Proper 22 Year A
Taken from Twelve Months of Sundays Year A
Description
Ordinary Time - Proper 22
Exodus 20.1–4, 7–9, 12–20
Philippians 3.4b–14
Matthew 21.33–46
The parable of the wicked tenants tells the story of Israel in such a way as to highlight Jesus’ own work and fate as the plot’s denouement. But, as with many parables, and many great non-biblical stories, the plot is never simple. It contains a twist at its heart, corresponding to the fatal twist in the human heart, not least the religious human heart.
Landowner and vineyard: obvious first-century Jewish code for God and Israel. The fence is presumably Torah, the law given to Moses, designed to make Israel God’s special people, the fruit-bearing nation, the light of the world. Some rabbis of Jesus’ day spoke of putting a fence around Torah itself, adding new commands for extra security, but the idea of Torah itself as a fence would be natural as well. The other details echo Isaiah 5, the song of the vineyard, which like this parable ends in tragedy. There the fault is with the vine, here with the tenants; but the result is the same. Rebellion leads to fruitlessness, fruitlessness to inevitable judgement...
Taken from Twelve Months of Sundays Year A by N T Wright
Published by SPCK