AN ABUSED ABSENTEE LANDLORD -- Daily Images of God--Lent 2022 Day 41 April 12

 

Daily Images of God--Lent 2022

Day 41

April 12

AN ABUSED ABSENTEE LANDLORD 

 

The Parable of the Desperate Farmers (Mark 12:1-12 // Matt 21:33-46 // Luke 20:9-19 //Gos. Thomas §65) on the lips of the historical Jesus was probably a critique of rapacious land rental practices of the age that dispossessed most farmers and left them with less than a living wage. The Gospels, however, recast and understand it as an allegorical story about how God is misrepresented and abused by those whom God has left to manage God’s affairs. Specifically, they see it as a critique of the Jerusalem religious leadership at the time of Jesus: the vineyard is Isra’el (Isa 5:1-7), the tenant farmers are the religious leaders, God is the owner of the vineyard, God’s servants are the prophets, and the beloved son is Jesus (Mark 1:11; 9:7; Matt 3:17; 17:5; Luke 3:22; 9:35). In Mark, the punishment of the tenants refers to the anticipated destruction of the religious leadership along with the Temple and Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE. The transfer of the vineyard to others refers to the people of the reconstituted Isra’el of the Age to Come, Jews and gentiles who accepted the Happy Announcement. 

 

 Unfortunately, the parable has been used over the centuries as a proof-text for the false and pernicious doctrine of Supercessionism that sees Judaism as rejected by God and replaced by the Church (an idea that St. Paul, for all his emphasis on faith in Christ, would never had accepted!) Such abuse of scripture historically was often driven by overt hatred of Jews seen as “Christ Killers” because of the Blood Libel in Matthew 27:26 (“His blood be upon us and our descendants!”) or the Gospel of John’s characterization of “Judaioi” (“Judeans?” “Jews?” “religious leaders?”) as “children of the Devil" (John 8:44), a Johannine sentiment driven by the trauma of having been “put out of the synagogue” (John 9:22). This way of misunderstanding the passion story disregarded the fact that crucifixion was a gentile Roman punishment rather than a Jewish one, and overlooked the clear motivation in the synoptic Gospels to reduce Roman culpability in Jesus' death at the expense of his coreligionists as a means of portraying Christianity as not subversive to the Empire.

 

The harm of such abuse of scripture is seen in the fact that over the centuries, most of the worst pogroms and atrocities committed against Jews by Christians occurred on Good Friday, by mobs leaving churches enraged by preaching against “Christ killers.” It is thus important to remember that the basic story of the parable is about how those left in charge of God’s affairs—of any ethnic or religious tradition, including such "Christian" preachers—often abuse and harm the very God they seek to serve. 

 

Here is the parable as it appears in Mark 12: 

 

Jesus began to speak to them in parables. “A person planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press, and built a tower. Then they leased it to tenant farmers and went abroad. At the due time they sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them a percentage of the vineyard’s produce. But they seized, flogged, and sent the servant away, empty-handed. Again the landowner sent them another servant. And that one they beat over the head and humiliated. When yet another was sent, they killed that one. So, too, many others; some they beat, others they killed. The landowner had one other to send, a beloved son. He sent him to them last of all, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they seized him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come, put the tenants to death, and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this scripture passage:

‘The stone that the builders rejected

has become the keystone;

by the Noble One has this been done,

and it is wonderful in our eyes’? ”

When they realized he had addressed the parable against them, they wanted to arrest him, but feared the crowd. So they left him and went away. (The Ashland Bible) 

 

Image: The Gospel Parable of the Wicked Vinedressers, by Gala Sobol