Just as each servant was sent to bring back the Master’s fruit, so did God send his prophets to bring back the fruits of a life shaped by the Word.
One of the most prominent features of Jesus’s earthly ministry was all the parables he deployed to reveal divine truth. The adage that parables are “earthly stories with a heavenly meaning” essentially holds true, as the Lord weaves common household items and everyday events into his stories, imbuing them with eternal significance. From coins to sheep to farmers to fish, from the piddling to the outstanding, Jesus wields very relatable moments and objects to showcase who he is and reveal his heart. There is, perhaps, no better example of this than “The Parable of the Wicked Tenants,” a tale that’s found in each of the Synoptic Gospels (Matt. 21:33-46; Mark 12:1-12; Luke 20:9-19).
1. A Parable That Cuts to the Heart
Out of all the parables Jesus tells, the one about the degenerate vinedressers is his most overt or transparent narrative, rivaled only by the story of the sower and the soils (Matthew 13). But even there, Jesus’s story is followed by a fairly lengthy explanation. What’s fascinating about the parable of the wicked tenants, however, is that it’s understood by everyone immediately. Those to whom the parable was addressed, that is, “the chief priests and the elders” (Matt. 21:23), got the point immediately (Matt. 21:45–46). They knew that the Rabbi from Nazareth was not only talking to them but specifically about them, as they once again found themselves as the unwitting punchlines of Jesus’s fable.
The parable itself also functions as a prophecy, shedding light on all of Israel’s history up to that point while also divulging what would take in short order over the next few days. In other words, this is Jesus’s most cruciform parable — it’s a story that’s shaped by the cross, a fact that should make us all perk up, especially since this exchange occurred on the Tuesday before Black Friday. Less than three days before God’s Son was brutally crucified for sins he didn’t commit, the Son of God tells a story about a son who dies an undeserved “miserable death” at the hands of those who should’ve embraced him with open arms.
2. When the Son Shows Up
To begin, Jesus sets the scene by laying out a series of ordinary yet informative facts. “Hear another parable,” he says. “There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country” (Matt. 21:33). There once was a nobleman who decided he wanted a vineyard. While we don’t know his motivations, we can infer that this vineyard project emerges out of his own goodwill. This was a huge undertaking, one that involved a bevy of planning, construction, hiring contractors, time, energy, and investment. Reading between the lines, though, this was the Master’s “passion project.”
This vineyard was lacking for nothing. Every detail was addressed, down to the hiring of field-hands to tend and keep it on the Master’s behalf. Everything was set up for the tenants to be successful, and it would seem that would prove true when “the season for fruit drew near” (Matt. 21:34). As harvest time arrives, the Master sends a few of his servants to go collect that year’s vintage. But something transpires that no one could’ve predicted or anticipated. Instead of showcasing that year’s reaping and celebrating a successful yield, the tenants bully, beat, and murder the Master’s servants, not just once but over and over again (Matt. 21:35–36). The more servants who are sent, the more graves that are dug, as the vineyard workers go into full self-preservation mode. Something changed during those months between when they took charge of the vineyard and when the time “for fruit drew near.”
That “change” became clear when Jesus tells everyone the Master’s next move. “Finally,” the Lord tells them, “he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son’” (Matt. 21:37). By any stretch of the imagination, this is an absurd decision by the vineyard owner. Instead of marching in and bulldozing the place due to the vindictive cruelty of the tenants’ mutiny, he demonstrates uncanny restraint, or what we might call “otherworldly patience.” This Master deeply cares for his vineyard, so much so that he opts to send his “beloved son” (Mark 12:6) there in hopes that their response would be different. But those hopes are quickly dashed, as the workers treat the heir apparent like all the rest.
The arrival of the son brings out the worst in them. All their pent-up rage is poured out on him (Matt. 21:37–39). What’s even more surprising is Jesus’s conclusion, or lack thereof. Instead of tidying up this story with an epilogue of justice, the Lord asks his audience how they think the story should end. “When, therefore, the owner of the vineyard comes,” he inquires, “what will he do to those tenants?” (Matt. 21:40), to which the elders are quick to reply with an agreed-upon answer: “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons” (Matt. 21:41). The religious aristocrats salivate for justice, for this horrible atrocity to be righted. “Those criminals deserve a criminal’s death,” they snap. “Those worthless wretches should get a wretched demise!” Little did they know that with that response, they had backed themselves into a corner and opened themselves up to a thorough cross-examination, which the Lord takes full advantage of (Matt. 21:42–44).
The Lord’s explanation was mostly unnecessary, as the listeners had already caught on. But what was it that they had “perceived”? And why had it made them so angry, to the point that they wanted to subdue Jesus on the spot?
3. A Vineyard with Wild Grapes
The Lord’s use of a vineyard in this story isn’t random. Actually, it was a recurring portrait of the covenant people of God. “Israel is a luxuriant vine,” a “vine in a vineyard planted by the water, fruitful and full of branches,” declare the prophets (Hosea 10:1; Ezek. 19:10). “You [Yahweh] brought a vine out of Egypt,” the psalmist exclaims, “you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land” (Ps. 80:8–9). The most overt allusion belongs to Isaiah, who has a vineyard parable of his own:
Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? (Isa. 5:1–4).
Just as the Master did everything necessary to make his vineyard successful, so, too, did the Lord furnish Israel with what they needed to follow, trust, and obey him. Plainly speaking, then, Jesus’s “vineyard” represents the kingdom of God’s covenant, that is, the domain of righteousness that Christ was even then breaking into the world. Likewise, the tenants portray the leaders and elders of Israel, who were chosen to tend and keep their Master’s vineyard, a.k.a. the priests, scribes, judges, and kings, each of whom was endowed with the express responsibility to care for God’s people. Their function was to shepherd the masses to abide by and live in light of God’s covenant promises, in accordance with the Word.
But, of course, the kings and leaders famously failed in this regard, leading the nation of promise into a host of wretched vices. The vine that God planted soon became a “degenerate” and “useless” vine — a “wild vine” that only produced bitter-tasting grapes (Jer. 2:21). Instead of bearing the Lord’s harvest, the grapes of God’s people were steeped in the vintage of Sodom and Gomorrah (Deut. 32:32). “I looked for it to yield grades,” the Lord bemoans, “why did it yield wild grapes?” (Isa. 5:4). He is distraught over them and their flagrant disregard for him and everything that he has given them. But because he’s a patient Master, who vehemently loves his vineyard, he sends servant after servant to his people, all of whom are representative of the prophets.
Just as each servant was sent to bring back the Master’s fruit, so did God send his prophets to bring back the fruits of a life shaped by the Word. “When the prophets were sent to Israel,” R. C. H. Lenski comments, “God expected the fruits of contrition, faith, and obedience.” Yet, over and over and over again, the prophets of Yahweh were overlooked, ignored, or killed. Their messages were discredited or dismissed, as Israel’s leaders became more consumed with preserving their power and position than with nurturing God’s people with God’s words. Nevertheless, the Lord’s merciful restraint persisted for them. “The patience of God toward Israel’s rulers,” Lenski continues, “is without parallel in all human history.” The Master’s vineyard is his passion.
4. Cornered by the Cornerstone
This is when the narrative reaches its fever pitch, both in the case of Jesus’s story and in the case of Israel’s history. After all, just a few days before this scene, Jesus raised dead-as-a-door-nail Lazarus back to life in a bona fide public miracle. The chief priest and elders, however, didn’t take too kindly to being bested by a resurrection, leading them to hatch a plot to get rid of Jesus for good (John 11:45–48, 53). Jesus knew this, of course; he knew their hearts, which is why he tells this story in the first place. As a prophetic parable, therefore, the failure of the tenants exposes the scribes and Pharisees and their misguided machinations to take ownership of the vineyard by killing the son. Thus, when Jesus ends his story with a penetrating question, he knows how they will respond (Matt. 21:40–41).
In many ways, this was the same procedure that Nathan the prophet used on King David when he confronted him for his sin with Bathsheba (2 Sam. 12:1–6). A parable is conveyed, replete with relatable ingredients, evoking a visceral reaction. The “man after God’s own heart,” much like the priests and elders, yearned for justice of the absolute variety, at which point Nathan laid down the hammer: “You are the man!” (2 Sam. 12:7). Jesus, in essence, does the same thing. “This is you!” we might hear him scathingly say. “You are the wretches who deserve a wretched end!” Jesus’s parable, therefore, is a mirror by which the religious elite behold the yawning depths of their atrocious insubordination.
The Lord brings everything home by quoting Psalm 118 and applying it to himself. “Have you never read in the Scriptures,” Jesus interrogates. “‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?” (Matt. 21:42–44; cf. Ps. 118:22–23). Just as the tenants rejected the son, so, too, were the elders rejecting their Christ, fulfilling what had long been prophesied — namely, that the very ones entrusted to build would reject the very stone God had predetermined to be the cornerstone of his eternal kingdom. The religious gentry were missing what God was trying to tell them through the person of Jesus. The Lord’s Christ had come! The Son was here; the Messiah was in their midst. “The time is fulfilled,” Christ trumpets, “the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15), which is akin to announcing that “the season for fruit” had come and the Master was ready to receive what was rightfully his.
5. The Stone We Rejected and the One Who Saves
Everything in Israel’s history had been building up to this moment. But instead of yielding fruit, the tenants plotted murder. Rather than celebrating the arrival of the Son, the elder — enraged by Jesus’s claims to speak for and hail from the Father — began colluding to bring about his demise. The prevailing point of Jesus’s parable, though, is that he is the son who dies. He’s the heir whose corpse gets thrown in the gutter. He’s the stone that’s deemed unworthy and tossed aside. But, as was promised long ago, the rejected one would be the chosen one. Indeed, the Cornerstone was now standing right in front of them. This is the scandalous announcement of the gospel, which says that the Christ who was killed on a cross is none other than the foundation stone of life, hope, and salvation for all who believe (Isa. 28:16; Acts 4:11; 1 Cor. 3:11; Eph. 2:20).
As the Master’s son was sent to the tenants to patiently, lovingly win them back, so, too, did God send his Son into the world, not to condemn it, but to save it, by dying for it (John 3:17). Christ was rejected so that you might be received. He was cast out so that you might be brought in. He was crushed so that you might be redeemed. He was killed so that you might be resurrected. The rejected and crucified one is he who saves and rescues us out of the muck and mire of sin and shame, planting our feet on the solid rock of his salvation.
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