Little, Mad Sin

Reflections on Matthew 21:33–43

Before I share my own reflection on Sunday’s Gospel reading, let’s make sure we have a sense of the literal meaning of the passage. Again, we are dealing with Matthew 21:33–43, the parable of the wicked tenants. And, again, we have Jesus addressing the chief priests and elders of the people (same as last week) who had been questioning his cleansing of the Temple.

“Listen to another parable,” Jesus begins. He just won’t let up. “On the one hand, he does not seem to tire of exposing their arrogance, self-righteousness, and hardness of heart,” Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis says. “On the other hand…he really does not forsake them for good.” His mercy knows no bounds. We’re “too acquainted with the deepest motivations of the Heart of Jesus to believe that all he has in mind…is to expose and condemn everything and everyone unfriendly to himself.”¹ No. He wants the parables to work like the bronze serpent mounted on the pole in Numbers 21:9. Those Israelites at the time of Moses were healed of the poison injected into their systems due to deep-seated vices by gazing in horror upon the depravity of their own sinfulness. To be healed, they had to look upon the cause of their being envenomed, namely, grumbling against God who punished them with vipers. It’s no wonder the image from Numbers 21 foreshadows the crucifix, and it’s no wonder Catholics hang crucifixes everywhere. The crucifix stands, at one and the same time, as a reminder of the horrors of sin and God’s completely shocking antidote to sin’s poison. Sunday’s parable works much the same way. Jesus wants the chief priests and Pharisees to see their sin for what it is and what God is up to. He continues to aim fiery darts right at the hearts of those who consider themselves already justified and, therefore, who do not think they need a savior. The rest of the parable “dramatizes God in Jesus always and everywhere pursuing our rebellious hearts with forceful divine rhetoric, so that we will be persuaded to turn back to him freely.”²

Well, the opening clause caused quite the preamble. Let’s get into the parable.

With broad brushstrokes, the parable of the wicked tenants serves as an allegory depicting the whole of salvation history in four stages:³

1. Creation and Election (21:33) — The householder (i.e., God) thoughtfully and carefully creates his vineyard (i.e., Eden, Promised Land, Jerusalem), and entrusts it to tenants (i.e., the “elect,” the Chosen People of Israel).

2. Law and Prophets (21:34–36) — Before leaving, the householder must have given clear instruction about caring for the vineyard given his assumption that there would be fruit (i.e., Law). He then sends servants (i.e., prophets) to receive the fruit of the harvest. They give the servants nothing but beatings and brutal murders.

3. Incarnation and Redemption (21:37–39) — Finally, the householder (i.e., God) is going to send his son (i.e., Jesus = Incarnation), because surely, they will respect his son. They don’t. Instead, they take him outside the vineyard (i.e., Jerusalem) and kill him with the expectation they will steal his inheritance. Unfortunately, we see this play out in every age, it seems. “God is dead and we killed him! Now we can do what we really want.” As I reflect on this further, I believe the anxiety we experience as a people in our time runs deeper than our fast-paced way of life or social media. It turns out that when you seemingly eliminate God from the picture, something we’ve been trying to do for a few hundred years, someone must step into that spot. When it’s you, you find yourself trying to carry a tremendous burden — the weight of the world — that can’t help but weigh you down. Okay, I’ve gone astray. Back to the program.

4. Second Coming (21:40–41) — When the householder comes back again, what will he do? Because of their wickedness, he will put them to death. They will receive their reward. It’s interesting to note that the Jewish authorities are the ones who issue the line explaining the punishment: “he will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants…” The Jerome Commentary points out that the Greek contains a play on words, here: “evilly those evil men he will destroy.” It’s as if they’re condemning themselves and, at the same time, ushering in the Church comprised of Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah and believing Gentiles.

It’s worth noting that at the end of the whole sequence the chief priests and Pharisees did perceive he was speaking about them (see 21:45). However, instead of repenting, they harden their hearts and try to arrest Jesus.

Prayerful Reading

Well, I pondered couple of things that I don’t want to spend a lot of time on. First, I marveled at the sending of the son:

ATTHEVERYENDHESENTHISSONTOTHEMSAYINGTHEYWILLREVEREMYSON

It amazes me that the landowner was so convinced about the possibility of the tenants’ conversion of heart. He seems to either be completely naïve or tremendously foolish. Perhaps both. From here, though, my mind went to 1 Cor 1:25. This verse says: “For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” Clearly God’s up to something I don’t get, though he’s known for these upside-down things you could never anticipate. This hope for change and those words THEYWILLREVEREMYSON reminds me of the line: “From the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). That the landowner/God says he’s sending he son as the only possible way to save the wicked tenants from themselves tells us something about the abundant goodness and mercy of God’s heart.

Next, you have to ask why in the world the tenants would have thought they, of all people, would be the ones to inherit the land by killing off the son. Of course they could have known the landowner had only one son, as there’s only one referenced, and assumed that without an heir the squatters would simply acquire the land at the landowner’s passing. In fact, they weren’t wrong. According to my Jerome Commentary, this would have been the legal proceeding at the time. If the owner would have died without an heir and without a will, the unoccupied land would have gone to the first claimant. The tenants would have had the first shot by the simple fact of being there. Besides, killing off the son would have been tantamount to killing the landowner himself.

All my curiosities aside, I want to share a bit of my own prayerful reading with you. I zeroed in on this portion of the text:

HAVEYOUNEVERREADINTHESCRIPTURESTHESTONETHATTHEBUILDERSHAVEREJECTEDHASBECOMETHECORNERSTONEBYTHELORDHASTHISBEENDONEANDITISWONDERFULINOUREYES

Here, Jesus quotes directly from Psalm 118:22–23. I already got fairly autobiographical this week, so I guess I’ll stay on theme.

In junior high and high school, I was one of those builders who rejected the living stone (see 1 Peter 2:4). You might say I was familiar with the sins of youth and versed in living a duplicitous life. Interiorly, I had rejected the faith I was given and exteriorly I even made fun of my peers, those “Jesus freaks” who had caught the “Catholic bug” at some Steubenville Youth Conferences. But during the Fall of 2004, just a month or so into my first year of undergraduate studies, I became aware, deeply aware, of the extent of my sin and my devious trajectory. It was not unlike the depiction of Julia Flyte’s confrontation with reality in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. Grappling with the weight of her sin after Bridey, her older brother, called out the fact that she was “living in sin” — referring to her adulterous affair with Charles Ryder — Julia is beside herself. She tries to explain things to Charles, her agnostic lover:

“Living in sin”; not just doing wrong…doing wrong, knowing it is wrong, stopping doing it, forgetting…Living in sin, with sin, always the same, like an idiot child carefully nursed, guarded from the world. “Poor Julia,” they say, “she can’t go out. She’s got to take care of her sin. A pity it ever lived,” they say, “but it’s so strong. Children like that always are. Julia’s so good to her little, mad sin.”⁴

Living in sin. All sin betrays our true allegiances and all sin betrays our affairs, because all sins, for the baptized, are infidelities — however great or small. They’re all an affront to the most important vows of our whole lives, our baptismal vows. In this light, “living in sin” doesn’t have to do only with adultery, but in whatever ongoing, willful sin we’re engaging in. “Living in sin” refers to our pet sins, the ones we use to prop up ourselves, to satisfy our egos or base desires, the ones we simply justify away. It was in this sense in high school that I was living in sin. Sometimes I welcomed my sin and sometimes I hated it. Sometimes I raced down well-worn, vicious paths, and sometimes I struggled against them only to fall in due time. But more often than not, I was just living — living in sin. Yes, all the while living in sin, and striving for little more than self-satisfaction. Ego. Reputation. Self. Making a name for myself. I was taking good care of my sin. “Brad’s so good to his little, mad sin.”

Well, like Julia’s spiritual awakening at Brideshead that night, that piercing sting of her conscience, mine happened in the Fall of 2004. Let’s just say the Lord, in his severe mercy, made my direction in life abundantly clear to me. This culminated with an honest prayer from the bottom of my heart — probably the first of my whole life — that went something like: “God, if you are who you say you are, I need help.” There, on my knees in my empty dorm room in Pacelli Hall, there at John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio, the God of the universe stooped down and heard my cry (cf. Psalm 40:2). And, one by one, things began to change as I relinquished my icy death-grip on my little, mad sin, and allowed myself to be led down a new path.

The stone which I had rejected became the cornerstone of my life. Revisiting those memories over the last few days, I realize I had little to do with that placement of that cornerstone in my life. I simply welcomed it. By the Lord had this been done and it was wonderful in my eyes. Still is, in fact.

Please use the comments to share your own lectio reflections if you’d like. It’s always a blessing to experience lectio within community — even online!

1. Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the World, vol. 3, 461.

2. Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, 462.

3. See Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, 467.

4. Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1945), 287.