The Wicked Tenants

Are you a renter or an owner? How do you see your role in this world? Are you a steward or a lord? Do you pay your dues?

As followers of Jesus, we are stewards of God’s resources and we are stewards of God’s kingdom in the world. We are tenants. We are servants. Each of us are renters, not owners of God’s creation. And we are called to give God his due as his servants.

In the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, in Luke 20:9-19, we see tenants who do not want to meet their obligations as tenants, but they want ownership and they want to strip the vineyard from the vineyard owner.

Luke tells us Jesus told this parable: “A man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants and went into another country for a long while. When the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants, so that they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed” (Luke 20:9-10).

Like these tenants, we are called to give the proceeds of our fruitfulness to the vineyard owner—God, but we do not always submit to God in obedience, and we do not always give God what is due to him. We want the benefits and the ownership without the service and without the responsibility.

The owner of the vineyard was patient “And he sent another servant. But they also beat and treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty-handed. And he sent yet a third. This one also they wounded and cast out. Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.’ But when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours.’ And they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them?” (Luke 20:11-15).

The selfishness and rebellion of the tenants in the vineyard had no bounds. The tenants went to great lengths, and depravity, and violence, to take the vineyard for themselves. They even killed the vineyard owner’s son, thinking the owner of the vineyard was dead, in order to take the inheritance from the son for themselves.

When we sin against God and take what is not ours, we also act like wicked tenants in the vineyard. Like these wicked tenants, we selfishly and greedily want what is God’s. We even go so far as rebellion and violence towards God and his Son Jesus in order to get what we want.

Like these wicked tenants in this parable, we will be judged sickly for what we have done, if we do not turn from our wicked ways and repent. As Luke tells us; God, the vineyard owner, “will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” (Luke 20:16).

May we be faithful and obedient stewards and tenants in the vineyard of God and give God what is rightfully due to him, and may we be found faithful when the owner of the vineyard comes.

A Collect for the Fifth Sunday in Lent: Passion Sunday: “Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of this world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.” (Book of Common Prayer, 2019).

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