A certain church was having a parking problem.   The church parking lot wasn’t big enough to provide adequate parking for all the worshipers on Sundays.  But across the street from the church was a grocery store, and since that store was always closed on Sundays (owner being a devout Christian) the pastor approached the owner of the store about the possibility of using his lot.  To the pastor’s relief, the owner was quite willing to oblige the pastor.  He said that he would be glad to allow the worshipers to park in his lot 51 Sundays out of the year.  But he said that on one Sunday every year he would put a chain across the lot entrance so the worshipers couldn’t use it.  That arrangement puzzled the pastor and the worshipers, and so eventually they asked the store owner why he would pick a Sunday each year when the worshipers wouldn’t be allowed to use the lot.  The owner replied, “I want to make sure that you always remember that the parking lot belongs to me and not to you.”

The question in the gospel reading today is this: “To whom does the kingdom of God belong?”  When it comes to God’s kingdom, whose rules do we play by?  The ‘Parable of the Tenants’ is a story about a landowner who rented his property to some farmers.  For three successive years the tenants forcibly resist the owner’s efforts to claim his rightful share of the harvest.  They murder his agents who come to collect.  And, after three harvests, they are in a strong position to acquire ownership of the land by means of what we would call “Squatter’s Rights.”  If they can successfully resist the owner’s claims following the fourth harvest, they will be in legal position to assert ownership for themselves.  The owner’s legal recourse is to lodge a formal complaint against the scheming tenants before witnesses.  To do this, the owner is required by law to physically come upon the land in question.   In this case, the owner sends his son, a co-owner of the land to represent him.  “They will respect my son,” he reasons.  But the wicked tenants murder the son too.  At that point, the tenants certainly figured that the owner wouldn’t be coming around anymore, because the owner would definitely have to be aware that he wasn’t welcome.  From now on, the tenants thought to themselves, “We’re going to live by our rules, not yours.”

Jesus ends the parable by asking his listeners, “What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?”  They answered him, “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death.”  In other words, the crowd was saying that they were sure that the owner would come around and start playing by the tenants’ rules – respond to violence with more violence.  But by answering Jesus’ question in that way, we reveal how different our ways are from God’s ways.  The listeners of this parable can easily figure out that Jesus is alluding to himself as the owner’s son.  We know what happened to Jesus, the Son of God.  But does God the Father respond to his Son’s death in the bloody and vengeful way that we might envision the owner in the parable doing?  No.  The story of Good Friday and Easter morning shows us that it is not what God did.   Despite all the ways that Jesus was mocked, beaten, spit upon, and crucified, and despite all the ways that the prophets before him were similarly ridiculed and killed, God chooses not to play by our rules.  Through this parable we are shown that in God’s kingdom, hatred and revenge are not the rules.  Rather, the ultimate rule is mercy.

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