The Parable of the wicked tenants

[John Martin]

Luke 20:9-19 He began to tell the people this parable. "A man planted a vineyard, and rented it out to some farmers, and went into another country for a long time. At the proper season, he sent a servant to the farmers to collect his share of the fruit of the vineyard. But the farmers beat him, and sent him away empty. He sent yet another servant, and they also beat him, and treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty. He sent yet a third, and they also wounded him, and threw him out. The lord of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son. It may be that seeing him, they will respect him.’ "But when the farmers saw him, they reasoned among themselves, saying, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, that the inheritance may be ours.’ They threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. What therefore will the lord of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy these farmers, and will give the vineyard to others." When they heard it, they said, "May it never be!" But he looked at them, and said, "Then what is this that is written, ‘The stone which the builders rejected, The same was made the chief cornerstone?’ "Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, But it will crush whomever it falls on to dust." The chief priests and the scribes sought to lay hands on Him that very hour, but they feared the people—for they knew He had spoken this parable against them. [SIZE=-1](web)[/SIZE]


[SIZE=-1]The parable of the wicked tenants deals with the relationship between God, religions, religious leaders and the common people. The purpose of religions and religious leaders is to bring people to God and not keep them to themselves. Jesus also said, 'the Sabbath is made for human beings and not human beings for the sake of the Sabbath'.
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[SIZE=-1]Jesus realized that religious leaders were using the scriptures to control people and blocking people's spiritual progress. The tenants have usurped the power of the owner and behaving like the owners; the means have become the end. Jesus also said, 'You have the keys to the knowledge of the kingdom of heaven:neither you enter nor allow others to enter'. The religious leaders have become an obstacle for people's spiritual growth. The mission of Jesus was to set right this unhealthy and oppressive relationship.between God, religious leaders,religions,scriptures and the people. The sacred scriptures, religions and religious leaders are like only God's tenants.They are meant to be at the service of God and human beings and not to use God to make human beings to be at their service. They are like ladders between God and people.Ladders are meant to climb upon and not to sit upon. If people sit down on the ladder they be come an obstacle to others. Jesus corrected this position.He used the keys of the knowledge of the kingdom present in the scriptures for his own spiritual evolution and tried to help others in their spiritual evolution. He gave these keys to his disciples so that they can use them for their spiritual evolution and help others to do the same.[/SIZE]Scriptures are signposts pointing towards God; religions are sign posts pointing towards God and religious leaders are sign posts pointing towards God.
[SIZE=-1]The question is: have the Christian sctiptures, Christian belief systems and Christian leaders become again like the wicked tenants? Have they taken the power of God into their hands? If Jesus comes today will he say the same parable?
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[ChristineES]

The question is: have the Christian sctiptures, Christian belief systems and Christian leaders become again like the wicked tenants? Have they taken the power of God into their hands? If Jesus comes today will he say the same parable?

Some certainly have. Power, in itself, isn't a bad thing but it can corrupt some people. Some people love to "lord" it over others. And that can be true within religious organizations as well- some leaders of a religion want to have control over others, and some leaders want to be better than others (holier than thou). There will always be those who think they are the ones who are right and everyone else is wrong. I think this is the kind of thing Jesus meant when he said 1. become childlike in your faith and 2. become servants of one another. If we don't do that, we can start to think we are somehow better of a certain faith than others.

So, yes, that parable still applies to us today and if Jesus were to come, He would repeat it.

 

[John Martin]

Some certainly have. Power, in itself, isn't a bad thing but it can corrupt some people. Some people love to "lord" it over others. And that can be true within religious organizations as well- some leaders of a religion want to have control over others, and some leaders want to be better than others (holier than thou). There will always be those who think they are the ones who are right and everyone else is wrong. I think this is the kind of thing Jesus meant when he said 1. become childlike in your faith and 2. become servants of one another. If we don't do that, we can start to think we are somehow better of a certain faith than others.

So, yes, that parable still applies to us today and if Jesus were to come, He would repeat it.

Thank you ChristineES,

 

[Dunemeister]

[SIZE=-1]The parable of the wicked tenants deals with the relationship between God, religions, religious leaders and the common people.[/SIZE]

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Actually, it does nothing of the sort. Rather, the parable is about the conflict between Jesus and the religious authorities of the day. The question is, "Who has authority to teach Israel?"

The problem here is that you've lifted the parable out of its literary context and dehistoricized it. In the first 8 verses of Luke 20, Jesus was preaching in the temple precincts, drawing quite a crowd. [/SIZE][SIZE=-1][SIZE=-1]The religious leaders publicly question Jesus' authority to teach. After all, they were the ones invested with this authority. Jesus responds strangely. He says he will explain the nature of his authority (the reader already knows that this authority is rooted in Jesus' divine messiahship) if they can explain whether John the Baptist's ministry was divine or human in origin. The thrust of this question is, if you are an authorized teacher of Israel, you should be able to determine who is a prophet or not. For political reasons, the religious leaders claim not to be able to answer this question.

This response is telling. Since they can't say whether the Baptist was from God or not (and all Israel knew he was), how can they claim that Jesus isn't from God?

Jesus then goes on to relate the parable of the wicked tenants. The parable is not about religion in the abstract or in general. Rather, it specifically denounces the religious leadership of a particular time and place because of their unwillingness to see what is obvious to everyone -- Jesus is the Messiah. It further claims that, just as their spiritually blind forbears killed the prophets, so this generation would kill God's Son. It's hard for us, separated as we are from this parable by thousands of years and kilometres, to appreciate the enormity of Jesus' accusation. Worse, the parable implies that their action taken against the Son (an obvious foreshadowing of the crucifixion) will lead to their ruination, their authority given over to others (who?).

The parables of Jesus become fully and truly scandalous when they are allowed to function as they were designed to: as statements concerning the particular history of Israel and Jesus (and the conflict between the two). When we try to read them as culturally neutral visions of ahistorical spirituality, we actually eviscerate them of meaning.

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The question is: have the Christian sctiptures, Christian belief systems and Christian leaders become again like the wicked tenants? Have they taken the power of God into their hands? If Jesus comes today will he say the same parable?

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To answer this question, one must first be clear on who "the others" are that have received the authority that was taken from the Pharisees. Was there a community (that recognized the Son for who he was) that was given the authority once possessed by the Pharisees? How is that community defined? Does it continue to exist today, and if so, where is it? Once we have that, we can reasonably ask whether that community has become like the wicked tenants. It's not obvious to me that modern American evangelical Christianity are "the others" or are meaningfully related to them.

 

[John Martin]

I do not think that Jesus wanted people to accept him as the messiah. I think we should put away these messianic concepts. His mission was not so much to tell who he was rather who every one was. By telling who he was he was telling everyone tho they were. The mission of Jesus was to invite his spiritual tradition to grow from the dualistic experience of God to the non dualistic experience of God. His mission was to make people free. 'Truth will make you free' he declared. The crucifixion of Jesus was the consequence of refusal on the part of the Jewish spiritual leaders to grow into higher divine-human relationship. They considered that their truth or belief system was absolute truth and there was nothing higher. Jesus realized that their truth was relative and they need to grow into absolute truth which breaks down the walls of division and creates one God,one creation and one humanity. It is the relative truth that divides human beings. Jesus was living in the absolute truth. He embraced everyone within himself. Jesus was not asking people to believe him as the Messiah but he was asking people to grow from the dualistic relationship with God to the non-dualistic relationship with God: from the creator-creature relationship to 'the Father and I are one'; from the relative truth to the absolute truth, from divisions into unity, from the external Law to the inner Law.

 

[savagewind]

one God,one creation and one humanity.

Who can rightly say this is not true? An atheist , maybe. For him it is one reality, one planet, one humanity. It's the same imo.

 

[Dunemeister]

I do not think that Jesus wanted people to accept him as the messiah.

Well, of course if you wish to ignore the only source of information we have about Jesus, you're free to think whatever you want about him.

 

[savagewind]

Well, of course if you wish to ignore the only source of information we have about Jesus, you're free to think whatever you want about him.

The name of the child born of Mary means YHVH is salvation. 'Jesus' is messiah in that he taught the body of believers trust in YHVH to save. Two people cannot both be Earth's savior unless they agree perfectly.

 

[Valjean]

This is either mistranslated or gobbledygook. Is there supposed to be a lesson in here? Is there some moral analogy? I can't even make out what happened.

"When they heard it" When they heard what? There was no message sent. There's only some third person aside speculating that the "lord of the vineyard" will do. "But he looked at them" Who looked at whom? Are we talking about the landowner?

There follows a bunch of gobbledygook I can't make heads or tails of. Do Christians really use dreck like this as the foundation of their religion? You'd think God could make His meaning a little clearer and more concise.

If this were an eighth grade English paper it would have received an F.

 

[savagewind]

When the vineyard's tenders heard the owner of the vineyard will come and destroy them they did not believe it. That is true.

When those hearing the parable heard that the owner's son was killed and the vineyard would go to the murderers those present said "Never!" That is true too.

 

[savagewind]

"When they heard it" When they heard what? There was no message sent. There's only some third person aside speculating that the "lord of the vinyard" will do.
"When they heard it" When who heard what? "But he looked at them" Who looked at whom? Are we talking about the landowner?

They are those hearing the parable. Jesus looked at them. I do not know why that matters.

 

[John Martin]

This is either mistranslated or gobbledygook. Is there supposed to be a lesson in here? Is there some moral analogy? I can't even make out what happened.

"When they heard it" When they heard what? There was no message sent. There's only some third person aside speculating that the "lord of the vineyard" will do. "But he looked at them" Who looked at whom? Are we talking about the landowner?

There follows a bunch of gobbledygook I can't make heads or tails of. Do Christians really use dreck like this as the foundation of their religion? You'd think God could make His meaning a little clearer and more concise.

If this were an eighth grade English paper it would have received an F.

When they heard it, when the religious leaders heard the parable
But he looked at them, Jesus looked at them.
and said, "Then what is this that is written, ‘The stone which the builders rejected, The same was made the chief cornerstone?’
This is a quotation from Pslam 118
…21I will praise you: for you have heard me, and are become my salvation. 22The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner. 23This is the LORD's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. …
"Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, But it will crush whomever it falls on to dust."
This stone is eternal truth; it is sat, real; and everything is unreal, asat or relative truth. Every untruth that tries to fight with to the Truth will be eliminated, like the darkness that comes to light or when the Eternal truth comes all the relative truths or darkness will be removed.
It also means that God will use the marginalized people as the means of liberation.
The chief priests and the scribes sought to lay hands on Him that very hour, but they feared the people—for they knew He had spoken this parable against them. [SIZE=-1](web)
The religious leaders were angry because Jesus pointed out how they were acting against the plan of God by not allowing people to grow spiritually. They usurped the power of God and oppressing people.The mission of Jesus was to liberate people.To lead people from the unreal to the real,from darkness to light and from death to eternal life.
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