Parable Vineyard Quotes

In his indispensable book The Return of the Prodigal Son, Henri Nouwen boldly invites us to imagine ourselves not just in the place of the younger son, and then the elder one, but also in the place of the father. Many of Jesus’ parables are waiting for this kind of attention—his shepherds, widows and vineyard owners are not just clues to the true nature and identity of God, but to what we are meant to become by grace. But for us the path to becoming the shepherd requires first recognizing that we are the lost sheep; to become the searching widow, we must understand that we are the coin lost in the cranny; and to become the father requires first coming to terms with ourselves as his equally foolish, equally prodigal children. And that is, in a nutshell, what discipleship is about. In the crucible of discipleship we come to see just how distorted our vision for our own power has been and how small we have become, but we also discover just how lavish our Father’s goodness is and how much glory is waiting for us, how much more we are meant to be.

Leave all the ‘wise men to mock it or tolerate.’ Let them reach the moon or the stars, they are all dead. Nothing lives outside of man. Man is the living soul, turning slowly into a life-giving Spirit. But you cannot tell it except in a parable or metaphor to excite the mind of man to get him to go out and prove it. Leave the good and evil and eat of the Tree of Life. Nothing in the world is untrue if you want it to be true. You are the truth of everything that you perceive. ‘I am the truth, and the way, the life revealed.’ If I have physically nothing in my pocket, then in Imagination I have MUCH. But that is a lie based on fact, but truth is based on the intensity of my imagination and then I will create it in my world. Should I accept facts and use them as to what I should imagine? No. It is told us in the story of the fig tree. It did not bear for three years. One said, ‘Cut it down, and throw it away.’ But the keeper of the vineyard pleaded NO’! Who is the tree? I am the tree; you are the tree. We bear or we do not. But the Keeper said he would dig around the tree and feed it ‘or manure it, as we would say today’ and see if it will not bear. Well I do that here every week and try to get the tree ‘you’ me to bear. You should bear whatever you desire. If you want to be happily married, you should be. The world is only response. If you want money, get it. Everything is a dream anyway. When you awake and know what you are creating and that you are creating it that is a different thing. The greatest book is the Bible, but it has been taken from a moral basis and it is all weeping and tears. It seems almost ruthless as given to us in the Gospel, if taken literally. The New Testament interprets the Old Testament, and it has nothing to do with morals. You change your mind and stay in that changed state until it unfolds. Man thinks he has to work himself out of something, but it is God asleep in you as a living soul, and then we are reborn as a life-giving spirit. We do it here in this little classroom called Earth or beyond the grave, for you cannot die. You can be just as asleep beyond the grave. I meet them constantly, and they are just like this. Same loves and same hates. No change. They will go through it until they finally awake, until they cease to re-act and begin to act. Do not take this story lightly which I have told you tonight. Take it to heart. Tonight when you are driving home enact a scene. No matter what it is. Forget good and evil. Enact a scene that implies you have what you desire, and to the degree that you are faithful to that state, it will unfold in your world and no power can stop it, for there is no other power. Nothing is independent of your perception of it, and this goes for that great philosopher among us who is still claiming that everything is independent of the perceiver, but that the perceiver has certain powers. It is not so. Nothing is independent of the perceiver. Everything is ‘burned up’ when I cease to behold it. It may exist for another, but not for me. Let us make our dream a noble one, for the world is infinite response to you, the being you want to be. Now let us go into the silence.

Remember the parable of the workers in the vineyard, how those who came early in the day complained that those who came later got the same wages. What does the master say? "Take what belongs to you, and go; I choose to give to this last as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?" And then Jesus adds, as he does so often, "So the last will be first, and the first last." But one hears the objection, "What's the point of being a Christian if, in the end, everyone is saved?" People who ask that should listen to themselves. What's the point of being first rather than last in serving the Lord whom you love? What's the point of being found rather than lost? What's the point of knowing the truth rather than living in ignorance? What's the point of being welcomed home by the waiting father rather than languishing by the pig sties? What's the point? The question answers itself.

The first edition of the King James Bible to be published by Oxford University Press appeared in 1675; this was followed in 1682 by a sumptuous edition prepared by the Oxford printer John Baskett. The value of the edition was greatly reduced by its many printing errors. For example, it made reference to the “Parable of the Vinegar” instead of the “Parable of the Vineyard”—an error which led it to being nicknamed the “Vinegar Bible.” Its amused critics panned it as “a Bastkett-full of Printer's Errors.

November 22   |   Matthew 21:33–44 In a parable, Jesus tells the story of a landowner who plants a vineyard, leases it to tenants, and then goes to another country. After a time, he sends servants to the vineyard to collect the fruit. Rather than give the master his profit, the tenants beat one servant, stone another, and kill a third. In response, the landowner sends more servants, only to see the same thing happen to them. Finally, thinking surely they will respect his son, the landowner sends his heir to the vineyard. Believing they will be able to keep the vineyard for themselves, the tenants kill the son. At that point, Jesus asks the Pharisees what the landowner will do in this situation. The Pharisees say what we would all say; they suggest doing what we would all want to do: “He will put those wretches to a miserable death” (v. 41 ESV). In other words, he’s going to turn that place into an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie: no survivors. You see, the Pharisees, like us, are tuned in to the law. They’re thinking in terms of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. They can’t see Jesus’s underlying point: they’re the tenants. Jesus quotes them Psalm 118, saying that the stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. The son sent to the vineyard was rejected by the tenants … but that’s not the end of our story. Jesus says that anyone who comes into contact with this stone will be broken. All of our efforts, whether aimed at rebellion or at righteousness, will cease. The chief cornerstone will break us. There’s one important difference between the heir in the parable and Jesus. Jesus didn’t stay dead! And because Jesus was raised to new life and has given that new life to us, we can leave all our striving behind.

In light of his earlier teaching in the temple precincts, especially as seen in the parable of the Vineyard Tenants (see commentary on 12:1–12) and prediction of the temple’s destruction (see commentary on 13:1–2), we should probably assume that Jesus’ reply carries with it an element of threat. When next Caiaphas and his colleagues see Jesus, he will be installed at God’s right hand and will be coming with the clouds of heaven, in judgment upon the temple establishment. The temple “made by human hands” will be destroyed (and this probably means more than only the physical buildings themselves, but refers to the entire establishment) and will be replaced with one of heavenly construction (compare Rev 11:19, which speaks of “God’s sanctuary in heaven”; and Rev 21:22, where God and the Lamb are themselves the temple).

The parables he just taught on this very overlook of Gehenna carried the same message.” He concluded, “As if Jerusalem will be destroyed again.” She said, “I have always assumed his words were about the judgment of the nations.” He protested, “But he seems to be prophesying that our people will reject his kingship, rather than accept it. And they will be judged just like a pagan nation.” “How could that be?” she asked. “He has always said that he has come to minister to Israel.” “Yes. But remember the tenants in the parable? They kept rejecting the landlord’s plea to bring him the fruit of the vineyard. And when the landlord sent his son, they killed him too. They wanted to steal his inheritance.” “So, the son in the story is Jesus, and the tenants are his people, Israel?” Her voice was thoughtful. He nodded. “Do you remember what Jesus said the landlord would do to the tenants?” She nodded. “He would put those miserable wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants.” He said, “And then he told the Pharisees and chief priests and their followers to their faces that the Kingdom of God would be taken away from them and given to a people producing its fruits.” “The only people other than the people of God are the Gentiles. But he said his ministry was to Israel.

Though not central to the story, good lessons in supply and demand, as well as the sanctity of contract, are apparent in Jesus's parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1–16). A landowner offers a wage to attract workers for a day of urgent work picking grapes. Near the end of the day, he realizes he has to quickly hire more and to get them, he offers for an hour of work what he previously had offered to pay the first workers for the whole day. When one of those who worked all day complained, the landowner answered, "I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?

The Parable of the Two Sons 28[†] h “What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in  i the vineyard today.’ 29And he answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he  j changed his mind and went. 30And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. 31Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you,  k the tax collectors and  l the prostitutes go into  m the kingdom of God before you. 32For John came to you  n in the way of righteousness, and  o you did not believe him, but  p the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward  j change your minds and believe him.

Grace is part of the very nature of God, and He cannot change. He is indeed the generous landowner of the parable in Matthew 20:1-16, continually going to the marketplace of life to find those in need of a day's wages so He can bring them into His vineyard and then reward them out of all proportion to their labors.

Matthew 20:1-16 New International Version (NIV) The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard 20 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a denarius[a] for the day and sent them into his vineyard. 3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5 So they went. “He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ 7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’ 8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’ 9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ 13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ 16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.

Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive. So when evening was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house, Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day. But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen...

The parable of the vineyard spoke very deeply to my heart, especially in the context of someone who has just freshly read the Old Testament from the first page to the last page of the Book of Malachi.

26       Yahusha said, “Fortify yourselves with the knowledge of Truth as I have imparted it to you. Rejoice in the knowledge that you stand within its everlasting light.

There were five of these commandments. The First Commandment (Matthew v, 21-6) was that man must not only refrain from killing, he must not become angry with his brother, must not consider anyone to be raca, of no consequence, and if he should quarrel he must first be reconciled before bringing a gift to God, that is before praying. The Second Commandment (Matthew v, 27-32) was that man must not only refrain from adultery, he must avoid lusting after womanly beauty, and one joined to a woman he never be unfaithful to her. The Third Commandment (Matthew v, 33-7) was that man must swear no oaths. The Fourth Commandment (Matthew v, 38-42) was that man must not only refrain from taking an eye for an eye, but must turn the other cheek when smitten on one, must forgive injuries and humbly bear them and never refuse people that which they desire of him. The Fifth Commandment (Matthew v, 43-8) was that man must not only refrain from hating his enemies, and waging war against them, but must love, help and serve them. Nekhlyudov fixed his gaze on the light coming from the burning lamp, and his heart stopped. Recalling all the ugliness of our lives, he started to imagine what this life could be like if only people were educated in the principles, and his soul was filled with the kind of rapture he had not known for a very long time. It was as if he had suddenly found peace and freedom after a long period of anguish and pain. He did not sleep that night, and, as so often happens with many, many people reading the Gospels for the first time, as he read he came to a full understanding of words he had heard read many times before without taking in what they said. All that was revealed to him in that book as vital, important and joyful he drank in like a sponge soaking up water. And all that he read seemed familiar, seemed to confirm and full acknowledge things he had known for a very long time without accepting or believing them. But now he accepted and believed. But more that that: as well as accepting and believing that by obeying these commandments people will attain the highest of all possible blessings, he now accepted and believed that obeying these commandments is all that a person has to do, the only thing makes sense in human life, and that any departure from this is a mistake leading to instant retribution. This emerged from the teaching as a whole but with particular strength and clarity from the parable of the vineyard. The workers in the vineyard had come to imagine that the garden where they had been sent to work for the master was their own property, and that everything in it had been put there for their benefit, and all they had to do was to enjoy life in the garden, forget all about the master and put to death anybody who reminded them of the master and their duty towards him. ‘This is just what we are doing,’ thought Nekhlyudov, ‘living in the absurd conviction that we are masters of our own lives, and that life is given to us purely for our enjoyment. Yet this is patently absurd. Surely, if we have been sent here it must be at someone’s behest and for a purpose. But we have decided that we live only for our gratification, and naturally life turns sour on us, as it turns sour on a worker who fails to follow his master’s will. And the will of the master is expressed in these commandments. People only have to obey these commandments and the kingdom of God will be established on earth, and the people will receive the highest of all possible blessings. ‘See ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and the all the rest shall be added on to you.’ And although we are seeking ‘all the rest’, we obviously cannot find it. ‘So this is what my life is all about. As one part comes to an end, another begins.

Although the stories in Jesus's parables are about people, the real plot is God. They are revelatory, revealing the heart of God. They teach us that the divine mystery cannot be pinned down or figured out by human projections and expectations. It is dangerous to suppose that God must feel and think as we do! The parables try to move us beyond that temptation. They show us a God whose heart is full of surprises and who has perspectives far beyond ours. This is depicted with unequivocal clarity in the parable of the prodigal son - none of Christ's listeners could have anticipated the Father's reaction, in the parable of the vineyard workers - who would have surmised that the last workers would receive the same pay as the first ones?, and in the parable of the good Samaritan - who would have foretold that the priest would pass by and the enemy, the Samaritan, would stop?

And he told this parable:a “A man had a fig tree that was planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it and found none.b 7 He told the vineyard worker, ‘Listen, for three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down!a Why should it even waste the soil? ’b 8 “But he replied to him, ‘Sir,A leave it this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it.a 9 Perhaps it will produce fruit next year, but if not, you can cut it down.

But more than that: as well as accepting and believing that by obeying these commandments people will attain the highest of all possible blessing, he now accepted and believed that obeying these commandments is all that a person has to do, the only thing that makes sense in human life, and that any departure from this is a mistake leading to instant retribution. This emerged from the teaching as a whole but with particular strength and clarity from the parable of the vineyard. The workers in the vineyward had come to imagine that the garden where they had been sent to work for the master was their own property, and that everything in it had been put there for their benefit, and all they had to do was enjoy life in the garden, forget all about the master and put to death anybody who reminded them of the master and their duty towards him. ‘That is just what we are doing,’ thought Nekhlyudov, ‘living in the absurd conviction that we are masters of our own lives, and that life is given to us purely for our enjoyment. Yet this is patently absurd. Surely, if we have been sent here it must be at someone’s behest and for a purpose. But we have decided that we live only for our own gratification, and naturally life turns sour on us, as it turns sour on a worker who fails to follow his master’s will. And the will of the master is expressed in these commandments. People have only to obey these commandments and the kingdom of God will be established on earth, and the people will receive the highest of all possible blessings.’ ‘See ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all the rest shall be added on to you.’ And although we are seeking ‘all the rest’, we obviously cannot find it. ‘So this is what my life is all about. As one part comes to an end, another begins.’ That night marked the beginning of a totally new life for Nekhlyudov, not so much because he had embarked on new personal circumstances, but because everything that happened to him subsequently came with an entirely new and different meaning. How this new period of his life will end only the future will show.

In the story a group of people worked all day and received a fair wage for a day’s work. But another group of people worked only one hour and received the same wage. We deride that as welfare. We’re convinced it’s inequitable. We call it unfair. But Jesus calls it the kingdom of heaven! The kingdom of heaven is not a meritocracy; the kingdom of heaven is an economy of grace. The vineyard owner (who obviously represents God) was more interested in giving people what they needed than giving them what they deserved—and he was willing to do so at his own expense. The only person who suffers loss in this parable is the vineyard owner. In this story no one is cheated. The anger of the group paid last was based not in any injustice they had suffered, but in their own envious resentment.

An abundance of other English versions of the Bible had followed Tyndale’s original, many affectionately identified by their misprints – the Place-maker’s Bible (‘Blessed are the place-makers’), the Wicked Bible, in which the seventh commandment lost its ‘not’ and became ‘Thou shalt commit adultery’, the Murderers’ Bible (a misprint for ‘murmurers’), the Breeches Bible (Adam and Eve made themselves trousers), the Bug Bible (‘thou shalt not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges by night’), the Standing Fishes Bible (instead of ‘fishers’ standing on the river bank), the Vinegar Bible (instead of the ‘Parable of the Vineyard’).

What happens in the Kingdom of God parable I was given is that a landowner goes out and hires laborers in the morning and agrees to pay them the daily wage. But then every few hours he goes and finds more workers and brings them in. In the afternoon he goes again to the marketplace and sees folks standing around and is like, “Why aren’t you working?” and they say, “because no one would hire us,” and he sends them into his vineyard to work the last two hours of the day. When the work is done he pays everyone the same thing, which pisses off the upstanding early risers who worked all day in the scorching heat because he has made the slept-till-noon new hires equal to them. The landowner is like, “Seriously? You’re angry because I am generous?” and then the final line of the parable is, “The last shall be first and the first shall be last.” This is exactly, when it comes down to it, why most people do not believe in grace. It is fucking offensive.

Each time I read that parable in which the landowner gives as much to the workers who worked only one hour as to those who did “a heavy day’s work in all the heat,” a feeling of irritation still wells up inside of me. Why didn’t the landowner pay those who worked many long hours first and then surprise the latecomers with his generosity? Why, instead, does he pay the workers of the eleventh hour first, raising false expectations in the others and creating unnecessary bitterness and jealousy? These questions, I now realize, come from a perspective that is all too willing to impose the economy of the temporal on the unique order of the divine. It hadn’t previously occurred to me that the landowner might have wanted the workers of the early hours to rejoice in his generosity to the latecomers. It never crossed my mind that he might have acted on the supposition that those who had worked in the vineyard the whole day would be deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to do work for their boss, and even more grateful to see what a generous man he is. It requires an interior about-face to accept such a non-comparing way of thinking.

It is "the times of the Gentiles" (kairoiV ejqnw'n). The expression means, the time when the Gentiles should have their opportunity of enjoying divine grace, corresponding to the time of gracious visitation enjoyed by the Jews referred to by Jesus in His lament over Jerusalem. There is no reason to suppose Luke coined these phrases; they bear the stamp of genuineness upon them. But if we assume, as we are entitled to do, that not Luke the Pauline universalist, but Jesus Himself, spoke of a time of merciful visitation of the Gentiles, then it follows that in His eschatological discourse He gave clear intimation of a lengthened period during which His gospel was to be preached in the world; even as He did on other occasions, as in the parable of the wicked husbandman, in which He declared that the vineyard should be taken from its present occupants, and given to others who would bring forth fruit.

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