Theme:  Paying the rent by living a moral, righteous life.

What did Jesus mean by this parable that he told against the Pharisees?

The renters were the Pharisees who didn’t want to pay the rent and acknowledge that God was the owner of the vineyard and expected a rent payment. The Pharisees wanted the vineyard for themselves. These Pharisaical leaders silenced the prophets of God, the representatives of God, who God had sent to them throughout the Old Testament.

The Pharisees silenced the voice of God who was saying to them, “I own this vineyard. It is mine. Pay the rent. The rent is fruit. The rent is a righteous life of goodness, kindness and mercy. I have entrusted this vineyard to you and it is not yours. I expect payment.” The Pharisees silenced these representatives from God again and again in the Old Testament and killed them. God finally sent his Son, Jesus, the heir of the vineyard, the future owner of the vineyard. And they killed the Son too.

Jesus wanted the Pharisees to know that God knew they were the ones who killed the prophets. Jesus wanted the Pharisees to know that he knew that they were going to kill him in the near future. Jesus wanted the Pharisees to know that they would be punished by God for killing the prophets of old, for killing the Son, and for not producing the fruit of righteous lives that God had rightfully expected of them.

What does this mean today some twenty-one centuries later?

We too silence the messengers of God to us, especially when they tell us unpleasant things about our lives: that we are phonies, that what we are doing is not right. We all have those people who come to us and are honest with us about things which are imperfect in our lives.

My messenger from God is most often my wife. She tells it like it is about me. She actually tells me that this is her God given gift, to notice the flaws and imperfections of my personality and to point them out. I often grumble and groan and cuss inside when she reminds me that I am acting like my father of old, that I am acting like a spoiled child, and that I am insisting on my own way. Yes, way too often, my wife is my personal messenger from God, God’s angel, God’s prophet for me.

The prophets of God in our lives are not usually the paid preacher or TV evangelist or some famous preacher like Billy Graham. Rather, the messengers of God to us are usually much closer and nearer, like a wife, a husband, a child, a parent, a dear and close friend who have the willingness to be honest with you.

And deep down inside, we often want to silence the honesty of God’s messenger to us. We are like the Pharisees in that we want to silence the voices of the messengers of God to us.

It is true of our nation also. Yes, we want to silence those messengers from God who tell us the truth about our nation and how it is perceived by many Third World nations.

This theme is part of Jesus’ parable. The question is: how have you and I been silencing the messengers of God to our lives?

I think of the wife who says, “You are a workaholic and you are rarely emotionally home for the kids and me.” I think of a husband who says, “Honey, you have become an alcoholic and you refuse to come to grips with your drinking problem which is affecting our whole family.” I think of the parishoner who says to the pastor, “You weren’t there for me when I needed you.”

The list goes on and on within our personal lives, where we often do not listen to the local messengers from God in our lives.

The fundamental problem for the Pharisees is that they were not producing the fruit of righteousness. They were not living lives of goodness, kindness, gentleness and compassion for those in need. The Pharisees were self centered and more concerned about their religious status and income than about the needs of others.

God gave us life. The vineyard is God’s. God owns this world in which we live. And God expects rent from us as a payment for living in the vineyard. It is pretty simple. Pay or be evicted. Making payments is simply a way of life.

What is the rent that God desires? A life of love, kindness and compassion. What is the rent? To love God with all your heart, mind and soul and love your neighbor as yourself. What is the rent? A morally righteous life.

In this passage, there is not only the threat of God punishing the renters who refused to pay the rent. There is a second threat in this parable in which Jesus teaches that God will find other people who will pay the rent and live moral lives of righteousness. God can and will always find people who will give God his due, who will live lives of goodness, kindness and compassion.

These people may live outside of the walls of the synagogues and churches, but God will find people who pay the rent, who live lives that are not morally perfect nor spiritually impeccable, but lives that are full of compassion and love. God will find those people, regardless of the religious label that they wear on the back of their spiritual shirts, and they will be God’s people.

In the parable today, we can hear the voice of God’s messenger or choose to be unresponsive.

God owns this vineyard of the world we live in. It is God’s. God expects payment. The owner of the world wants moral and righteous lives, for your lives to bear good fruit, lives of love and compassion, for God and our neighbors.

Rev. Ed Markquart