This is an interesting perspective, Donald. I do think it helps to look at the parables from all sorts of angles--but I think to categorically reject certain meanings based on an a priori that rests on historical Jesus research--rather than on the Gospel texts themselves--is awfully limiting.

Yes, Jesus challenges all kinds of structures and hierarchies. But doesn't he sometimes do that by portraying authority figures who model God's ways? The landowner with the egalitarian pay structure, for instance, has been read for centuries as an icon of the profligate grace of God. Furthermore, this and other parables about vineyards, owners, and those who tend them have deep biblical roots in texts like Ps 80, Exod 15, and especially the prophetic critique of Isa 5--where God's wrath at the unfaithful tenants is due expressly to their failures of justice (see Isa 5:7 in particular...). To cast these meanings away is to isolate the parable from its proper setting and to discard, with a stroke, a vision of God's grace that has nourished and nurtured the faithful for centuries...

Donald,
Thank you for this piece! As a reader or listener, I (or anyone else) can participate in the parable from my experience. From a pedagogy of the oppressed, the vineyard owner of the parable is a member of the oppressing elite who can be criticized for his unfair treatment of workers. The wicked tenants (in the parable of the same name) from the same perspective are not wicked. They have lost their land through something like the right of eminent domain and through their actions, including the killing of the owner's son, they try to restore honor and reclaim their place as heirs. William Herzog in 1994 proposed that this parable was about the futility of violence and ways the poor might be drawn into a hopeless spiral of violence from which they would be unlikely to emerge. "Oppression serves the interests of the ruling class" argued Herzog using writings of Paulo Friere. The parable invites listeners to consider how humans can respond to violence and break the cycle of poverty created by exploitation and oppression.

For more on reader-orientated interpretations of the parables, Alison Jack has a great article in the recent Expository Times (Vol.120, 1, pp.8-15) called "'For those Outside, Everything Comes in Parables': Recent Readings of the Parables from the Inside."

Derek and Deirdre,

I love this! It is exciting when scripture pushes us to a kind of arguing that seems rabbinic - a struggle with big picture interpretation and verse by verse and line by line as well.

Derek, I do love the lesson so many Christian teachers have drawn from the landlord with the 'egalitarian pay structure.' Something in his arbitrariness hints at grace. For once all the day laborers get enough to feed their families. But is he 'generous?' I once knew a CEO who liked giving completely unexpected bonuses to his senior execs because it kept them 'on their toes' and divided. Their relationship to him could prove very rewarding as he'd set it up. He (like the landlord) was playing with fire - envy.

This past Sunday, preaching on the other landlord, the one who gets his son killed, I began my sermon by telling the congregation I'd felt all of us squirming during the Gospel reading and wondered what in the parable made us so uncomfortable. The congregation seemed hugely relieved that I'd named their response. (I should add that I was a visiting preacher, so not counting on people knowing me and not having them primed to talk about their struggles with scripture). I got people call out what had made them so uncomfortable and I heard things like,
"I don't think God's our landlord,"
"Why does he just keeping sending people to collect the rent after the tenants have killed some servants?"
"What made them think they would get title to the land from killing the heir," and
"Doesn't the landlord get what's going on? Sending his son seems foolish."

That the land law of the time did give title to tenants when the owner died without an heir helped the parable make narrative sense, but heightened their anxiety ("Why would Jesus tell such a terrible story?")

Focusing with Deirdre on Jesus' listeners, all these responses make very good sense. The parable is startling and provocative. It doesn't explain, it troubles and raises more questions than we had to begin with. All this feels to me like the mark of a genuinely great teacher. His story won't let us rest.

Does Christian tradition bring other wisdom and good theology into play to tame this dangerous story? I think it does. And even if it's good theology (God is vastly generous with us. God was willing to give his Son up for our us) when it doesn't fit the parable or makes it more obscure or raises other odd questions, I'm certainly willing to ask whether Jesus meant something quite different in telling the story.

Donald, I think in speaking about the "generosity" of the vineyard owner of Matthew 20 it's important to note that the Scripture doesn't call him "generous". That's a liberty taken by our translators; rather the word is "good" (ego agathos eimi)...

I don't think a traditional meaning "doesn't fit" the meaning of the text at all. Actually, I think it works better when we consider not only the content of the parable but its literary context as well.

If we look just before this parable we see the account of the young wealthy man who asks what "good thing" (ti agathon) he must do to be saved to whom Jesus responds that "there is one who is good" (ho agathos) (Matt 19:16-22).

Then Jesus speaks of the difficulties of the wealthy who wish to enter the kingdom ["easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God..."] (Matt 19:23-30).

Then we get this parable about the householder who hires laborers (Matt 20:1-16) which ends with the householder saying, "Why do you cast the evil eye [on me] because I am good?"

How do we interpret the householder given the rest of the discussion around wealth and the good? Is he a negative example that confirms the difficulty of the rich to do good or a positive exemplum of one who uses wealth as a manifestation of the nature of the kingdom?

If he is a sign of evil what, then, is the sign of the kingdom thus displayed?

I agree that we must always be on our guard against the domestication of the sharp edge of the Gospel. I just disagree that this reading strips the story of a Gospel challenge.

Excellent! Credit should be given to William Herzog's book Parables as Subversive Speech.

How ironic that readers who are not religious may have an easier time reading the parables than those contaminated with theology! Reminds me of the distinction in postmodern theory between interpretation, which cleans things up, and reading, which, as Avital Ronell says, "stays with the mess."

Gary Paul Gilbert

http://www.amazon.com/Parables-Subversive-Speech-Pedagogue-Oppressed/dp/0664253555

or

http://tinyurl.com/486scb

Google Books gives a preview of many passages to give readers a sense if they like his book.

http://books.google.com/books?id=sG6Bjr7guSAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=william+herzog&sig=ACfU3U2wwLo0nZ5yGtLBn3U7tH7fpVTPBw

or

http://tinyurl.com/3quesx

Author: Herzog, William R.
Title: Parables as subversive speech : Jesus as pedagogue of the oppressed / William R. Herzog.
Edition: 1st ed.
Physical Description: xi, 299 p. ; 23 cm.
Publisher/ Date: Louisville, KY : Westminster/J. Knox Press, c1994.

Donald - As you noted in your reply, "It is exciting when scripture pushes us to a kind of arguing that seems rabbinic".

When I first read your post my guts knotted up a little. Your reading of the text comes at such a different angle to what is traditional that I felt as if the floor had dropped out on an exciting carnival ride. THAT'S what I like about this sort of Rabbinic Conversation! It's like a roller coaster with the Holy Ghost at the switch as long as we trust each other.

Derek, your description of the text works well with my ex-Orthodox comfort level - which is therefore suspect. Thanks for that tracing of "good" through those passages. But does that literary context say anything about what *Jesus* intended by this story? Or does it tell us more about what the Matthewite community wanted to focus on in the hearing of this passage? Mind you - I don't think it's possible to make that choice in a satisfactory way; and I think such a realisation opens the doors to the possibility that there are many other ways of reading this text.

And this is even more true if the traditional reading is based, in circular fashion, on a context that simply expects the traditional reading.

It's the use of Allegory that is the problem here: was Jesus intending Allegory? Did the Early Disciples hear Allegory? We may never know in this world, but certainly the Church Fathers saw nearly *all* the scriptures as conveying Allegory. Should we do likewise? Even if we follow in their footsteps, does that mean that only one allegory drawn from the text is right? If we decide to use their method do we need to duplicate their results?

One traditional allegory on the "Walking on Water" has Peter getting out of the boat showing us what happens when we dare leave the Church. It goes on to say that Peter was at fault for daring to leave the boat at all! After the Great Schism this reading becomes laden with political overtones. It's no wonder we never hear it in the west outside of the Orthodox Church. I head it every year when that Gospel came up. And when Peter cries, "Save me" Jesus puts him in the boat (ie, back in the Orthodox Church). It has nothing to do with Peter "loosing faith" when he tried to Walk on the Water. Attempting to walk away from the boat and the other disciples was, in this reading, the sin.

Which reading is right? Does one need to be right and the other wrong? Do we need to pick one over the other other than as needed for a sermon in a given situation? Which one is intended by the Gospel writer? Which one would have been heard by his first community? Or would they have heard just a cool story? Do we need to know those answers beyond prying new, interesting readings out of the text?

Hey Huw,

Yes, a both/and reading is typically preferable over an either/or. I do think, however, that certain readings are to be preferred based on the principle of edification. I need to be challenged by readings like the ones Donald and Deirdre offer. At the same time, others need to be challenged again by the meanings that endure in the traditional readings. I do not accuse Donald or Deirdre of this at all, but there are some who believe that the Bible was entirely misunderstood until the 1960's and I think that's a mistake.

As for the parable and its setting, What you and Donald are doing is stripping away one setting and replacing it with another one. The one that you are discarding comes from the same general time-period and culture as Jesus himself, written by a people far more familiar with their cultural and interpretive practices than we are. The setting that you are replacing it with is a 21st century recreation that some scholars think might be possibly what Jesus was like. Or not. Personally, I'd rather work with the setting that we actually have and, since Matthew is the only gospel who preserves this parable, it's the only one we have to go on.

Derek - " I'd rather work with the setting that we actually have"

If by that you mean *only* the literary setting, then ok. As I said I thank you for drawing out the line on "agatho" through the preceding several scenes. It was something I wouldn't have noticed without your sharing.

But, again: that only tells us about the text. Not about the community or the intent of the writer(s). It tells us nothing about Jesus. We don't even know if the community would have heard those several passages read together. Even our assumptions about who that community was are mere guesses.

Any attemt at a cultural reading or a setting (New or Old) is a reading-into the text of material that isn't necessarily there. Our choice, as you've noted, is to find out if it is a reading towards the edification of the people - and ultimately to their deification in Christ.

But, again: that only tells us about the text. Not about the community or the intent of the writer(s).

True. And the text is what we confess as part of the mystery that is the Word of God--not the community nor the intention of the writer(s).

It tells us nothing about Jesus.

Au contraire, my friend... It tells us how Matthew and possibly other pre-Matthean sources communicated who Jesus was. It may not give us historical "facts" about Jesus but it does tells us how the author and the transmitting community understood the ethos, aims, and point of Jesus. That's pretty important in my book.

Hi Huw,
I'd like to keep this conversation going and add some more voices to it so I've posted on it over at my blog.

Loved your article, and especially Deirdre's response. It reminded me of something I'd read somewhere, so I went to the shelves to hunt. Here's what I found: The dialogue in/with the parables is crucial in helping us to step outside ourselves and look at our own preconceptions/worldviews from another angle. The idea that we are either being educated for freedom or domestication can't be underestimated. Have you read The Dharma of Jesus by George Soares-Prabhu, or any of Raimundo Panikkar's work?
In The Dharma of Jesus, Soares-Prabhu describes the awareness to which the parables provoke the listener as "a critical awareness" (sound familiar?). He writes that the "non-elitist, transforming, prophetic dialogical, and critical pedagogy of Jesus is highly liberative by "making them conscious of their worth as children of the one Father in heaven (Mt. 6:9), whose value derived not from personal ability or social status but from the inalienable reality of the Father's love (Mt. 6:26; 18:10-14). And as prophetic and critical teaching it freed them from the manipulative myths which legitimized their opppressive and alienating society. Any pedagogy that claims to be Christian, must be liberative in this double sense."
John Dominic Crossan writes about this also, when he speaks of the parables as NOT historical allegories about how God behaves with mankind. "They are
stories which shatter the deep structure of our accepted world and thereby render clear and evident to us the relativity of the story itself. They remove our defenses and make us vulnerable to God. It is only in such experiences that God can teach us, and only in such moments does the Kingdom of God arrive." (from John Dominic Crossan, The Dark Interval, 1975).
Submitted for what it's worth. Enjoy the day.

Ana Hernadez