Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!  Rank ingratitude.  Now, a parable isn’t supposed to cover all the details.  It’s supposed to get across at least one, clear, main point.  Listening to this parable, it strikes me how the tenants never argue whether the owner is truly the owner; they don’t even argue or debate whether they actually owe him anything.  Their approach isn’t philosophical or principled.  They just refuse to give: yeah, okay, so what: it’s yours, but we don’t care, and what are you going to do about it?  Even in these days of squatter horror stories, we know what’s supposed to happen if an occupant refuses to pay the rent, if a borrower refuses to make the payments, if there is no return or even cordial acknowledgement for a benefit received.

It isn’t just that the tenants refuse to pay, though.  They go further than that.  They shamefully abuse any of the owner’s servants who come to remind the tenants that they owe something and that payment is due.  They don’t want to be reminded.  They don’t want to hear that.  They’ll do unpleasant things to anyone with the presumption to tell them.  It’s freedom they want: freedom from having to listen.  What’s that owner done for them lately, anyway?

Note that the owner doesn’t send legions, doesn’t send armies with swords drawn and retribution on their mind.  The owner sends one, then another—lone messengers.  Lonely messengers who know, as they go, just what reception they will find.  There isn’t one prophet of those whose proclamations are included in the Bible, whose word was welcome.  We can still hear several of them protesting over the response and treatment they received.

Is the owner’s demand unreasonable?  Is the rent too high?  And what is the rent, beloved?  A basket of fruit, a sack of grain, some oil and wine?  A calf or a lamb to be offered up at an altar in Jerusalem, and most of the meat then to be enjoyed at a feast by the one who brought it?  We can argue that these requirements might be inconvenient, but I don’t think we could reasonably call them excessive or unfair.  Token expressions of acknowledgment, gratitude.  If the vineyard truly belongs to the owner, if the tenants aren’t actually contesting or denying that ownership, then they ought to pay what is required, oughtn’t they?  The owner wants some fruit from his vineyard.  Why is that too much to ask?  But the response isn’t we shouldn’t have to or it’s not fair; the response is we won’t.  The tenants aren’t being philosophical or principled.  They’re just refusing: there was an agreement, a contract, a covenant; we’re reneging on it.

Maybe the tenants have nothing to give?  Lean years come along, we know!  I just don’t have it to give—please be patient with me!  Jesus told a parable about that, too, I believe.  It doesn’t seem to be the case that the tenants have nothing to give.  There is fruit in the vineyard; it is productive, blessed.  The tenants simply don’t care to give the owner anything, no matter that there be any supposed law or just basic etiquette.  The law they prefer is the Law of Mine: it’s mine, and I don’t owe anyone anything.

How much of the produce belongs to the laborers, and how much to the one who provides the materials and means of production?  Oh, there’s an argument for philosophers, economists, and political scientists!  Such a question is beyond the scope of Jesus’ purpose.  The basic idea seems to be along these lines: God has provided, the people have labored and benefited from God’s provision and their labor.  (And that ability to labor, the health and strength in which they labor—these also are gifts of God, but oh well.)  The people refuse to give to God that for which He asks.  Refusal to obey, refusal to live God’s way, refusal of responsibility before the Lord.  The old, old problem persists.  It’s stubborn, hard, calloused.  I’ll live how I want, and God will be okay with that.  You’ll see.  Yes, we will; we surely will.

Knowing all this, the owner does something quite peculiar and in a certain sense rather stupid: knowing the stubbornness of the tenants, knowing their history of refusal, their history of rejection, their history of refusing, abusing, harming, and killing the messengers and servants of the owner, the owner sends His Son.  “They will respect my son.”  How could He possibly think so, after all that had been done to the previous servants?  The consistent record of the failure of the people to respect the owner’s claim, their hardhearted refusal and rejection of His authority, makes plain what’s at the heart of what’s happening: they do not want His authority, or Him!  Throw off the chains!  Break the yoke!  Ah, freedom.  That was the serpent’s sales pitch and the Tempter’s temptations, there in the wilderness those forty days: make God serve you, or, better yet, make yourselves gods.  Let us be a law unto ourselves, without regard for or the least interest in whoever may be calling out, crying out, from some far heaven.  Yeah . . . God, whatever . . . spare me.

It’s not as if those listening that day didn’t have the least idea what Jesus was talking about.  The eightieth psalm sung of Israel as a vine God had lovingly, carefully transplanted.  Through Jeremiah, God spoke of His people as His “choice vine” (Jer 2:21).  Through Isaiah, God very memorably had spoken of Israel as a vineyard, one which had required much intensive labor to establish, a true labor of love.

The conclusion of the parable likewise is not hard to grasp: Those who reject God, God will reject.  There is nothing new or strange in this message: it’s what the prophets had always told anyone who would listen and all who would not.  The vineyard is His; He can give it to whomever He pleases.  He will.  If this were only directed at the Sanhedrin—the ruling Jewish authority, composed of the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders—this parable could be of some historical or antiquarian interest and that would be all.  We can read it that way, and that might be some comfort to us.  No bearing upon us, nothing to say to us.  We can also read it as Paul and Peter might have, as pointing to the inclusion of the Gentiles, and that might also be of some historical interest to us, and some comfort.

There are some denominations that like the slogan, “God is still speaking”: they take that to mean that there is something new or more to be said that God has not yet said, some new revelation, or some reimagining or reinterpretation that hadn’t occurred to us until now.  I’m not enamored of slogans, and I don’t take a catchy one like that in quite the way some of our sisters and brothers in Christ seem to.  But I agree that God is still talking.  Yes, God is still talking, because people still aren’t listening, giving, living according to all this Word.  I’m not placing myself outside that group, let alone above them.  My discipleship has a long way to go; I pray that God will keep my ears and heart open, because I’m bound to go astray, otherwise.  I pray God will keep my ears and heart open to what He has already said, fully, sufficiently, transformingly.  God knows all the Word we need is what you and I may find as we open up this book and start reading, start listening, start living and growing God’s way, like . . . a fruitful vineyard.

As you read the Bible, you may notice that God seems to repeat Himself, and not just every so often.  “Yes, Lord, I heard You the last four times You said that.”  Don’t you just hate it when people keep repeating themselves?  God repeats Himself not because He is forgetful, but because He remembers: remembers His covenant, remembers His love for us, remembers to be slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, mercy, and grace.  When will people listen?  What will it take?  What is God going to have to do, to get people to listen up?  And will they even listen, then?