Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells the parable of the tenants and the vineyard.

It seems that there are at least three ways to read such a parable. In the first, Jesus speaks directly to the Jewish spiritual leaders of his day – the ‘chief priests, scribes and elders’ – challenging them to the point of denouncement for failing to recognize God’s workings, his messengers, and finally, his only Son.

The second might be a transmogrification of that story into a parable for our own times. In this story the ‘wicked’ tenants become us in a broad sense and the tenant-vineyard relationship becomes a metaphor for our attitudes towards any number of ideologies: for instance, the parable becomes a critique of American cultural values such as self-reliance, ownership, and the like. Perhaps this interpretation may flow from a desire to soften the first message into a broader message about group identity. One might say that ‘Jesus was really condemning power and preaching a radically inclusive love with this parable.’

Is there a way to bridge the gap between the past and the present, and to apply Jesus' words to ourselves at the individual level?

A third possibility does just that. It involves interpreting the parable as a teaching about the spiritual life. Just before this passage, Jesus had cursed the barren fig tree he passed while walking to Bethany. Jesus cursed this tree – as Saint Innocent of Kherson puts it – in order to show that spiritual barrenness is punishable. This suggests the parable of the tenants is indeed applicable to all: to the Jewish leaders of that day and to anyone who belongs to Christ in any time. What Jesus denounced is a failure to produce fruit!

This rich metaphor suggests that Jesus came to enable us (Jews and Gentiles alike) to bear fruit as God’s creatures. We all have a great responsibility to cultivate our inner lives and, by God’s help, to yield a harvest of spiritual fruit. What fruits are these? They are the fruits of the Spirit, as taught by Saint Paul and the Church for millennia: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

This third interpretation of Jesus’ parable reminds me of what Bishop Smith said when he visited this month: that Christianity is primarily a lifestyle. Our goal is to say, like Saint Paul, ‘Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.’

Blessings,
Justin