harmoniously in tending the vines? Is that the problem? Is it that their science is too primitive; do they need to update their productive efficiency with mechanization and fertilizers? Is it the vicious socio-economic system to which they are victim, with its oppressive absentee landlords and exploited labourers, seething with class antagonism?
No. According to Jesus it's none of these things. The problem is simple, he says. These people were placed in the vineyard as tenants, but they want to be owners.
‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours’ (Luke 20:14).
A tenant, of course, is accountable to somebody. He pays the rent. And Jesus is saying here that the same is true of human beings. We are accountable too. We owe a debt of moral obedience to the God who gave us this beautiful world to live in. That's why the word 'ought' features so prominently in our vocabulary. Originally the word 'ought' was part of the verb 'to owe'. It is the word of moral duty, of moral debt. Intuitively, all human beings recognize its authority over them. We can distinguish quite easily in our decision-making between what we want to do, what's easiest to do or what others are forcing us to do and what we ought to do.
And we instinctively feel that final constraint upon our choices has an unquestionable priority over all others. No matter how painful or inconvenient it may be, no matter how many people are trying to make me do the opposite, if something is what I ought to do then I ought to do it. I'm obliged by an imperative taking precedence over every other consideration. We all understand that word 'ought', for it is the word of our tenancy, the word of our obligation.
The question that has occupied the minds of philosophers for thousands of years, of course, is: where does
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