The parable of the tenants: Its meaning to us

Our Sunday gospel reading today is another parable… The Parable of the Tenants, which you can find in your Bibles in Matt.21:33-43.

[Jesus said to the chief priests and elders of the people,] 33 Hear another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey. 34 When vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce. 35 But the tenants seized the servants and one they beat, another they killed, and a third they stoned.

36 Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones, but they treated them in the same way. 37 Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.’ 39 They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40 What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes? 41 They answered him; “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times.”

42 Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; and it is wonderful in our eyes’? 43 Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”

We’ve written about this parable many times before and I noticed that our Lord Jesus Christ always uses a vineyard for his imagery of the Kingdom of God. It can only be because he was speaking before the chief priests and elders of the people and thus, they can easily relate to a story about a man who owns a vineyard and the people that works there.

However this story doesn’t tell us whether the chief priests or elders of the people understood that this parable was really about them… that the Lord was actually giving them a warning of what would happen to those tenants whom the landowner allowed to use his vineyard. If you haven’t gotten the hint, the landowner in this parable is God and the tenants are the priests and elders of the Jewish people who were given the responsibility to save the souls of their people. These souls are the produce of the vineyard.

The servants of the landowner are the prophets who came to “collect” on the produce of the vineyard. But in the end, these servants were maltreated and killed by the ungrateful tenants. More prophets were sent as we’ve read in the Old Testament and still the tenants maltreated and killed them. Finally, the landowner sent his son… the son being our Lord Jesus Christ. But still the tenants threw his son out of the vineyard and killed him. Call this parable a prophesy of our Lord’s death… after all the four evangelists St. Luke, St. John, St. Mark and St. Matthew all wrote that Jesus was crucified in Golgotha or Cavalry outside the walls of Jerusalem.

This parable also teaches us about God’s goodness and patience. He prepares his vineyard and leases it to evil tenants, who only repay him with more evil, killing the landowner’s servants and eventually his own son. But God’s patience has limits and the wretched tenants suffered a wretched death and the vineyard given to new tenants that would produce its fruit. Clearly this parable refers to the Jews, who were the first-born children of God. Today, the majority of the Jewish people still do not recognize that 2,000 years ago, the long-awaited Messiah did come from amongst the Jewish people. But because of the unbelief of the Jews, God leased his vineyard to the new tenants, whom the Jews say are the Gentiles or Pagans.

Today, thanks to the Gentiles and Pagans who embraced Christianity, there are now more than a billion Catholics and perhaps millions more from other Christian sects, while Judaism has become a small minority. Perhaps this can be traced from the fact that Jews today are still waiting for the Messiah to come, which is probably why Judaism as a religion has stagnated and stopped growing, while Christianity has grown by leaps and bounds.

But while our Lord Jesus Christ told this parable in reference to the Jews, it can also be a reference to the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church whose principal mission is not much different from that of the leaders of Judaism 2,000 years ago. In his last appearance before his Ascension into heaven, our Lord Jesus Christ made Peter the shepherd of his flock when he told Peter, “Feed my lambs, feed my sheep” Feeding here is akin to ‘directing and governing.” This is why it is important for our church leaders, the clergy and the laity to teach the magisterium of the Catholic Church and not confuse our people when often the church goes into crisis, like what we’re having today, where confused Catholics support the Reproductive Health Bill.

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