I think we’ve all been tenants at some point in our lives. And if you have ever rented an apartment or a house, you know the responsibilities that come with it.
First, you must pay the rent. If you stop paying for long enough, the landlord will eventually remind you that your spiritual gift of “free housing” was never part of the lease.
And we also know that when we are tenants, we are not the owners. We cannot simply knock down a wall, build another bedroom, or put a swimming pool in the backyard without asking permission.
That simple distinction between tenant and owner helps us understand today’s Gospel.
A landowner plants a vineyard and leases it to tenants. When harvest time comes, he sends his servants to collect what is due. But the tenants beat one servant, kill another, and stone another.
Finally, the landowner says, “I will send my son. Surely, they will respect my son.”
But they do not. They throw the son out of the vineyard and kill him.
These are not exactly the kind of tenants you would give a five-star review!
The meaning would have been clear to Jesus’ listeners. The tenants represent those entrusted with caring for God’s people. The servants represent the prophets whom God repeatedly sent to call his people back to him. And finally, the son represents Jesus.
God sent his Son, and they rejected him. But before we point our fingers at the wicked tenants, perhaps we should ask ourselves an uncomfortable question:
Could we sometimes be like them?
God still sends us his Son.
And yet, what have we done with this extraordinary gift?
Perhaps this is where the parable becomes very personal.
We may never physically throw Jesus out of a vineyard. We may never stand up and say, “Jesus, we reject you.” But we can reject him much more quietly.
We can say, “Lord, I love you, but Sunday morning is difficult. The Dolphins are playing. The children have soccer. We have brunch reservations.”
Apparently, God has some very serious competition on Sunday mornings!
In a different way, we can become like the tenants. God gives us something precious, but instead of receiving the gift with gratitude, we begin living as though the vineyard belongs to us.
We forget that everything is a gift. Our life, family, work, health, car, homes, and above all, Jesus himself is the gift.
The tragedy of the tenants is not simply that they killed the servants or even the son. Their deeper problem was that they stopped recognizing the landowner.
They wanted the vineyard without the owner.
And that temptation still exists today.
We want life. But sometimes without God. We want blessings—but without the One who gives the blessings. We want Christmas, but sometimes without Christ. We want Easter—but sometimes without the Cross and Resurrection. We want God to bless our plans, but occasionally we forget to ask whether our plans are part of God’s plan.
Sometimes our prayer can almost sound like: “Lord, your will be done as long as your will and my will happen to be the same!”
We can become so busy enjoying the vineyard that we forget the One who planted it.
So perhaps the question of today’s Gospel is very simple:
We are tenants. God is the owner. The vineyard is his. And everything we have is a gift. May we be aware that we are only tenants, only temporary occupants in this world, and that we will use our gifts to advance God’s Kingdom.