Peculiar Tenants

Matthew 21:33-45

The tenants that Jesus describes in his Parable of the Tenants, could have won the "landlord's worst nightmare" award. You see they didn't pay rent. If that wasn't bad enough, they had this nasty habit of killing the people who came to collect rent. After several instances of the landlord's servants getting killed, he sent his son thinking that at least they would respect him, but they didn't. They killed him too.

What would make tenants behave this way? They could have just been mean, greedy, and selfish. Or maybe they got comfortable and mistook leasing the vineyard for owning it. Ultimately, they forgot who they were and they forgot who the landlord was.

The meaning of the parable could be easily deduced by its listeners. Scripture they were already familiar with (Isaiah 5) described Israel as the Lord's vineyard, and the history of the prophets fit well into the storyline (prophet after prophet had been killed). Also, Jesus wrapped up the parable by saying, "I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit" (Matthew 21:42).  The message could not be more clear--they were the bad tenants. Tragically, the listeners did not take the story to heart. In fact, with no sense of irony they went from listening to the story to discussing how they could arrest Jesus.

Jesus would later say of them, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing" (Matthew 23:37).