wants us to engage with it, but to run away from it. The whole point of what Jesus is saying is that we are tenants too. We were there when they crucified the Lord.
Some of us were with those Roman bureaucrats, some with those violent soldiers. Some of us were among the Pharisees, smug in our biblical orthodoxy. But where were most of us? Statistics dictate that we were in that mindless crowd shouting, 'Crucify him! Crucify him!'
Our hands were not the actual hands that drove the nails through Jesus' hands. But our hearts are wicked, rebellious and irresponsible enough to have done it. I suppose we can plead ignorance. Indeed, Jesus pleaded it for us. 'Father, forgive them,' he said, 'for they do not know what they are doing' (Luke 23:34).
But this parable surely exposes the generosity of that prayer, and the shallowness of such an excuse. For if we crucified him in ignorance, it was nevertheless culpable ignorance. Jesus insists that these tenants knew only too well who it was they were murdering. That's why they were doing it. This is the heir,' they said. 'Let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.'
So Jesus would have us realize that deep down at the most profound levels of our personal honesty, we too know who he is and we too know why we don't want him in our lives. It is that obsessive desire for independence, that lunatic ambition to play god. 'I don't want any patronizing deity interfering in my life. I want to do my own thing, thank you very much. I want to be my own master. This is the heir; let's kill him and the inheritance will be ours.' We've all said it. And every time we say it we add our personal nail to those that held Christ to his cross.
3. How Jesus understood the future
What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? (Luke 20:15).
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