30. Matthew 20: Closer to Jerusalem

Parable of a Landowner and his Laborers (Mt.20:1-16)

I will never forget an Adult Sunday class I sat in on one Sunday on this parable. The teacher, a local insurance salesman, tried to give it his best effort but at the end of the day sadly shook his head and confessed to me that he could not understand how anyone could run a business like that. I told him that was precisely the point! He got it (though he didn’t realize it)! The kingdom of heaven operates on a completely different logic and dynamic than does the commerce of the world where competition, competence, and production govern one’s success. That’s why Jesus told this story in the first place.

The clue comes with the description of the workers last hired. The vineyard is a stock symbol for Israel, the landowner is God, and the various workers are classes of people within Israel. The last hired confess they are still available “Because no one has hired us” (v.7). These are the last and the least among the people. The undesirables no one else would hire. For whatever reasons they were always left standing, unemployed at the end of the day.

They were not those who had left everything to follow Jesus and stood in closest relation to him, like the disciples (19:27ff.). Nor were they the rich and successful who likely assumed they had merited a place with God (19:23-26) or the scrupulous, wealthy person genuinely seeking to share in God’s new creation (19:16ff.). No, these unemployed undesireables are the “little children” whom the disciples wanted to keep away from Jesus (19:13ff.).

Yet Jesus welcomed those “little children” and blessed them. So too the landowner of this vineyard. He welcomes and blesses them by paying them the same wages he pays those hired first (the desirables) who worked all day for him. The latter are, not surprisingly, upset and feel unfairly treated by the owner. He, however, asks them if he had done them any injustice. Have they not been included in what he has been doing from the beginning? Has he not paid them what he promised? No, of course not. These desirables have been securely and fully engaged in God’s work from the beginning. They have received blessings from him day after day. What is their gripe, then?

“Or, are you envious because I am generous?” (v.15). Are we? What if God includes and blesses those standing on the corner carrying signs reading “Homeless. Will work for food!” Or those who have hurt or betrayed us? Gay people? Minority peoples? Those who lower the value of our real estate? Those who attend church only once a month and never serve on any committees? Convicted felons? You fill in the blank. Thus, Jesus declares, “the last will be first, and the first will be last” (v.16).

That is what the kingdom of heaven is like. Accounts and no-accounts alike find a home with this landowner in his vineyard. And alike share in its blessings. Like no earthly kingdom. Certainly not Rome. Or the Jews of 1^st century Israel.

As the mission of the church spread into Gentile lands this parable continued to speak. This time to the church. God’s new people taking the good news of Jesus to the wider world would hear in this story a critique of any kind of favoritism or prejudice that would make Gentiles, no-accounts in Jewish eyes, either excluded or second-class members in the church. Such a vision animated the early church’s vision for the destiny of the world in God’s “generosity.”

Jesus’ Third Passion Prediction (Mt.20:17-19)

The disciples will note find such generosity in the world. What Jesus speaks of is not the milk of human kindness (which always has its limits and exclusions). This divine generosity comes at a cost. A hideous, terrible cost. To Jesus himself.

For the third time he summarizes the cost of his mission will which spill over onto the disciples themselves. Bonhoeffer writes in Discipleship: “Every call of Christ leads into death.”[1] And it does so because God’s call to him led into death. Death is what being this God in human flesh in this kind of world means. And it means that for those who follow him too.

Greatness in the Kingdom (Mt.20:20-23)

Once again it seems as of Jesus has not spoken clearly enough for the disciples to understand. The mother of John and James came to Jesus with them and knelt in a posture of reverence before him. Since Jesus is going to be king (they get that much of the story he tells) it would be nice if her sons took seats of status and power right on each side of him. She or they, or likely both still think in worldly terms about these things.

“This request opens a window for us on the whole sordid business of power. Young politicians try to guess who’s going to be powerful. They attach themselves to him or her, so that if they’ve guessed right they will be rewarded handsomely for their early allegiance. People play games like that all the time. It produces cheap ‘loyalty’ that’s not worth a thing, hollow ‘friendships’ that don’t go deeper than the outward smile, and easy betrayals when things go wrong. That’s the level the two brothers were working at. When the other disciples are cross with them, it’s probably not because they were all too pure-minded to have similar thoughts, but simply because James and John got in first.”

Wearily, and perhaps warily too, Jesus tells them they’re out of their gourds. And then, cryptically, asks “Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” James and John seem to understand what he means and answer, “We are able” (v.22). Doubtless they imagine a royal feast with Jesus. With the king lifts his cup of victory all at table with him lift theirs as well. They want to be right with him in seats of honor.[2] Yes, they are able to drink that cup.

But in the Old Testament we find a number of passages that speak of a “cup of God’s wrath” (e.g. Isa.51.17, 22; Jer.25.15–29) that he will pour out on the rebellious world. And God will force them to drink it, all of it. This likely the cup Jesus alludes to and the Zebedee boys don’t get this one at all. Moreover, Jesus speaks of drinking this cup himself! What kind of king talks like that?

Jesus, ironically, assures them that they will drink his cup. But it is not up to him where they end of seated when he does. In fact, the honor of being on his right and left when he drinks this cup belong to the two thieves crucified with him on Golgotha! (v.23).

Now the ten other disciples join the party and are mad at James and John for trying to one-up them. They doubtless believe they are best qualified to be Jesus’ right- and left- hand men. Now that they are all together, Jesus issues a classic statement on power and leadership in God’s way. Leading the kingdom way means eschewing altogether the worldly and imperial practice of being top dog and “lording power over others.” Tyranny of this sort, whether on a large or small scale, is verboten. Rather, slavery and servanthood, words not in respectability lexicon of the 1^st century world.

Jesus alludes to Isa.53 to seal the deal. Here in a nutshell is Jesus’ alternative view of kingship, royalty, and leadership: “Just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (v.28).

“Son of Man” is Jesus’ favorite self-designation drawn from Dan.7:13f. It speaks of a victorious figure the Ancient of Days gives a kingdom. In other words, this figure is a ruler, perfect for Jesus to use to spell out what ruling in God’s way means. A victorious ruler, Jesus says (meaning himself), does not lord is power and authority over his subjects. Rather, in this peculiar kingdom, the ruler serves his subjects rather than them serving him! And not only that, this ruler gives up his life for them rather than using them as cannon fodder to fight his enemies.

This ruler’s death will be a “ransom for many.” A ransom was paid for the freedom of slaves. And Israel was enslaved to all manner of demons and evil powers. Jesus’ death, his drinking the cup of God’s wrath, for their freedom. Freedom to be the Israel God always meant them to be (which would mean blessing for the world).

A potent image to Jesus’ death, it has been misused when taken out of its context here and made to serve as a linchpin of a theory of atonement. This image is a limited one (as are all images used of what Jesus’ death accomplished.

-in the first place, his death here is limited to Israel and for its freedom to be the true Israel of God.

-secondly, the cup of wrath Jesus drinks is not God’s punishment of him (killing him) instead of Israel. Rather, the wrath Jesus undergoes is Israel’s rejection, persecution, and murder of him (in collusion with the Romans, of course) as a sign of their rejection of God and judgment by God (in 70 a.d.) as no longer his Abrahamic people who would carry his blessing to the world. Salvation comes from the Jews, as Jesus said in Jn.4:22, but it is not delivered to the world by them as an ethnic entity but rather as a new Israel made up of Jews and Gentiles. (This does not, of course, mean ethnic Israel is no longer God’s people too. It is and continues to have a role to play in the spread of the gospel through its very disobedience and rejection of Jesus as Paul labors to detail in Rom.9-11. After all, the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable according to Paul in Rom.11:29).   

-thirdly, the ransom imagery is limited to its means as securing the freedom of slaves. To ask to whom Jesus paid the ransom (e.g. the devil) is to go beyond the function of the image and import a great deal into it that is not there. We need to restrain our interpretations to what the image actually intends not to whatever else we may connect with it.

Jesus radical redefinition of rule and leadership in God’s way is the point here. The ransom imagery is a powerful and visceral way to bring that distinctiveness home, especially to would-be followers whose imaginations are still immersed in imperial pagan notions of leadership. Like the ten, and us as well.

Jesus Heals Two Blind Men (Mt.20:29-34)

It is not surprising, then that Matthew concludes this section with a healing of two blind men. The disciples have proven their sight to be at least significantly occluded. On his way to Jerusalem again, two blind men, broken image-bearers needing divine reclamation and restoration, cry out to Jesus when they hear he is passing by. The crowd tries to silence them (v.31), proving themselves as blind as the two men crying out to him. They can only process the practice of greatness in ways that don’t include the royal attending to unfortunate no-accounts on his way to capitol.

He is, indeed, the “Son of David,” the royal king of Israel. The blind men recognize this much. They probably expected no more than to catch his attention by their flattery and he might send an aide over with some money for their relief. But instead, the “great man” himself calls out to them: “What do you want me to do for you?” (v.32). Now on the spot, with the whole crowd listening attentively, is their “moment of decision.” Will they treat him like any other great man and request a pittance from him for their daily needs?

Somehow, though, they screwed up their courage, threw caution to the winds, and said “Lord, let our eyes be opened” (v.33). “Lord” may mean no more than “Sir.” A deferential address to a great man. Or it could mean a flash of insight into who Jesus truly is (remember Peter in 16:16). The latter seems more likely since their request is not something one would normally ask of a great man, risking embarrassing him in public with a request he could not fulfill.

These two broken image-bearers ask Jesus to reclaim and restore life to them. Full life. New life. Their request stirs something in him. Perhaps in the face of the corporate blindness of the crowd who could see, their desperate courage in making such an audacious request moved Jesus to compassion (v.34). He moves over to them, touches their eyes and heals them. Like devotees of temple deities anointing their image’s eyes so it could see in pagan temple rituals, Jesus anoints the eyes of these broken divine image-bearers so they too might see and be restored to their vocation of loving and living for the God who created them in his image.

These men probably did not know what to expect, if anything, when they blurted to their request. But the hope it expressed, even it was but a hope against hope kind of thing, Jesus honored and acted on it. And touched by this grace, they respond appropriately – “they followed him” (v.34).

Discipleship is the expected result of grace. It is realized by these two men. Will it be realized by Jesus’ own disciples? By Israel?   

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[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship DBW Vol 4 (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works), p. 87: Fortress Press. Kindle Edition. A literal translation of Bonhoeffer’s stark German.

[2] Leithart, The Gospel of Matthew: 2015.