Mine or Yours? Matthew 21 and Philippians 3

Imagine you’ve been hard at work, and at last it’s paying off; you’re finally getting some results. Except … you work in a vineyard, and now the harvest has come, you’re expected to give some of it away. You really do not like this idea. You’ve worked hard for those grapes, and now you can not even use them all. Together with those you share the vineyard with, you decide this is unjust, and refuse to hand any over, rejecting the messengers sent to collect the produce. Tensions rise so much that eventually some of the messengers are killed.

Or imagine that you own a vineyard; you’ve actually created this vineyard, planting the vines, building a wall around it, and a winepress inside. You let it out to tenants to care for it, in return for a share of the produce. But when the harvest comes, the tenants refuse to hand anything over, mistreating and killing those you send to collect it. This is unjust and criminal; the vineyard is yours, and the tenants working there have an agreement; their tenancy depends on paying over some of the produce. If they do not, then their tenancy is at an end. But the tenants have a different idea; if they kill the owner’s son, the heir, then the vineyard will be theirs. Read the parable in Matthew 21:33-46.

On pondering this passage, one thing that struck me was the attitude of the tenants to the owner’s son: let’s kill him, and the vineyard will be ours. Quite what this phrase meant in the original Greek, or what the inheritance laws were at the time, I do not know. But it seems obvious that the tenants saw the vineyard as theirs; their vineyard, their produce. They wanted to take over something that was not theirs. Okay, yes, they had done the hard work in caring for the vineyard. But the owner was the one who had invested in it, and set it up. It was his vineyard, not theirs, and in refusing to hand over his share of the produce, they were stealing his share. Whether the share was fair or not, we are not told, but it was presumably what they had agreed in taking up the tenancy.

But what does this have to do with us today? The parable was aimed at people in Jesus’ own time. It would be easy to dismiss it; to say we’re not like that, it’s irrelevant to us. But maybe we should ponder it further. To begin with, think about how much of who we are, as well as what we own, we see as ours and how much we see as God’s. How much of the fruits of our labours do we attribute to ourselves and how often do we give the glory to God?  How much do we depend on and trust in God, and how much do we do in our own strength? How much are we working for God’s kingdom, and how much of our strength is given to extending our own? Are we among those who are giving God the fruits, or are we hoarding it for ourselves?

As so often, the answer may be both/and rather than either/or. The point of these questions is not to induce guilt, or make us give up, but rather to ponder where we are in our faith, and where we need to go forward. Even if all we can do is ask God for the grace to change, or the insight needed, or just acknowledge that we have not got the balance right. Possibly a habit of regular thanksgiving to God for who we are and what we are able to do (however much or little that is) may help, as might praying with Philippians chapter 3. Here, Paul talks of all his advantages in trusting in the flesh, but then goes on to declare that it is all rubbish, for the sake of knowing Jesus as his Lord (see verses 4 – 14). It might help also to know that Paul himself declares that he knows he hasn’t got there yet! (see v. 12).

So what are the advantages in your own life? What is your equivalent to those Paul lists in v 4-6? Can you see them as a loss, as rubbish for the sake of knowing Jesus as your Lord? Can you see that knowing Jesus is far more than anything else that we do or own? That in giving our ‘produce’ to our Lord, we are not losing but gaining far, far more than we ever would in building our own kingdoms?