Of Vineyards and Tenants


Mark 12:1-12
1And he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8 And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. 9 What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Have you not read this Scripture: “‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; 11this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?” 12 And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away.

As we stand on this side of the death and resurrection of Jesus, this parable really holds no mystery for us. The players in this story easily fall into the roles Jesus means them to represent. The “land owner” is clearly God the Father, creator of all things. The “tenants” are the Jews who were given stewardship over God’s story of redemption. The Savior would come from the Jews. The “servants” were the Old Testament prophets who told God’s story to the people, sharing His promise of a Savior. Most of those prophets went completely unheeded and many were ridiculed or even killed. The last of these prophets was John the Baptist. And finally, the “Son” was Jesus Himself. When he came, He is ultimately killed by the “tenants”.

“Hmmmm. We think He said something against us.” That’s the thinking of the temple leaders as they went away from this conversation. But these words of Jesus are prophetic and will come to pass just a few days later. They couldn’t really find anything against Him, so they made something up. His death is the result, just as He said. In this parable we find that the Lord of Life is still firmly in control of the entire situation. The story is playing out exactly as God had always planned. Our salvation is sure because Jesus was committed to the plan from His birth – or perhaps more accurately, from the very beginning.

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