“And they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” (Luke 20:15-16a)
In their zeal to eliminate Jesus as a threat, the Pharisees sent several groups of their followers to try and trap Him into saying something to incriminate Himself. None of their efforts succeeded. Jesus had true wisdom and always spoke the truth so that His authority was above reproach. In His wisdom he turned the tables on the Pharisees with this parable about the tenants and the vineyard. The Lord had sent many prophets to Israel over the centuries, who attempted to lead the people to repentance and faith in Him. Each in turn had been rejected . The same was going to happen to Jesus, the Son. The very people the Lord was trying to redeem would kill Him.
Consequently those who thought themselves to be the Chosen people would find them opposed to God. They would lose their eternal inheritance and God would bring in others, the Gentiles, to make up His Kingdom. These newcomers were the idolatrous sinners, the dregs of society, the rejected and downtrodden. They would make up God’s Kingdom with Jesus as the cornerstone, the stone which was rejected. As such Jesus did fit in with the Pharisees way of thinking of what the Kingdom of God was or what a Messiah should be. Jesus is still that stone which does not fit in with what the world thinks today of who God is or should be. He extends love, mercy and forgiveness not to the rich and famous, or the celebrities, the beautiful people or the powerful, but to people who deserve nothing, people who realize they are helpless and hopeless sinners, people the world calls “losers”. As Jesus’ followers we share the same rejection as He did or ought to. We should feel out of place in this world for we are first and foremost citizens of His Kingdom.
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