This week’s readings all work together leading to the message of the parable told by Jesus. The scene is set as soon as Jesus began to describe the vineyard – fenced, a winepress and tower built – his audience would have immediately known that he was reflecting the Isaiah description of Israel as the vineyard of the Lord. The imagery Jesus used would have been so familiar to his audience that it was almost mundane, and yet Jesus, as usual, gives the image a twist. He describes a vineyard owner whose tenant farmers rebel, beat and murder his servants. Any one of these acts was punishable by death and the audience may well have expected the story to end there. And yet the landowner sends further messengers – hopeful of a change of heart from the tenants and allowing them the opportunity to do what is right. After these messengers are also murdered, the landowner sends his own son to collect the harvest from the tenants.

Jesus, of course, is drawing on the familiar image of Israel as the vineyard of the Lord. God, the landowner, has entrusted this beautifully prepared land to the people of Israel and yet they have taken ownership for themselves and forgotten their Lord. Messengers, in the form of prophets, have been sent to call the people back to God but they were ignored and even murdered. Now, the Son has been sent to the people and received much the same response. When Jesus asks his audience of chief priests and elders what the landowner should do, they are acutely aware that he is asking them how God should deal with them. 

In what ways do people of the world today act as though God is not the ‘landowner’?