Tell me what you reject, and I will tell you who you are

Reflections for the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time: Isaiah 5:1-7, Philippians 4:6-9, Matthew 21:33-43

Garbology (Rudologie in French) is a branch of sociology that studies cultures and societies by analysing what we reject as garbage. Pioneered by Prof. William Rathje (Rubbish!: The Archaeology of Garbage, 1992), this academic discipline shows that our dustbins and trashcans reveal not only what we throw away but also who we are and where our society is headed. The axiom that garbology proposes is fascinating indeed: Tell me what you reject, and I will tell you who you are. Applying this axiom to this Sunday’s parable helps us not only make sense of the misguided tenants’ rejection of the land owner but also discern ways in which we reject God in our own discipleship.

1. Rejecting partnership for proprietorship:

The stories of the two vineyards (first reading and the Gospel) both begin with the allegorical affirmation that Israel is a vineyard and God is its owner. Isaiah asserts, “The vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel” (5:7). The Gospel literally cites this passage when it insists that it is the “landowner who planted the vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower”. In entrusting his vineyard to the leaders of Israel, God invites them to be his stewards ‘charged’ with the responsibility of caring for the vineyard.

The tenants, however, reject God’s partnership offer because they prefer to be its owners instead. When they see the heir, they cry, “Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance”. God offered Adam and Eve a similar call to be his partners, to “be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth”(Genesis 1:28). Like the misguided tenants, they reject the vocation to stewardship when they are tempted to become owners: “If you eat of this fruit, you will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). God’s offer of stewardship is rejected when we wish to make ourselves proprietors. Our planet, families, communities, etc., are all vineyards that rightfully belong to God. Are we God’s stewards or do we wish to become owners of his vineyard?

2. Rejecting prophecies for personal interests:

The parable is narrated in a context of palpable tension between Jesus and the Jewish leadership. His triumphant entry into Jerusalem follows a series of prophetic actions and proclamations that warn the Chief priests, the teachers of the law, the elders of the people and the kind about the imminent end of their abusive leadership. He drives the vendors from the temple, speaks of the coming judgement, and criticises the failures of the leadership (cursing of the fig tree, parable of the two sons, and the parable of the wedding feast). Risking his own life, he exposes the evil intentions of the self-engrossed leadership of his times right to their face.

Unsurprisingly, Jesus’ open challenge of the religious leadership results again in rejection. As Matthew observes in his conclusion of the chapter, “They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet” (21:45-46). While the crowd regards Jesus as a prophet, the leadership rejects the prophetic actions and parables of Jesus to safeguard their own self-interests. In evoking the violence met by the servants of the land owner, Jesus unmasks a disturbing truth about those who considered themselves prophets and true interpreters of the Torah: that they are not truly prophets but killers of the prophets (also in Matthew 23:37). Don’t we too run the risk of self-obsession to the point of rejecting the prophecies of God that aim to wake up our conscience?

3. Rejecting Christ, the Corner Stone:

Matthew chapter 21 also includes an argument over Jesus’ authority. The chief priests and the elders of the people ask him, “Who gave you this authority?” In Israel, God’s authority was deemed to be manifested in three ways: 1. the Davidic king enabling God’s reign (represented by the elders); 2. the Aaronic priests serving God’s presence (represented by the Levites); and 3. the dissident prophets speaking God’s voice (represented by the Torah). Jesus presents himself as the Cornerstone (Psalm 118:22–23), the one in whom the Kingly, priestly, and prophetic roles find their ultimate fulfilment. God has ordained him King to inaugurate God’s reign, Priest to make God’s presence accessible to all peoples, and Prophet to speak God’s mind to his people. Jesus puts Himself at the centre of God’s salvific plan when he quotes Psalm 118:22–23 to refer to himself: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (Isaiah 28:16). In rejecting Christ, the cornerstone, the Jewish leadership risks ostracizing itself.

C. S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity (1952) argued, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. . . . Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God (p. 55-56). The authority of Jesus presents us with a mandatory choice to make: to either be with him or against him, to gather or scatter (Matthew 12:30). Choosing the cornerstone and proclaiming him to be the messiah means becoming stewards of God’s prophetic project for his vineyard.