and we’ll see more of that Matthew’s gospel in the coming weeks.

The Church is the Bride of Christ; Christ the bridegroom.

He seeks out and woos his Bride in the vineyard.

The vineyard, then, should be flourishing, a place of love, love that generates new life and abundance.

So, Isaiah’s song starts well:

Let me sing for my beloved

my love song concerning his vineyard:

This vineyard has rich soil, is planted with the very best grapes.

The vineyard is fertile, arid stones are cleared away, everything is full of promise and of hope.

A wine vat is placed at its heart ready for the sweet juice to flow and become a foretaste of the kingdom of God.

With everything in place the bridegroom looked for it to yield grapes.

There’s a great big ‘but’ hovering there.

… but it yielded wild grapes.

The promise is unfulfilled: instead of the rich fruit it should produce there is only inedible, sour grapes, nothing will flow from them, except perhaps vinegar.

Isaiah is telling the people of Israel and men of Judah something about themselves.

They are the bride who is unfaithful, they disappoint the trust and hope the bridegroom places in them: the lavish care and love given is rendered infertile, barren and fruitless.

Hearing Jesus’ parable of the tenants of the vineyard echoes and amplifies the prophetic message of Isaiah.

In the parable the master of a house plants a vineyard, just as in Isaiah.

And just as the bridegroom in Isaiah, the master puts a fence around it, puts in a tower and digs a wine press in it.

And he entrusts it to others to care for.

In Isaiah it is Israel and Judah; in the parable it is tenants.

Now the parable is told first to the chief priests and elders of the people.

Jesus clearly identifies them as the tenants, and at the end of the parable, if you read on, the evangelist is quite clear about that: the chief priests and elders of the people ‘perceived that Jesus was speaking about them’ (Matthew 21.45).

So Jesus identifies the chief priests and elders of the people as the tenants who beat the servants of the master and killed others: are these not the prophets who were killed, like Zechariah, son of Jehoiada the priest (2 Chronicles 24:20-21), Uriah (Jeremiah 26:20-23), Isaiah and Jeremiah, John the Baptist, all killed for telling Israel to be faithful as a bride to the bridegroom and lover of their soul?

And the connection is explicit, for us who are marked with the sign of the cross in baptism, the son and heir comes to the vineyard to bring it back to the master, for the heir is as good as the master in Hebrew thought.

That son is Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, indeed God himself, the bridegroom.

On hearing this parable, the chief priests and elders of the people wanted to arrest Jesus, but now was not their moment, that was to come, when, as Jesus quotes from the psalm:

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. (Psalm 118:22)

 

He is rejected by the builders of Israel and yet becomes the cornerstone and foundation of the Church.

He is the heir to the vineyard, who is beaten and killed.

He is the bridegroom who is rejected by his bride.

So he declares:

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.’

So the Kingdom is entrusted to other servants, the Church.

Make no mistake, God remains faithful to his ancient people the Jews, for whom we pray on Good Friday each year, that they may be faithful to the Covenant; and, at the same time, the Church becomes his Bride, in the marriage banquet of the Lamb consummated on the Cross.

The death of the Son is not the last word.

Now the cornerstone he becomes the New Temple, the meeting point of heaven and earth, the place of encounter with the Living God.

What does this all mean for us today?

First, we are not entitled to hear the parable and identify the Jewish people as the ones who killed the Son.

Humanity killed Jesus Christ.

On Good Friday it is we, the Church, who are convicted by the words of the Reproaches, as the Lord says to us:

O my people what have I done to thee? Or how have I offended you?’

And one of the verses says:

What more ought I to have done for thee, that I have not done?

I planted thee, indeed, my most beautiful vineyard:

and thou hast become exceeding bitter to me:

for in my thirst thou gavest me vinegar to drink:

and with a spear thou hast pierced the side of thy Saviour.

This speaks to all the times when we reject Christ the Bridegroom, when we are unfaithful as Christians and as a Church.

This parable is a call not to project onto others but to be faithful, fruitful tenants of the Father’s vineyard.

Christ is given vinegar to drink on the Cross: that is the produce of the corrupted vineyard.

Yet as the Passiontide hymn puts it:

Abel’s blood for vengeance

Pleaded to the skies;

But the blood of Jesus

For our pardon cries.

We are given Christ’s own blood to drink, the abundant wine of the Kingdom, our participation and grafting into the Vine of Life, Jesus himself.

The wine of Cana, at Our Lady’s prompting, raised spirits and manifested Christ’s glory, but it was just wine.

The wine of the Last Supper infused the veins of the disciples and gave life because it is not just wine, it is Christ’s own blood shed of the life of the world.

We tenants of the vineyard today receive his lifeblood, his very presence, his promise.

May we be found faithful.