Monday: Those Wicked Tenants!!!

Harsh realities in our world today are a clear signal that there are too many people who feel they have control of the world and its people.  What realities?  Consider these pains that have been brought upon nations, states, communities and families:  wars, genocides, corruption that has infiltrated so many institutions and people around us, murders that damage communities and families especially the horrific increase in youth murders, violence that streaks across all humanity like lightning across the skies during storms and hatred that has become so public in our culture.

Jesus uses an allegory in today's gospel to address these human failures:  the wicked tenants.  See the vineyard as representative of God's chosen people; look at the tenant farmers as the religious leaders of Jesus' time; the prophets of the Old Testament history are the servants; the beloved son is, of course, Jesus.  Read this story:


“A man planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press, and built a tower.
Then he leased it to tenant farmers and left on a journey.  At the proper time he sent a servant to the tenants to obtain from them some of the produce of the vineyard.  But they seized him, beat him,
and sent him away empty-handed.  Again he sent them another servant.   And that one they beat over the head and treated shamefully.  He sent yet another whom they killed.  So, too, many others; some they beat, others they killed.  He had one other to send, a beloved son.  He sent him to them last of all, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’  But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir.  Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’  So they seized him and killed him,
and threw him out of the vineyard.  What then will the owner of the vineyard do?
He will come, put the tenants to death, and give the vineyard to others.  Have you not read this Scripture passage:

The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
by the Lord has this been done,
and it is wonderful in our eyes?”

They were seeking to arrest him, but they feared the crowd, for they realized that he had addressed the parable to them.  So they left him and went away.

What is Jesus attempting to teach?  God has not abandoned the world.  He has not turned over control to those who do evil.