The Wicked Tenants (Reflections on Pentecost 19, Year A 2026)

 

Have you ever been a landlord or rented out an Air B&B or let a friend (or your adult kid) stay in your house for an extended period? If you have, you know how tricky the landlord/tenant relationship can be. For Pentecost 19, Year A in the RCL we get this pretty violent story some have called “The Parable of the Wicked Tenants.” (Matthew 21: 33-46) At Faith Lutheran here in Philadelphia, we have several different groups of tenants. We have six AA meetings each week, a senior citizen’s group on Wednesday afternoons, and a support group for families dealing with addiction which meets once a month. All we ask is that the tenants treat our little corner of God’s vineyard with respect, clean up after themselves, and give us a small donation to help keep the lights on.

Our Seventh Day Adventist Friends who use the church building on Saturdays aren’t exactly wicked, but some of my folks complain because the Adventists keep moving our stuff and never put it back in the right place. They’ve also installed all manner of electronic gadgets around the worship space without asking our permission. But, hey!, They’re our brothers and sisters in Christ, and we’re not about to throw them out (or put them to a miserable death!).

The tenants in Jesus’ parable don’t get treated so well, even though their landlord shows a surprising gift for tolerance of their wicked behavior. They are thieves who don’t respect the covenant they’ve made even though the landlord has provided generously for them. When called upon to surrender payment they turn to violence. They murder the landlord’s son, possibly thinking he’s come because his Old Man has died. With the heir out of the way, they can claim squatters’ rights to the property. But, when his son is killed, the landlord will summon the authorities and take his vineyard back by force, slaughtering the ones who have misused it and leasing it to others more worthy.

It’s really tempting for us, as we read this story in the context of Matthew’s gospel, to allegorize the tale and see the vineyard as God’s kingdom (especially since the story is paired in our lectionary with the reading from Isaiah 5:1-7, which explicitly compares the vineyard to the house of Israel), the wicked tenants as the Jews, and the future worthy tenants as good Christian folks like us. We can read this and say, Sorry, Jews. You guys screwed up. You killed Jesus and now we’re God’s favorite people (Nyah!).

Okay. Maybe that interpretation is more than a little antisemitic. Of course, we could then say our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters missed the boat with all those indulgences and whatnot, and now the kingdom belongs to Protestants (specifically Lutherans!). But neither of these “us-versus-them” interpretations are particularly instructive or spiritual (They’re not historically accurate, either! Our Jewish and Catholic friends seem to be getting along just fine and are still every bit God’s children just as we are.).

So? What’s this about? I think it’s helpful when we read the Bible to imagine a couple of things. First, we need to put ourselves in the place of the writer or the community to whom he was writing. I think it’s very likely that Matthew was not only allegorizing Jesus’ parable, but also the context in which Jesus tells the parable. By the time Matthew got around to writing his gospel (sometime between 80 and 90 CE), the Jerusalem temple was long destroyed and the priests and Pharisees who opposed Jesus were likely dead too. The folks to whom Matthew wrote were, we think, a community of Jewish Christians in Antioch or some place in Syria. They were trying to sort out their own identity as both Jews and Christians, and it’s not hard to imagine some squabbles breaking out.  Matthew may have been saying to the leaders of that community, Dudes! Remember what happened to the priests and Pharisees in Jesus’ day? Same could happen to you if you’re not producing the kind of fruit Jesus asks of us.

Secondly, whenever we read one of Jesus’ parables, I think it’s useful to cast ourselves in the role of the least likable person in the story. Who are the wicked tenants? We are. In the story the landlord has provided a truly first-class vineyard. He’s given the tenants everything they’ll need to live and be well. He didn’t stiff them, and he’s excruciatingly patient when they stiff him (I’d have sent the troops in after they beat and killed the first group pf slaves!). The parable holds up a mirror to the sin of ingratitude. God provides for me and forgives me every day, and I get my shorts in a bunch when my desktop printer goes on the fritz!

The tenants aren’t just ungrateful. They’re also selfish. They want to keep all the grapes for themselves, forgetting they don’t own the vineyard. We don’t either. Everything we have is from God.

The good news, of course, is that the landlord will find new tenants for his land. If you’ve been keeping up with what’s going on in the Christian world, you’ll notice that American churches are emptying out like a flushing commode—and let’s not even get started on the churches in Europe. Nevertheless, churches in Asia and the global south (Latin America and Africa) are filling up. God’s word is still active. Rather than lament the loss of a once-central religious culture in our land, we should be rejoicing that others are experiencing the love and joy of Christ.

I see this parable as being about more than crime and punishment. It’s an invitation to every Christian to experience gratitude, the joy of living for others, and a reminder that God is always active in mysterious and wonderful ways.

Be hopeful, my friend. God isn’t done yet—not by a long shot. Thanks for visiting this week!