'Hear another parable: There was a certain householder,
which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about,
and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and
let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country:
34. And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent
his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive
the fruits of it. 35. And the husbandmen took his
servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned
another. 36. Again, he sent other servants more than
the first: and they did unto them likewise. 37. But
last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They
will reverence my son. 38. But when the husbandmen saw
the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir;
come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his
inheritance. 39. And they caught him, and cast him out
of the vineyard, and slew him. 40. When the lord
therefore of the vineyard cometh what will he do unto
those husbandmen? 41. They say unto him, He will
miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out
his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render
him the fruits in their seasons. 42. Jesus saith unto
them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone
which the builders rejected, the same is become the
head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is
marvellous in our eyes? 43. Therefore say I unto you,
The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given
to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. 44. And
whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but
on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to
powder. 45. And when the chief priests and Pharisees
had heard His parables, they perceived that He spake of
them. 46. But when they sought to lay hands on Him,
they feared the multitude, because they took Him for a
prophet.'--MATT. xxi. 33-46.
This parable was apparently spoken on the Tuesday of the Passion
Week. It was a day of hand-to-hand conflict with the Jewish
authorities and of exhausting toil, as the bare enumeration of its
incidents shows. It included all that Matthew records between verse
20 of this chapter and the end of the twenty-fifth chapter--the
answer to the deputation from the Sanhedrin; the three parables
occasioned by it, namely, those of the two sons, this one, and that
of the marriage of the king's son; the three answers to the traps of
the Pharisees and Herodians about the tribute, of the Sadducees
about the resurrection, and of the ruler about the chief
commandment; Christ's question to His questioners about the Son and
Lord of David; the stern woes hurled at the unmasked hypocrites; to
which must be added, from other gospels, the sweet eulogium on the
widow's mite, and the deep saying to the Greeks about the corn of
wheat, with, possibly, the incident of the woman taken in adultery;
and then, following all these, the solemn prophecies of the end
contained in Matthew xxiv. and xxv., spoken on the way to Bethany,
as the evening shadows were falling. What a day! What a fountain of
wisdom and love which poured out such streams! The pungent severity
of this parable, with its transparent veil of narrative, is only
appreciated by keeping clearly in view the circumstances and the
listeners. They had struck at Jesus with their question as to His
authority, and He parries the blow. Now it is His turn, and the
sharp point goes home.
I. The first stage is the preparation of the vineyard, in which
three steps are marked. It is planted and furnished with all
appliances needful for making wine, which is its great end. The
direct divine origin of the religious ideas and observances of
'Judaism' is thus asserted by Christ. The only explanation of them
is that God enclosed that bit of the wilderness, and with His own
hands set growing there these exotics. Neither the theology nor the
ritual is of man's establishing. We need not seek for special
meanings for wall, wine-press, and tower. They simply express the
completeness of the equipment of the vineyard, as in Isaiah's song,
which lies at the foundation of the parable, and suggest his
question, 'What could have been done more?'
Thus furnished, the vineyard is next handed over to the husbandmen,
who, in Matthew, are exclusively the rulers, while in Luke they are
the people. No doubt it was 'like people, like priest.' The strange
dominion of the Pharisees rested entirely on popular consent, and
their temper accurately indexed that of the nation. The Sanhedrin
was the chief object at which Christ aimed the parable. But it only
gave form and voice to the national spirit, and 'the people loved to
have it so.' National responsibilities are not to be slipped out of
by being shifted on to the broad shoulders of governments or
influential men. Who lets them be governments and influential?
'Guv'ment ain't to answer for it,
God will send the bill to you.'
Christ here teaches both rulers and ruled the ground and purpose of
their privileges. They prided themselves on these as their own, but
they were only tenants. They made their 'boast of the law'; but they
forgot that fruit was the end of the divine planting and equipment.
Holiness and glad obedience were what God sought, and when He found
them, He was refreshed as with 'grapes in the wilderness.'
Having installed the husbandmen, the owner goes into another
country. The cluster of miracles which inaugurate an epoch of
revelation are not continued beyond its beginning. Centuries of
comparative divine silence followed the planting of the vineyard.
Having given us our charge, God, as it were, steps aside to leave us
room to work as we will, and so to display what we are made of. He
is absent in so far as conspicuous oversight and retribution are
concerned. He is present to help, love, and bless. The faithful
husbandman has Him always near, a joy and a strength, else no fruit
would grow; but the sin and misery of the unfaithful are that they
think of Him as far off.
II. Then comes the habitual ill-treatment of the messengers. These
are, of course, the prophets, whose office was not only to foretell,
but to plead for obedience and trust, the fruits sought by God. The
whole history of the nation is summed up in this dark picture.
Generation after generation of princes, priests, and people had done
the same thing. There is no more remarkable historical fact than
that of the uniform hostility of the Jews to the prophets. That a
nation of such a sort as always to hate and generally to murder them
should have had them in long succession, throughout its history, is
surely inexplicable on any naturalistic hypothesis. Such men were
not the natural product of the race, nor of its circumstances, as
their fate shows. How did they spring up? No 'philosophy of Jewish
history' explains the anomaly except the one stated here,--'He sent
His servants.' We are told nowadays that the Jews had a natural
genius for religion, just as the Greeks for art and thought, and the
Romans for law and order, and that that explains the origin of the
prophets. Does it explain their treatment?
The hostility of the husbandmen grows with indulgence. From beating
they go on to killing, and stoning is a specially savage form of
killing. The opposition which began, as the former parable tells us,
with polite hypocrisy and lip obedience, changed, under the stimulus
of prophetic appeals, to honest refusal, and from that to violence
which did not hesitate to slay. The more God pleads with men, the
more self-conscious and bitter becomes their hatred; and the more
bitter their hatred, the more does He plead, sending other
messengers, more perhaps in number, or possibly of more weight, with
larger commission and clearer light. Thus both the antagonistic
forces grow, and the worse men become, the louder and more
beseeching is the call of God to them. That is always true; and it
is also ever true that he who begins with 'I go, sir, and goes not,
is in a fair way to end with stoning the prophets.
Christ treats the whole long series of violent rejections as the
acts of the same set of husbandmen. The class or nation was one, as
a stream is one, though all its particles are different; and the
Pharisees and scribes, who stood with frowning hatred before Him as
He spoke, were the living embodiment of the spirit which had
animated all the past. In so far as they inherited their taint, and
repeated their conduct, the guilt of all the former generations was
laid at their door. They declared themselves their predecessors'
heirs; and as they reproduced their actions, they would have to bear
the accumulated weight of the consequences.
III. Verses 37-39 tell of the mission of the Son and of its fatal
issue. Three points are prominent in them. The first is the unique
position which Christ here claims, with unwonted openness and
decisiveness, as apart from and far above all the prophets. They
constitute one order, but He stands alone, sustaining a closer
relation to God. They were faithful 'as servants,' but He 'as a
Son,' or, as Mark has it, 'the only and beloved Son.' The listeners
understood Him well enough. The assertion, which seemed audacious
blasphemy to them, fitted in with all His acts in that last week,
which was not only the crisis of His life, but of the nation's fate.
Rulers and people must decide whether they will own or reject their
King, and they must do it with their eyes open. Jesus claimed to
fill a unique position. Was He right or wrong in His claim? If He
was wrong, what becomes of His wisdom, His meekness, His religion?
Is a religious teacher, who made the mistake of thinking that He was
the Son of God in a sense in which no other man is so, worthy of
admiration? If He was right, what becomes of a Christianity which
sees in Him only the foremost of the prophets?
The next point marked is the owner's vain hope, in sending his Son. He
thought that He would be welcomed, and He was disappointed. It was His
last attempt. Christ knew Himself to be God's last appeal, as He is to
all men, as well as to that generation. He is the last arrow in God's
quiver. When it has shot that bolt, the resources even of divine love
are exhausted, and no more can be done for the vineyard than He has
done for it. We need not wonder at unfulfilled hopes being here
ascribed to God. The startling thought only puts into language the
great mystery which besets all His pleadings with men, which are
carried on, though they often fail, and which must, therefore, in view
of His foreknowledge, be regarded as carried on with the knowledge that
they will fail. That is the long-suffering patience of God. The
difficulty is common to the words of the parable and to the facts of
God's unwearied pleading with impenitent men. Its surface is a
difficulty, its heart is an abyss of all-hoping charity.
The last point is the vain calculation of the husbandmen. Christ
puts hidden motives into plain words, and reveals to these rulers
what they scarcely knew of their own hearts. Did they, in their
secret conclaves, look each other in the face, and confess that He
was the Heir? Did He not Himself ground His prayer for their pardon
on their ignorance? But their ignorance was not entire, else they
had had no sin; neither was their knowledge complete, else they had
had no pardon. Beneath many an obstinate denial of Him lies a secret
confession, or misgiving, which more truly speaks the man than does
the loud negation. And such strange contradictions are men, that the
secret conviction is often the very thing which gives bitterness and
eagerness to the hostility. So it was with some of those whose
hidden suspicions are here set in the light. How was the rulers' or
the people's wish to 'seize on His inheritance' their motive for
killing Jesus? Their great sin was their desire to have their
national prerogatives, and yet to give no true obedience. The ruling
class clung to their privileges and forgot their responsibilities,
while the people were proud of their standing as Jews, and careless
of God's service. Neither wished to be reminded of their debt to the
Lord of the vineyard, and their hostility to Jesus was mainly
because He would call on them for fruits. If they could get this
unwelcome and persistent voice silenced, they could go on in the
comfortable old fashion of lip-service and real selfishness. It is
an account, in vividly parabolic language, not only of _their_
hostility, but of that of many men who are against Him. They wish to
possess life and its good, without being for ever pestered with
reminders of the terms on which they hold it, and of God's desire
for their love and obedience. They have a secret feeling that Christ
has the right to ask for their hearts, and so they often turn from
Him angrily, and sometimes hate Him.
With what sad calmness does Jesus tell the fate of the son, so
certain that it is already as good as done! It _was_ done in
their counsels, and yet He does not cease to plead, if perchance
some hearts may be touched and withdraw themselves from the
confederacy of murder.
IV. We have next the self-condemnation from unwilling lips. Our Lord
turns to the rulers with startling and dramatic suddenness, which
may have thrown them off their guard, so that their answer leaped
out before they had time to think whom it hit. His solemn
earnestness laid a spell on them, which drew their own condemnation
from them, though they had penetrated the thin veil of the parable,
and knew full well who the husbandmen were. Nor could they refuse to
answer a question about legal punishments for dishonesty, which was
put to them, the fountains of law, without incurring a second time
the humiliation just inflicted when He had forced them to
acknowledge that they, the fountains of knowledge, did not know
where John came from. So from all these motives, and perhaps from a
mingling of audacity, which would brazen it out and pretend not to
see the bearing of the question, they answer. Like Caiaphas in his
counsel, and Pilate with his writing on the Cross, and many another,
they spoke deeper things than they knew, and confessed beforehand
how just the judgments were, which followed the very lines marked
out by their own words.
V. Then come the solemn application and naked truth of the parable.
We have no need to dwell on the cycle of prophecies concerning the
corner-stone, nor on the original application of the psalm. We must
be content with remarking that our Lord, in this last portion of His
address, throws away even the thin veil of parable, and speaks the
sternest truth in the nakedest words. He puts His own claim in the
plainest fashion, as the corner-stone on which the true kingdom of
God was to be built. He brands the men who stood before Him as
incompetent builders, who did not know the stone needed for their
edifice when they saw it. He declares, with triumphant confidence,
the futility of opposition to Himself--even though it kill Him. He
is sure that God will build on Him, and that His place in the
building, which shall rise through the ages, will be, to even
careless eyes, the crown of the manifest wonders of God's hand.
Strange words from a Man who knew that in three days He would be
crucified! Stranger still that they have come true! He is the
foundation of the best part of the best men; the basis of thought,
the motive for action, the pattern of life, the ground of hope, for
countless individuals; and on Him stands firm the society of His
Church, and is hung all the glory of His Father's house.
Christ confirms the sentence just spoken by the rulers on
themselves, but with the inversion of its clauses. All disguise is
at an end. The fatal 'you' is pronounced. The husbandmen's
calculation had been that killing the heir would make them lords of
the vineyard; the grim fact was that they cast themselves out when
they cast him out. He is the heir. If we desire the inheritance, we
must get it through Him, and not kill or reject, but trust and obey
Him. The sentence declares the two truths, that possession of the
vineyard depends on honouring the Son, and on bringing forth the
fruits. The kingdom has been taken from the churches of Asia Minor,
Africa, and Syria, because they bore no fruit. It is not held by us
on other conditions. Who can venture to speak of the awful doom set
forth in the last words here? It has two stages: one a lesser
misery, which is the lot of him who stumbles against the stone,
while it lies passive to be built on; one more dreadful, when it has
acquired motion and comes down with irresistible impetus. To stumble
at Christ, or to refuse His grace, and not to base our lives and
hopes on Him is maiming and damage, in many ways, here and now. But
suppose the stone endowed with motion, what can stand against it?
And suppose that the Christ, who is now offered for the rock on
which we may pile our hopes and never be confounded, comes to judge,
will He not crush the mightiest opponent as the dust of the summer
threshing-floor?