Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. “Don’t shoot the messenger!” That’s what we say when people get mad at us for relaying a message they don’t want to hear. “Hey, don’t get mad at me! It’s not my word. I’m just the messenger.” In our Gospel lesson today Jesus tells a story that we have come to know as the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, and the point of this parable is much the same: Don’t shoot the messenger.

The Parable of the Tenants belongs to the events of Holy Week. Perhaps it’s difficult for us to understand these parables of Jesus, removed as we are from their cultural and historical context. But the meaning wasn’t missed by Jesus’ enemies. “They perceived that he was

speaking about them” (Matt. 21:45b). Indeed, he was! But what Jesus said about them is more than they wanted to hear. It made them mad enough to kill him. The point of the parable is “Don’t shoot the messenger,” and yet by the end of the week, they did just that, taking the Word made flash and nailing him to a tree.

But why?! What was it about this story that infuriated Jesus’ enemies so much? What does the parable say about them? What does it say about GOD? And what does it say about us?

Before we apply the parable to our lives, we need to make sure we understand what is going on here. The story begins with a wealthy householder who carefully plants a vineyard—a place for growing grapes and producing wine on his property. From our Old Testament lesson (Isaiah 5:1-7) and Psalm (Ps. 80:7-19), we discover that God is the master of the house and the owner of the vineyard. And God’s people, the nation of Israel, is the vineyard. “For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting…” (Isa. 5:7a). Yet at this point, Jesus’ parable departs from the vineyard motif of the Old Testament. For in the Old Testament

versions, the vineyard bears no fruit. Here in Jesus’ parable, the issue is not the unfruitfulness of the vineyard but rather the refusal by the wicked tenants to share the fruits.

Who, then, are the tenants—the workers of the vineyard? They are the nation’s religious leaders, the priests and scribes entrusted with the cultivation and care of the vineyard while the master is away. As tenant farmers, they are responsible to grow and harvest the grapes, press the wine, and pay a portion of the net harvest to the master. The master rightly expects a return on his investment from the caretaker tenants, just as God wants to see evidence of faithful service and good works on the part of his people!

But when the master (God) sends his servants—the prophets—to bring word from the master and collect his due, the tenants abuse and kill them. Instead of paying up, they rebel against the master and reject the Word of his prophets. Remember your Bible history. Over and over again, the nations of Israel and Judah mistreated God’s holy prophets. They shoot the messengers. Elijah lived on the lam with a bounty on his head (1 Kings 19:1-3). Jeremiah was beaten, imprisoned, thrown down

a well and left for dead. According to Jewish tradition, the prophet Isaiah was sawed in half by the evil King Manasseh (cp. Heb. 11:36-38). John the Baptist was arrested and beheaded.

Time and again, God sent prophets to call his people—represented by the tenants—to repentance, faith, and obedience to his Law. Time and again, the people abused the prophets and refused to accept their Word. As Jesus said in his great lament, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Matt. 23:37).

The tenants don’t repent. They never pay up. So finally the owner of the vineyard decides to send his son instead. “Surely,” he reasons, “they will respect my son.” It’s madness! What in the world makes the owner of the vineyard think that they will listen to his son after all the evil they have done to his servants, the prophets? The master’s plan is completely unreasonable. Yet it shows the longsuffering nature of God’s mercy. Despite his people’s pattern of unrepentance, he nevertheless shows them mercy and keeps trying to win them back to

him. So God in his wisdom and mercy sent his only-begotten Son, Jesus, to give the nation of Israel one last chance.

But when the Son comes, the wicked tenants see an opportunity for evil gain. “This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance” (Matt. 21:38). Again, this thought is insanity. In what world do you gain an inheritance simply by killing the heir? No court of law would ever rule in such a way. Yet the tenants are crazed by their hatred of the master and his son, so they take the Son and throw him out of the vineyard and kill him, just as the Jewish religious leaders did when they arrested Jesus, put him on trial in a kangaroo court, and then handed him over to the Romans to be crucified outside the city of Jerusalem.

But the tenants in the story make a terrible miscalculation. In their horrible hatred, their rebellion goes too far. They sought to seize the vineyard through violence. But you cannot steal an inheritance. An inheritance is a gift, which must be given and received. You cannot take the kingdom of God by force (cp. Matt. 11:12).

And so Jesus asks his hearers, the chief priests, the scribes, and the Pharisees—all the religious leaders of Israel—“When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” (Matt. 21:40).

“He will put those wretches to a miserable death,” they replied, “and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their season” (Matt. 21:41). And so, by their own mouths, they brought judgment on themselves. When the crowds demanded Jesus’ crucifixion later that week, they declared, “His blood be on us and on our children!” (Matt. 27:25). And so it would! Jesus’ blood would be on their heads and their hands. They would be held responsible for his death. Indeed, everyone who rejects the Son of God and rebels against the Word of the Lord will be condemned and destroyed by fire in hell on the last Judgment Day.

The Lord is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6). God puts up with a lot from us—up to a point. Yet in every person’s life there comes a point when we go too far and the hour becomes too late. The only chance you

have to repent and give God the fruit he seeks is while you still draw breath. But once you die or Jesus comes back—whichever happens first—then your time will run out, and so will God’s patience. Repent now! Turn from your sin before it’s too late! “Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2).

That is why Jesus ends his story with this chilling corollary: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits” (Matt. 21:43).

That’s the part that got Jesus killed! Because the nation of Israel failed to bear fruit in keeping with repentance (Matt. 3:8), God would take his kingdom away from them and give it to another people: the holy Christian Church, comprised of both Gentiles and Jews who fear, love, and trust in God above all things.

Who are those other people? Hopefully, they are you and I! But what kind of tenants are we? When God sends his Son back to earth on the Last Day, will he find faith (Luke 18:8)? Will he find us to be a people both faithful and fruitful, believing his Word, receiving his gifts, and giving it all back to him in works of love and service to our

neighbor? When the Son returns to collect the rent, will we be able to pay what is owed?

Here’s the tricky, sticky part—no, not the grapes, but the sobering reality that we too have been wicked tenants. We have not been faithful to God and his Word. We have not always been fruitful. God sends his servants, the prophets and apostles, but we doubt and question the Word they speak in Scripture. So God sends still more servants to speak his Word to us: parents, pastors, and other leaders in the Church. But we stop our ears and refuse to listen. We get bored and even angry with their message. When the pastor tells us something we don’t want to hear—some inconvenient truth about ourselves—instead of repenting and changing our ways, we get angry and turn on them. How dare the pastor tell me that I have sinned and done something offensive to God! How dare my parents speak God’s commandments to me!

God’s servants don’t always say what we want to hear. And that’s a good thing because pastors seek to please God, not men (Gal. 1:10). They come looking for fruit, and so we’ll give them fruit! We’ll throw rotten tomatoes and sour grapes in their face and give them a run for it.

We gossip and slander about the Lord’s servants. We make their ministry difficult. We may even try to run them out of the church, and when that fails, we just abandon ship and go somewhere else to make things difficult for another pastor instead. We shoot the messenger.

Every time we refuse to believe and obey God’s Word, we reject him and his servants. And every time that we insist on our own sinful attitudes and ways of doing things, we rebel against the master of the vineyard. Anger leads to bitterness, and bitterness leads to unbelief. And when we fall away from faith, we crucify Jesus all over again (Heb. 6:6).

“When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? … 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. 21:40-41).

But God doesn’t want to destroy you. He doesn’t want to punish us for our sins. He doesn’t want us to stumble on the cornerstone of Christ or be crushed by him on Judgment Day. Instead, he wants to make us into living stones that he can use to build up his Church on a

foundation of prophets and apostles with Christ Jesus as the chief cornerstone (Eph. 2:20). God is not cruel and malicious. He loves you. The reason the Master of the Vineyard sends for fruit is not because he is a greedy landlord who treats his tenants unfairly. The Master is looking for fruit because he wants everyone to enjoy it! He wants to share and give it away and invite everyone to the harvest celebration when the wine is poured and flows freely for all who believe in his Son. God wants all people to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4).

God is not a miser; he is magnificent and generous. He offers grace freely and fully to each of us wicked tenants who are willing to throw down our pitchforks and set down our stones and fall to our knees in repentance and faith. Stop killing the prophets. Stop stoning God’s servants. Don’t shoot the messenger. Open your hearts, open your ears, listen to the Word they preach and believe. “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…” (Heb. 1:1-2a).

Time and again, God spoke to us by his prophets. But now he has spoken to us by his Son. God sent his Son to die on a cross and

back to life so that he could give life and the forgiveness of sins to all who receive him and believe in his name. And so Jesus comes to you and comes and comes again by his Word, by his Spirit, and in water, bread, and wine. Jesus comes looking for fruit because he has fruit to give. The fruit he seeks from us is the fruit that flows from the cross of Christ. So may his wine and his Word fill you up and overflow. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.