“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went away. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. Then he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:
‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?
“Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet. (Matthew 21:33-46, NRSVue)
The title of the devotional today is the title of this parable in most Bibles. I sometimes wonder where they get these titles or who makes them up, but today’s seems to fit.
The tenants are evil. The NRSVue has wicked tenants which is as good. It seems these people renting the land do understand the contractual obligations they have made and seem to think they can take all the land and its produce without supplying the owner anything in return. But as I read this I wonder where the good news is.
This is a gospel lesson I would read in a congregation and sarcastically say, the word of the Lord. Because the gospel is supposed to be good news, and all I read here is death. The tenants kill all the people the landowner sends, including the son, and the landowner kills the tenants.
And then Jesus says the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to others. Death and removal.
The good news is implied in the story that is to come when Jesus is killed and returns to give us new life and help us to produce good fruit.
The good news is that death is not the end.
We have life in Jesus, who was rejected, but still lives to give us hope.
