Scripture Readings for March 21, 2025

Genesis 37:3-4, 12-13a, 17b-28a, Psalm 105:16-21, Matthew 21:33-46

            Let’s begin with the story in Matthew’s Gospel. This parable is an allegory of salvation history. God is the landowner who builds a vineyard. The tenants are the Hebrew people who are given charge of the vineyard in order to produce a good crop of grapes for the owner. The servants are the prophets God sends to collect the produce at the harvest. The son is Jesus who finally comes to get what the tenants have refused to hand over. The death of the son leads to God taking away the care of the vineyard from the original tenants and handing the vineyard over to new tenants who will respect the owner and the responsibility he has given them. For Matthew this was a story to explain how the Jewish leadership had failed to do what was expected of the chosen people.

            The question I have is what value does this story have for us today? The simplest approach would be to say that we are to be those new tenants of God’s vineyard. We are to bring about good fruit and at the proper time be able to give this produce, our lives on earth, to God as a product of our fidelity for God’s gifts. Gifts frankly that are supposed to be our salvation both here and in the eternal future. I think that’s a good understanding of this parable.

            However, that approach leaves out any consideration for the first reading from Genesis.  The Isaiah quote in the middle of the Gospel allegory caught my attention, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone …” What’s with this stone? The rejected stone is a theme that relates to salvation, the rebuilding of the temple, and the chosen people entering heaven or whatever form of final happiness you want to imagine. It’s the rejected stone that made me think.

So now consider that Joseph was Israel’s favorite son. His brothers want to do away with him. They sell him to traveling merchants who take him to Egypt. The brothers are rejecting Joseph. The same brother who years later will save his family from starvation by welcoming them to Egypt and the abundance he helped create.

            In the same way Jesus is rejected by the Jewish leadership of his time. In the Gospel the tenants say explicitly “This is the heir. Come on, let us kill him and take over his inheritance.” Jesus is the rejected heir who is killed for his inheritance.

            We have parallel rejections. Both Joseph’s brothers and the tenants of the vineyard can’t see the good that is right in front of them. Joseph’s brothers are jealous of this dreamer, the tenants want more than they have a right to. They’re both willing to throw away what they have so they can get something they think will be more or better. The brother’s want their father’s favor and the tenants want all the profits or even the vineyard itself. I think together, today’s readings are about the failure to recognize the good we have right now in our own lives. Nurturing, loving and appreciating those gifts, the life we have. Let’s not let the very life we are leading become its own stumbling stone to happiness. A happiness now that could well be the path to eternal happiness. Happiness that may all be part of the same larger reality.