In this parable, just as in the
parable of the prodigal son, Jesus dresses up some hard teachings in a story
about a father and two sons. In this case, we have a father of some means, who
owns a vineyard. He goes to both sons, at different times, and says, “Son, go
and work in the vineyard today.” One says, rather insolently, it seems, “No,”
but then ends up going, anyway. The other says something like, “Right away,
sir!” but doesn’t go.
Jesus then asks the deceptively
simple question, which of the two actually did the will of the father? There is
more to the answer than his interlocutors might want to know — more, for that
matter, than we might want to know.
The story, in context, is a kind of
an answer to people in the immediately preceding scene who are questioning
Jesus’ authority. Jesus has just “cleansed the temple,” driving out various
money-changers and businessmen, people selling items for sacrifice and people
exchanging the coin of the realm for the currency used in the temple. It should
be pointed out that, under the operant rules of the temple, these merchants
have a perfect right to be there, doing what they’re doing. They are regulated,
so that they do not overcharge or take advantage. Yet, Jesus has driven them
out, exclaiming, in a paraphrase of the prophets Isaiah and Zechariah, “‘My
house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a den of
robbers.”1
When he returns the next day, the
chief priest
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