Jesus the Jew, a book written by Geza Vermes, caused controversy when published in 1973. Today it is commonplace to reflect on Jesus’ Jewish background. We have Geza Vermes to thank for that. In 1973, however, Jesus the Jew was provocative title. Why? 

Jesus the Jew was a confrontational title because Christianity has internalised the oldest hatred, anti-Semitism. Moreover, we have over spiritualised our reading of Scripture. Over spiritualised means that we read the Gospels in moral tones, ignoring the justice, environmental, economic, and political impacts of the text. As I have studied and read, my research into Scripture has cleaned a mirror for my attitudes and I have been saddened at how the reflection reveals my prejudice and bias. Our over spiritualised and anti-Semitic bias in reading scripture are like cataracts clouding our sympathy for the context of the Jewish Jesus. Read through anti-Semitic and over spiritualised cataracts, often this parable has been interpreted as an indictment on the religious hypocrisy of the Jews who have had ‘heaven’ taken away from them and given to the Christian gentiles, while our own hypocrisy remains hidden. Many explanations of this parable regard it as an attack on the Jewish leaders of Jesus time. Furthermore, some interpretations of this parable describe how God has sent pastors to the vineyard his church only to have them abused by the tenants until eventually God will (re)send his son in a second coming. Such teachings cassock church leaders in a false piety when they themselves are at times the wolves in sheep’s clothing. The Royal Commission into institutionalised responses to child abuse has been a cleansing, a necessary movement of the Spirit to disallow any such interpretations.

As background to this parable, the authors of our lectionary have revealed their own bias in marrying Matthew 21.33-46 with Isaiah 5.1-7 – song of God’s vineyard:

Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill…
he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes…

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!

Tellingly they have stopped short at verse 7, omitting verse 8, which is the interpretive key for us:

Ah, you who join house to house,
who add field to field,
until there is room for no one but you,
and you are left to live alone
in the midst of the land!

“Add house to house and join field to field” to where there is “no more room in the land.” What does this refer to? The audience in the first century existed under a multiple tax burden. In addition to levies paid to Roman officials there was also the necessary taxes paid to the temple. In Matthew 23.1-12 Jesus refers to this: “They (the priests and pharisees) tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.” The multiple tax burdens which leached life out of the average Jew living under Roman and Temple rule is one of the reasons Jesus became angry. In Matthew 20.12-13 we read: “And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

When one was no longer able to pay one’s taxes and debts, a loan was taken out. When the loan could not be paid, land was forfeited to the wealthy city-based class from whom you were awarded a loan. You hired yourself out as a labourer to the very land you used to own.

Imagine now that the land you owned and loved that supported you and your family for generations was totally destroyed and then replanted with a vineyard. For at least five years the land would bear no fruit which means you had to have enough savings to pay wages without an income. This highlights that only the extremely wealthy could afford the luxury of digging up a workable farm to replant with vines. Imagine being in near poverty working on this farm. As part of your work agreement you are allowed to plant vegetables in between the vines to feed your family, as long as you pay some of this harvest to your already wealthy property owner. Step into scene, you are hungry and tired, you have been working in the sun, your children are suffering and starving, the small amount of food you are able to grow to feed an undernourished family is taken from you as payment for using the land to grow it, land that once belonged to you. These labourers would have longed for a Messiah to come, to destroy all those who generated wealth at the expense of the peasants, and to overturn the tables of history so that the poor would be rich and the rich, poor. Perhaps you can have sympathy for the violent revolt the desperate tenants resort to, especially if their religious hopes are for a Messiah who would violently destroy the oppressors and support their uprising.

Yet Jesus warns that such an uprising will not be effective and lead to a spiral of violence and not have a happy ending for anyone. The ominous question “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” possibly alludes to the siege of Jerusalem in 70CE, a decisive event where the Roman army destroyed the city and Temple of Jerusalem. Josephus the historian suggests that 1.1 million people were killed in that siege. Aware that such a brutal response to an uprising against Rome was possible, the audience in Matthew’s Gospel reply to Jesus question, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death.”

I suggest that in this parable Jesus is inviting listeners to question for themselves the spiral of violence and its lack of efficacy in overcoming evil. A more nuanced approach is needed, where we are as wise as serpents but as gentle as a dove. Since Jesus does not intend to be the sort of Messiah who will lead a violent uprising against corrupt leadership, many will reject his Messiahship. The unusual messiahship Jesus offers will be a cornerstone for the new community he inaugurates, a new community that adopts the beatitudes as its constitution. To opt for violence instead of the beatitudes means that one will always stumble against the character of the Christ, the cornerstone is, for some, a stumbling stone.

As we allow the parable to interrogate us, unless we are widows, we as wealthy readers examine the extent to which our lifestyle rests on the exploitation of others, like the wealthy landowner in the text. Is it possible to imagine a new future that subverts the imbalance of the rich being too rich at the expense of the poor who are made poorer?

I suggest a new future is possible. St Francis of Assisi is a living parable of how the spiral of violence described in Matthew’s Gospel can be undone. After Jesus, St Francis has had the greatest impact on human history. He is credited with the non-violent destruction of the feudal system of Europe, a feudal system which is summarised in Matthew’s parable in 21.33-46. In Matthew’s parable, the wealthy landowner sends his son to collect the “taxes”. St Francis was the son of such a rich noble, however instead of perpetuating his father’s wealth, Francis rejected the lifestyle completely. He lived a life of solidarity with the poor and sick. St Francis not only rewrites the parable, by refusing to be an agent of destruction on behalf of his wealthy patriarch, he also heals the spiral of violence destroying the marginalised and the earth.

As a hero of the faith St Francis empowers us with a creation spirituality that heals a spiral of violence. Compare and contrast is perhaps not the best way to highlight the example St Francis offers us, but this method summarises his impact below:

1.   While we may have been taught that we are born in original sin, in contrast creation spirituality celebrates that we are as an original blessing, blessed to be a blessing to others.

2.   While we may have been taught that the nature of humans is that they are sinners, in contrast creation spirituality celebrates that we the baptised are the anointed kings and queens of the new creations.

3.   While we may believe in a divided world, in contrast creation spirituality teaches the interconnectedness of all things; rich and poor, humans and animals, animate and inanimate are linked together as interdependent siblings. It is because the world is enjoyed as an undivided whole that St Francis sings a hymn to sister moon and brother sun.

4.   While we may see the world in dualistic terms and define some areas as secular and others sacred, in contrast St Francis teaches the divine permeates all things. Creation spirituality notes that all things pulsate with God’s breath, God’s energy.

Similarly, since the world vibrates with the energy of Christ, the universe itself is the body of Christ and the Risen Lord Jesus is worshipped as the Cosmic Christ present in all that is.