Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-june-17-2025
Luke 20:9-19
The Parable of the Tenants
9 He went on to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. 10 At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 11 He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. 12 He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.
13 “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.’
14 “But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 15 So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
“What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? 16 He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.”
When the people heard this, they said, “May this never be!”
17 Jesus looked directly at them and asked, “Then what is the meaning of that which is written:
“‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone’?
18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”
19 The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid of the people.
A few days ago, our Reflection was based on Luke’s account of Jesus’ triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem – the ‘Palm Sunday’ story. And you might remember that on the same day, we thought about the way Jesus went to the temple after his entry and chased out the money changers and the merchants who were selling sacrificial animals. You might also remember that we said many scholars believe the reason Jesus was so angry is that these merchants were taking advantage of the monopoly the temple leadership had given them to jack up the prices and gouge people coming to worship.
Of course, the way Jesus chased away those merchants represented a threat to the religious leadership, who derived a good deal of income from the corrupt merchants. Luke tells us that after this “cleansing of the temple,” the religious leadership reacted in a predictable way — they confronted Jesus and demanded that he tell them by what authority he was doing these things.
But rather than answering the religious leaders’ question about his authority, Jesus responded as he did on other occasions, and posed a question of his own. He asked the religious leaders by what authority John the Baptist had performed his ministry – was it by God’s authority or by human authority? But as you might remember, the religious leaders refused to give an answer. We get to listen in on their deliberations, so we know that they were afraid of the PR fallout from either answer they might give. So because they refused to answer Jesus’ question, he refused to answer theirs, either.
In our passage for today, Jesus tells a parable that’s a sort of follow-up to the discussion about his authority. In the parable, a bunch of tenants refuse to hand over the fruit they owe to the owner of a vineyard. And not only do they refuse to pay, but also they beat the landlord’s representatives and eventually murder his son.
At the end of the passage, Luke tells us that the religious leaders wanted to arrest Jesus immediately. He’s already told us that these leaders wanted to get rid of Jesus, but that the public thought so well of him and his teaching that they were afraid to take action against him. And now, we’re told, the leaders understood that this parable Jesus had told was directed at them – apparently they knew the criminal tenants were meant to represent them.
It seems to me that many of the people who heard Jesus tell this story would have realized the same thing. The people of Israel used the metaphor of “God’s vineyard” to refer to their nation. So lots of the people who heard Jesus tell the parable would have realized that he was talking about the leaders when he told the story of the evil tenants. There’s a good chance that they might also have understood that the first servants the landlord sent represented the prophets — people God had sent to call the chosen people to greater faithfulness.
Of course, the people listening to Jesus would not have made the connection between him and the landlord’s son, the way we do. We have the benefit of knowing how the story ends, but they didn’t. We probably need to keep reminding ourselves that at the time, there was no expectation among the Hebrew people that the Messiah would die for the sins of the world. So that aspect of this parable is something that would only have become clear to the followers of Jesus when they heard this story after his crucifixion.
But one thing that might have been pretty obvious to the people around Jesus was that tensions were rising between him and the Jewish religious leadership.
But what’s the ‘So what’ for us? What does this parable have to say to people like us who are trying to follow Jesus twenty centuries later? It seems to me there are two important lessons for us in it:
First of all, this story points to a basic aspect of our human nature, and that’s our tendency toward a sense of entitlement – a focus on what we think we have coming to us, rather than on the responsibilities that go with it. The temple leadership, like the tenants in the story, were more concerned about what they could get out of their religious authority than they were about delivering what God expected.
For us as followers of Jesus, it seems to me that plays out in our tendency of claim him as our Savior, even when we’re not that committed to obeying him as our Lord. We want to be saved, to go to heaven when we die, but we’re less concerned about living out his commandments to love and serve others, to make peace and to witness to the good news of what God has done in Jesus.
The second matter this parable raises for us, it seems to me, is what it means to be fruitful people of faith.
From the beginning of his relationship with the covenant people, it was always God’s intention that they be “a blessing to all the families of the earth.” In other words, being the chosen people wasn’t supposed to be just a special favor to them – it was supposed to be a calling to create a new and more just society, and to carry God’s word to the whole world. And the same was true of those chosen for religious leadership among them. Leadership wasn’t meant to be about percs they got. It was supposed to be about a calling to lead the people in carrying out their special role in history.
So what kind of fruit is God looking for from us?
I’d say there are three kinds of fruit God wants from the followers of his Son. First of all, lives that are being transformed as we go deeper and deeper in our discipleship and show the image of Jesus more clearly in the world. Second, service to others, and especially to the suffering and the marginalized in Jesus’ name. And third, telling others around us that God loves them, and that his love for them has been expressed most clearly in Jesus. Making disciples as Jesus commanded.
This passage was originally directed at the Jewish religious leaders, but with the coming of Jesus, the role of the Jewish priesthood was handed over to his followers. Being fruitful is no longer the responsibility of a class of ‘professionals’ – it’s now a calling of everyone who considers himself or herself a follower of Jesus.
So this passage is an invitation to ask ourselves a very important question: How fruitful are we being for God?
Let’s pray. Lord, we pray that you will protect us against having a sense of entitlement about our relationship with you, and help us to understand that our new life in Jesus is something we could never claim to be entitled to. In thanks for your gracious love in Jesus, help us to strive every day to be fruitful in our lives of discipleship. Amen.
Blessings
Henry
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