It's Passover in Jerusalem, and the city is bursting with pilgrims. It's a tense time for those charged with keeping order - like Pilate the Roman Prefect, and Caiaphas the High Priest. The arrival of a preacher from Galilee called Jesus causes great excitement when He enters through the East Gate on a donkey's colt, fulfilling prophecies of the coming of the Messiah. For Jesus's band of disciples, hardened by several years on the road, this is the moment they've been waiting for, but none of them suspects just how momentous this week will be.
Over the next few days, you and I are invited to enter into the story of those final days of Jesus's earthly life, events that marked the culmination of His mission. It is a story which is also being retold in The Passion, a new four part television drama on BBC1, which begins at 8 o'clock this evening. Don't worry, as I also hope to watch it, you'll be back in good time!
Today, on Palm Sunday, we recall how Holy Week begins.
The entry of Jesus into Jerusalem to the acclamation of His followers, and the carnival atmosphere of the crowds. Imagine, then, that you and I are now in the Temple in Jerusalem. We have gathered to listen to Jesus, who is teaching those who have come to listen to Him. Here, in the place where He had been brought so many years ago as an infant, and blessed by old Simeon … here, where as a boy of twelve He had sat among the teachers listening to them, and asking searching questions. Now Jesus is teaching, and He starts to tell us a story.
"There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them in the same way" (Matthew 21 : 33-36).
As we listen, the story rings true to our experience of life.
We know of several absentee landowners, who let their lands out in this way. We know how much they are resented and how, as money is generally tight and nationalistic feelings running high, the tenants might well refuse to pay the landowner his share of the produce. But the story also rings other bells.
We recall how the picture of a vineyard was used centuries ago by the prophet Isaiah to describe God's relationship with His people in these words: "My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest of vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit .. The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel" (Isaiah 5 : 1,2,7).
Those words remind us of our calling as God's people - to bear good fruit, and so give God His due. They also remind us that we are part of a people who have often failed to live up to that calling: we have often wounded or rejected God's love, and so produced bad fruit. And we know very well who the maltreated servants are in Jesus's story. Time and again, God sent prophets to call His people back to Him, but they were often rejected.
We listen again, as Jesus concludes His story: "Last of all, he sent his son to them. 'They will respect my son,' he said. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, 'This is the heir. Come, let's kill him and take his inheritance.' So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" And we find ourselves replying to Jesus: "He will bring those wretches to a wretched end, and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time."
Then Jesus speaks to us again. He interprets His own story, quoting from two biblical passages, Psalm 118 and Daniel 2. We know these passages and recall Daniel's interpretation of king Nebuchadnezzar's dream about a large statue, and a rock which struck it and became a huge mountain. It was to do with the kingdoms of the world, and the kingdom of God. The rock or Stone was God's Messiah, the Anointed One we longed for who would finally set up the kingdom of God by destroying the world's kingdoms, and starting something quite new.
So what was Jesus saying? Was He saying that the Stone in the dream and the Son in the story were in fact one and the same? That, just as the stone the builders rejected was vindicated by becoming the cornerstone, so the son who was killed in the story was then vindicated by his father, who destroyed the tenants and gave the farmyard to someone else.
If the vineyard owner is God, and His servants are the prophets, then who are the farmers, and who is the son that they will throw out of the vineyard and kill? As we ponder these things, we hear around us some angry murmuring. The religious officials are convinced that Jesus is getting at them - that they are the ones being cast as the tenants in the vineyard. But the story also makes you and me wonder about its message for us. If we, as God's people, are His vineyard, then what fruit do we bear for Him? And then there is Jesus. Where does He fit into the story of God and His people?
Such questions would doubtless have been raised on that first Palm Sunday. And they continue to be valid questions, for all who look and long for the coming kingdom of God. So this Holy Week, may you and I be open to seek and discover new insights, as we - like those first followers - journey with Jesus. In words from the Introduction to the Liturgy of Palm Sunday, "Let us go with him in faith and love, so that, united with him in his sufferings, we may share his risen life."
John Barr
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