LENT REFLECTION

Matthew 21:33-43, 45-46

Rejecting Jesus

Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: 
“Hear another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it,
dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey.
When vintage time drew near,
he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce.
But the tenants seized the servants and one they beat,
another they killed, and a third they stoned. Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones, but they treated them in the same way.
Finally, he sent his son to them,
thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another, ‘This is the heir.
Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.’ They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.
What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?” They answered him, “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants
who will give him the produce at the proper times.” Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures:
The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes?
Therefore, I say to you,
the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they knew that he was speaking about them.
And although they were attempting to arrest him, they feared the crowds, for they regarded him as a prophet.


1. Jesus told this Parable to those who rejected Him; the chief priests, elders and pharisees. They were plotting to have Him killed.

2. Today, in our very midst, in our communities and public life, we have people who continue to reject Jesus. This Parable is particularly addressed to them. And it is equally addressed to all Christians who confess Jesus but their hearts are far away from God, and whose actual lives hardly reflect the will of God as taught and revealed by our Lord Jesus Christ (Mt 7:21-23, 24-27). They do not bear the good fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22-23). A tree is known by its fruit (Lk 6:43-45, Mt 12:33-37).

3. To day, we see structural sin, embedded in global, regional, national, and local policies and programs that dehumanise and kill God’s people. They are run and overseen by those who reject God, or those who pay mere lip-service to God’s will, saying Lord-Lord when their hearts are far.

4. Many reject our Lord Jesus Christ today because they are atheists, even those who marvel at the wonder of the natural world, which declares God (Ps 19:1-4), and have a nature-based spirituality. There are those who prefer the seduction and promises of the evil one as pathways to riches and pleasures and honour and power; the very lie the serpent told Eve in the garden (Gn 3:1-6) and the very temptations Jesus resisted in the desert (Mt 4:1-11). And having acquired power and wealth, like the Jewish temple aristocracy, they will kill to keep it, just as they killed Jesus to preserve their temple economy of taxation and trading (the den of thieves) in collaboration with and to appease the Roman authorities (Mt 21:12-13, Jn 2:13-22). It could be sheer expediency; to kill someone who is considered a trouble maker and a risk (Jn 11:50). Or to have nothing to do with the demands of our Lord Jesus Christ when considered inconvenient or a barrier to  schemes for wealth, honour, pleasure, and power. It could also be just foolishness and erratic reasoning, or cynicism, or hardness of heart. It could be due to wrong images of God which require correction, or psychotic obsessions and past hurts which need compassion and healing.

5. Our Lord Jesus Christ is rejected today for the very reasons that He was rejected by the chief priests, the elders, pharisees, scribes, sadducees, the false witnesses, Judas Iscariot, the crowds that shouted crucify Him, together with Pilate and the soldiers who mocked and crucified Him and the unrepetent thief who was crucifed with Him. We can see in these groups, in their hardness of heart, in their interests and fears, in their expediency and worldly calculations, a bit of ourselves when we reject our Lord Jesus Christ.

6. The Lord’s lament in Isaiah rings ever more urgently even today: “I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know; my people do not understand” (Isa 1:2-3). Their hearts have become dull, their ears hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes, lest they should see and understand and be converted, and I should heal them (Mt 13:14-15, Jn 12:40, Isa 6:10 LXX).

7. The Gospel of John has a damning verse: “Although he had performed so many signs in their presence, they did not believe him” (Jn 12:37) and the reason is that they hardened their hearts and shut they eyes, and didn’t want the Lord to heal them (Jn 12:38-40).