“Let me now sing of my friend,

my friend's song concerning his vineyard.

My friend had a vineyard

on a fertile hillside;

he spaded it, cleared it of stones,

and planted the choicest vines;

within it he built a watchtower,

and hewed out a wine press.

Then he looked for the crop of grapes,

but what it yielded was wild grapes.”

“Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people:

‘Hear another parable.

There was a landowner who planted a vineyard,

put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. 

Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey.

When vintage time drew near,

he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce. 

But the tenants seized the servants and one they beat,

another they killed, and a third they stoned. 

Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones,

but they treated them in the same way. 

Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking,

‘They will respect my son.’

But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another,

‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.’

They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.”

Sixteen chapters earlier, in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew writes a series of six teachings of Jesus that use the pattern, “You have heard that it was said…But I say to you…”. In today’s Gospel, Jesus could have said, “You have heard the story about the vineyard (from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah), but I tell you a new parable.” Jesus is taking a familiar saying and reimagining it in his context for a different audience. The original story dealt with wild grapes and the coming desolation of the vineyard. Jesus uses his parable to summarize God’s saving acts for his people culminating in the son being killed. Through it, Jesus predicts his own death. It becomes a prophecy: the Word of God spoken into a particular circumstance. Jesus reapplies God’s Word in a new situation with different people. We can sometimes study the Bible in a way that relegates it to history. Jesus teaches us a lesson today about God’s Word that shows it is applicable in the here and now, lest we simply think of it as a quaint irrelevant artifact of the past. Instead, Jesus shows us that the Word of God is dynamic, applicable, and poignant to our own time and place, to our own hearts and lives. 

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews says, “Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.” I encourage you to read and study the Bible, but most importantly to pray with the Bible. Spend time with the stories and wrestle with the teachings. Hold it up as a mirror to your life or a window to your heart. Let the Word of God console you and challenge you. Let it soak into your heart and mind for it is living and effective.