The Battle For The Vineyard (Matthew 21:33-40)

Of course, I’ve acted as de facto landlord for the church on more than one occasion, and so I have some idea of the reality of dealing with bad tenants. We’ve had residents of our properties here screaming and carrying-on on the front lawn of the rectory, and while none of them has ever become physically violent with me as yet, we‘ve certainly had to face that possibility from time to time.

Of course, that reflects in part the sorts of people that we’ve chosen to offer hospitality to. Perhaps we should have chosen our tenants more carefully. And yet surely the same question has to be asked here of the landowner. Why didn’t he choose his tenants more carefully? For this guy’s tenants make the worst of our tenants look very good indeed! These people don’t just withhold rent, they engage in deliberate acts of violence towards the landlord and towards his representatives. What’s more, they are senseless acts of violence.

If these tenants had wanted to keep the master at a distance, why didn’t they give him some token amount to satisfy him. If they’d wanted to fool the master into thinking that his messengers never arrived, why didn’t they kill them quietly. Perhaps they forgot that they had a master? They certainly showed him no respect.

Of course, the only thing more incomprehensible than the mindless aggression of the tenants is the naïve optimism of the landlord, who keeps assuming that things are going to get better! The penny just doesn’t seem to drop!

Instead of working it out, after these tenants treated his trusted employees with utter contempt, the landlord, we are told, decides to send his son to them, thinking, ’They will respect my son.’

What ever made him think that they would respect his son? We could have told him what would happen. The indications were all there that these tenants were never going to show any respect to the rightful owner of the vineyard. Why give them another chance? Why not just nuke the lot of them? What was it that got into the landlord’s head that made him think, ‘yeah … it’s worth another shot’.

What sort of landlord is this? What sort of set-up is this, where the master just puts up with this ongoing cycle of violence? What sort of world are we talking about here? This is our world, isn’t it? This is our history, isn’t it? These tenants seem strangely familiar, do they not?

And so, we’re told, the tenants deal with the landlord’s son with the same contempt with which they dealt with his servants - surprise, surprise. Indeed, they go one step further and after brutalising the son, they kill him!

This, as I say, comes as no surprise to us. This is how the vineyard operates. We know that. This is the sort of treatment the landlord has always received at the hands of his tenants. What made him think that his son would fair any better?

And so Jesus asks, ‘what is the owner of the vineyard going to do now?’

The disciples are quick to reply ‘He’ll nuke the lot of ’em!’ But will he? Maybe he has another son at home, or other servants whose lives he is ready to sacrifice?