Christians, Jews and Matthew's parables

 I wrote this brief piece for our parish bulletin.  I find the parables from Matthew's Gospel which we've been hearing on recent weekends to be problematic because they seem so polemical against Jews of New Testament times.  What follows is my amateur attempt to address the problem to our parishioners.  Probably I could have said considerably more, but had to squeeze it into the allotted space.  I am not an expert on the topic by any means, and would appreciate any feedback and/or suggestions for improving the message.  Here is the article:

During these last months of this year of Matthew’s Gospel, we hear a series of parables with common themes.  The last three Sundays have given us a trio of “vineyard” parables: three Sundays ago, a vineyard owner goes into the marketplace throughout the day to hire laborers, and then pays all of them a full day’s wage at the end of the day.  The following Sunday, a man asked his two sons to go into his vineyard and work; one said “no” but went; the other said “yes” but didn’t go.  This past weekend’s Gospel offers us the striking parable of the landowner who built a vineyard then leased it to tenants who killed his servants and his son.  This coming weekend, we'll hear a parable without a vineyard but with a similar theme: a king whose invited guests don’t come to his son’s wedding banquet, so he sends his servants out into the town to invite one and all to come.

All these parables address issues which were important in the early church – including how Jews and non-Jews were to coexist together in a faith community.  Traditionally, Judaism consciously set itself apart from other religions, so it may have been a new thing for Jesus’ Jewish followers to live and worship alongside non-Jews as brothers and sisters.  These parables touch on that reality.  Thus, the parable of the landowner who hires people all day can be understood to mean that those who have come last into the vineyard (non-Jews who have learned about God only recently) are entitled to the same new life as Jewish followers whose covenant with God already had been in place for many hundreds of years.  The sons who say, respectively, “no” and “yes” to their father but then change their minds can be understood as those, both Gentiles and Jews, who accepted and rejected Jesus’s message.  Those who killed the vineyard owner’s servants and sons can be understood as those in Jesus’ time and place whose power and position were invested in the status quo rather than in the Kingdom of Heaven which Jesus has inaugurated.  And those who rejected the first invitation to the king’s son’s wedding feast are those who, too beholden to earthly power, rejected God’s invitation to eternal life, while those who subsequently were invited are to be understood as those of all backgrounds and nationalities who were then invited to come to the feast. 

In all this, it must be said clearly: none of these parables should be understood as Jesus and his followers rejecting Jews and Judaism.  While it is true that Jesus had Jewish enemies during his lifetime, it is also true that Jesus himself and virtually all his followers, including Mary his mother, his apostles and his disciples, were Jewish.  The reality of biblical Christianity was considerably more complicated than a simple Jewish/Christian dichotomy.  Christianity grew out of Judaism, and many of the first Christians were Jews - and continued to view themselves as Jewish.

At the time the Gospels were compiled, Christianity was new, tiny and marginal, while Judaism was ancient and widespread.  Two thousand years later, the situation for Christianity has changed.  History tells us that the relationship between Christians and Jews has been fraught over the centuries – a sad reality for which we Christians must shoulder our full share of responsibility.  One of the great tragedies of religious history is that these parables have been misused by some Christians who sought to justify their prejudice against Jews and wished to do them harm.  That sinful hatred and contempt for Jews and Judaism culminated in the 20th century, within the living memory of some of our parishioners, in the unfathomable evil of the Shoah.  The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, meeting less than two decades after the death camps were liberated, confronted the spiritual dimensions of this evil.   In a development that was both necessary and monumental, the Council decisively rejected anti-Semitism and reached out to Judaism in friendship.  

Today, the Catholic church sees itself as sharing a religious heritage with Judaism, recognizing that Jesus can’t be understood except as Jewish.  St. John Paul II memorably described adherents of Judaism as our “elder brothers in the faith of Abraham.”  We younger siblings have much to learn, if we are willing to listen.  

At many levels, the church works assiduously to cultivate friendship with Jews.  Here in our local area, we can do our part.  We should recognize how blessed we are to have Jewish friends, neighbors and, in some cases, family members.  It is good for us Christians to recall how indebted we are to our Jewish elder brothers.