The Tenants

Oct 1

3 min read

Show a flourishing vineyard carefully enclosed and tended, with abundant grapes, a watchtower, and a sturdy boundary wall. In the foreground, a tenant holds a broken mirror. In the reflection, the tenant’s own hands are shown damaging vines and tearing out fruit, symbolizing greed, violence, and the judgment we cast upon ourselves.

A second visual path leads away from destruction toward people caring for the vineyard together, emphasizing that the world is entrusted to us and that we still have time to choose love. — Created using Canva

33 "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. 34 When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. 35 But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36 Again he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. 37 Then he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.' 38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.' 39 So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40 Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" (Matthew 21:33-40)

In Matthew 21:33-40, Jesus offered another parable to the chief priests and elders who had questioned his authority. This time, as Jesus continued discussing workers in a vineyard, his listeners would have recalled the teachings of the prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah's telling, God had taken every measure to prepare and cultivate a healthy, productive, vineyard, but the yield was rotten. Jesus began with the same imagery of a vineyard that was carefully planted and protected by its owner. However, the tenants, who had been charged with maintaining the vineyard and bringing it to a successful harvest, chose greed and violence instead. Tellingly, when Jesus asked his listeners what should be done to those had tried to forcibly take the vineyard for themselves, their response was equally violent. As these leaders realized that Jesus was talking about them, they understood that they had

just pronounced judgement on themselves.

While this parable is sometimes, unfortunately, interpreted as a critic against Judaism, Jesus was actually calling all of us to account. God invites all of humanity to a way of life that centers love for God and neighbor, yet we repeatedly choose selfishness to the point of harm for our brothers and sisters. We engage in the same backward thinking as the tenants in Jesus' story - believing that if we destroy someone else, there will be more for us. This is as true at a national level as it is at a personal level. When we seek lack, devastation, or destruction for another, we are casting that judgment on ourselves. We are our brother's keeper, and we will reap what we sow. This world, and everyone in it, is God's vineyard and we are the tenants. We still have time to choose the way of Love.

May God's kingdom come, and God's will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

1 I will sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. 2 He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded rotten grapes. 3 And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. 4 What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield rotten grapes? (Isaiah 5:1-4)

Enjoy this original song by yours truly.