A landowner plants a vineyard, fences it, digs a winepress, builds a tower, leases it to tenants, and goes away. The image comes from Isaiah, where Israel is the vineyard and God the one who planted it and looked for fruit (Isaiah 5:1-7). When the season for fruit comes, the owner sends servants to collect, and the tenants 35"took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another." He sends more servants, and they are treated the same way. Then he does what no cautious landlord would do and sends his own son, thinking 37"They will respect my son." The patience in the story looks reckless. It is the patience of God with people who have already shown how they receive his messengers.
The tenants reason 38"This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance." They are right that a dead heir leaves a vacancy, and wrong that the vacancy becomes theirs. Matthew records a small detail: they 39"threw him out of the vineyard and killed him." Jesus himself would be crucified outside the city (Hebrews 13:12). He tells this story to the men who are about to do it. They have just asked him by what authority he acts (Matthew 21:23), and the story answers them: the last one sent is the owner's own son.
Jesus asks his listeners to pronounce the sentence, and the leaders say the owner will 41"let out the vineyard to other tenants." They convict themselves without noticing, the way David pronounced judgment on himself when Nathan told him a story (2 Samuel 12:5-7).
Then Jesus answers from Psalm 118, the psalm the crowds were quoting when he entered the city (Matthew 21:9; Psalm 118:26). The parable ends in murder, and the psalm supplies the ending the parable leaves out. The stone the builders threw away becomes the cornerstone, by the Lord's own doing. The builders in the psalm are Israel's leaders, and the stone is the one they are about to reject. Rejection is real, and it is never the last word.
The warning follows: 43"the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits." The vineyard was planted to bear fruit. Tenants who kill every messenger sent to collect it will lose the lease, whoever they are. The warning lands on the chief priests, and it lands on any of us who take a position, a history, or a heritage as a guarantee. Privilege never produces the fruit, and the owner asks for fruit.
The chief priests and the Pharisees 45"perceived that he was speaking about them." They understood him exactly, and understanding changed nothing. They wanted to arrest him and held back because 46"they feared the crowds." A room full of religious experts managed to recognize the truth of a story without being changed by it.
Recognizing the truth of a parable costs nothing. Letting it correct you costs more. Ask what fruit the owner is looking for in your life this year, and answer him with something you can name.
Prayer
Father, we have heard this parable and could easily recognize its truth without letting it touch anything in us. Where we have assumed our standing with you was secure whatever fruit we bear, correct us now, before understanding hardens into resistance. Thank you that the stone this world rejected has become, by your doing, the foundation everything rests on. In Jesus' name, amen.