What is obedience? that seems to be at the heart of yet another parable with a vineyard setting. As straightforward as it seems to be at face value the more you peel back it the more enigmatic it becomes. Below is my translation from the Greek New Testament. I have included textual notes beneath each verse.

After that I provide some comments. It is not a long passage, although I could have included the squabble that came before it to elongate it, but the parable is my focus right now.

 

Translation of Matthew 21:28-32 With Notes

28. What do you think about this? A man had two children. He came to the oldest and said, ‘Child, go work in the vineyard today.’

Traditionally this is called The Parable of the Two Sons but Jesus doesn’t use the word for son. He uses the word for child. We can deduce the gender by the use of other words in the text as male, but it is quite interesting Jesus does not use the word son but child. Combine this with the way he uses both male and female ‘offenders’ such as tax collectors and prostitutes and we learn we should not make this parable gender specific in its application or telling. 

Also, ‘older’ is actually ‘first’ in the text. So, it could read, ‘He came to the first and said…’

29. But he told him, ‘I don’t want to.’ However, later on he had a change of heart and went out to work the vineyard. 

Rather noticeably the word for ‘change of heart’ is not the same as the usual word for repent, metanoia. The word here, metamelomai, could be remorse or regret. The older child regretted what he had said to his father and this led him to go to work, therefore I have decided ‘change of heart’ is a better rendering for the story. 

Here, as in the next verse, the sentence ends with ‘went out’ but I have added ‘to work the vineyard’ for clarity although that phrase does not appear in the text.

30. Then he came to the youngest and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I am on it, Boss!’ but he did not go work in the vineyard. 

The word I have translated as ‘boss’ is ‘kurios’ which is usually translated as ‘Lord’, especially when it is directed toward the Father or the Son. Yet, in the language of the day, it didn’t always mean divinity. It actually meant master or patron. I decided to play with it, thinking the younger is issuing a little flattery in his speech. The curios thing is that he does not call him father, and the father does not call him by name. 

What I have translated as ‘youngest’ is literally in the text ‘other’, so ‘he came to the other son and …’

31. Which of these two did the will of their father? ‘The first,’ they said. He said to them, ‘Truly I say to you tax collectors and prostitutes will go into the kingdom of God ahead of you.

            The verb ‘will go’ helps us understand the vineyard is the kingdom of God. 

32. For John came to show you the way of righteousness but you did not believe him. Tax collector sand prostitutes did believe him. Yet you have seen but have not changed your heart so as to believe. 

‘The way of righteousness’ to my mind is a reference to Isaiah 35, which seems to have been understood as a describer of The Baptist’s ministry. 

We again see the change of heart verb. Now it applies to groups of people in the real world, not in a parable. The Pharisees who were challenging Jesus did not have a change of heart when John preached at them and therefore they did not ‘go out to the vineyard’. The tax collector and prostitutes did.  

Comments and Random thoughts

The verb ‘change of heart’ is found in two other places in the New Testament. In 2 Corinthians 7:8 and Hebrews 7:21 it is used to describe a regret about the past that you wish could be undone. The older son feels that regret. He wishes he hadn’t talked to his father that way. If he could go back and undo it he would, but he can’t, so he simply changes his life and does what the father asked of him. 

The verb is also used in Matthew 27:3 to describe the way Judas felt after he had betrayed Jesus. He has a change of heart and tries to give back the silver. This of course is impossible. The inability to act on his change of heart led him to the place of such guilt and shame that he took his own life, which is the opposite of going out into the vineyard. Judas ‘doubled-down’ on his regret and died in his sin. 

 I want to crawl into the mind of these children. First let’s think about the younger child. When he (and remember, it could easily be ‘she’ as well) told his father he would go out, did he mean it at the time or was it always a lie? Did he do what so many people do today and pay lip service to the father but never intend to obey? Or, as is more likely in my mind, did he actually intend to do what he said, but as time got away from him and his mind was preoccupied with other things, he just never got to it that day. The sin was not of intent but of follow-through, of commitment.

He became interested, perhaps, in other vineyards. Maybe there was a pretty girl or a handsome man in the vineyard next door.

He might have been busy with an online game with his buddies and just couldn’t pull himself away because deep down he would rather his friends think more highly of him than his father think highly of him. 

The ball game was on at the same time the work was happening in the vineyard.

We could speculate all day long about this because we have all been guilty of being preoccupied right out of the kingdom’s work at one time or another. And as such, regardless of what our intentions are, we are disobedient. 

The older son, though, said no at the start. This was a hard no, because in order to reverse his course he needed a heart change. He firmly and definitely never intended to go out into that vineyard when he told his father no. He had other plans for his life. He wanted to study engineering or accounting. He wanted to learn Latin and move to Rome. He hoped to make a lot of money in the up and coming AI boom. So he told the father in no uncertain terms, ‘No!’ It might have been that he had already worked all week in that vineyard without any break. It might be anger at the father for being such a slave driver. Maybe he was sore from the previous day’s labor, or was injured, or needed to take care of some person issues because he’d been working so hard he’d let things go. We can speculate all over the place as to whether he was justified or not in his refusal to work. Saying no is not always a sin.

But then he did change his heart. He accepted the call. Eventually, his love for the father outweighed whatever other plans he had.

Now I am thinking about my own life. 

What things have I told the father, ‘No’ and now I need to search my heart and change it? Where am I being disobedient to his call upon my life? Now I realize I am both the older child and the younger child all at the same time. 

More random thoughts in no particular order:

1. It is a parable that is an allegory. The father is God, the vineyard is the kingdom of God, and Jesus assigns identity parallels to both children.
2. We should remember the other story with two children, which is in Luke 15 about the prodigal child who comes home.
3. Jesus doesn’t say the younger son doesn’t get to go in, ergo the religious leaders are exempt from the Kingdom, but he does say they loose their priority entrance and preferred seating. Also, space may run out. Consider those who show up late in the parable of the virgins in Matthew 25.
4. The ministry The Baptist is elevated by our Lord here in that believing in it is what gets the tax collectors and prostitutes entry into the kingdom.
5. Tax collectors and prostitutes are the lowest run of society and are outcast. We should not get bogged down by identifying these historically but rather think of their analogous components today.
6. Belief and change in heart, trust and transformation, are the requirements for entry into the kingdom, not social standing or religious achievement. Without transformation faith is only a nice idea, and without faith transformation is impossible.
7. As Jesus unwinds this story, I can’t help but wonder how old these children were in his mind?
8. This parable should never be used as a text for raising children or in how to approach disobedience in our children. Jesus is not giving us a parenting lesson, he is giving us a lesson using every day experiences of parenthood about the kingdom of God.
9. There are textual variants to this parable. In one, it is the younger child who obeys rather than the older, in another the group affirms the one who said yes but didn’t go is actually the one who did the will of the father, which is nonsensical.