Today I reading in Matthew 21 about the land owner who rents out his vineyard to some people and then tries to collect his portion and they kill his son.
I think I’ve always thought this story was just about Israel as a nation rejecting Jesus. But today something else came to my mind.
N.T. Wright said that in scripture the vineyard is always used as a symbol for the people of Israel. Whether it was rotten or flourishing, it represented the people’s relationship with God.
This changed the way I looked at the story.
If the vineyard is Israel, then the people taking care of the vineyard would be the people who God has entrusted to watch over and tend to His people. That would be the priests and the other officials that God had placed in charge of His people.
The people of Israel didn’t reject Jesus until it was His time, and only then, I think, because they were influenced by those that were meant to lead them to God.
The people followed Jesus all over the country side and listened to every word He said. They believed that He was God’s Son.
It was the people who God had left in charge who were threatened by Jesus.
They were the ones that thought if Jesus came to power in the earthly way, they would lose all of their power.
They were in a comfortable spot. They had trust of the people and power given to them by both God and Rome.
If Jesus became king of Israel, they knew that He would not allow them to keep their positions.
They knew that Jesus would kick them out and expose them as the frauds they were.
So they had Him killed.
Luckily God had a different plan.
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