Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

Introduction  

In the last Sunday Gos­pel (Matt 21:28–32), Jesus reminded the reli­gious lead­ers (priests and eld­ers) that those they regard as sin­ners (tax col­lect­ors, pros­ti­tutes, and oth­ers) make it to the king­dom of God, while they them­selves do not. In this Sunday Gos­pel (Matt 21:33–43), with the par­able of the unfaith­ful ten­ant farm­ers, Jesus informs the same reli­gious lead­ers that due to their unfaith­ful­ness, the king­dom of God will be taken away from them and entrus­ted to those who know its value and who will take prop­er care of it. Since these reli­gious lead­ers can­not guar­an­tee justice and right­eous­ness, there is no need to leave the king­dom of God in their hands; oth­er­wise, they con­vert it to their own king­dom, where injustice, cor­rup­tion, and reck­less­ness reign (cf. Isa 5:7).

The reward for wickedness 

“Now when the own­er of the vine­yard comes, what will he do to those ten­ants? They said to him, he will put those wretches to a miser­able death, and lease the vine­yard to oth­er ten­ants who will give him the pro­duce at the har­vest time” (Matt 21:40–41). As the say­ing goes, as you make your bed, you lie on it. There are no actions without con­sequences. The con­tinu­ous send­ing of his ser­vants was an attempt on the part of the landown­ers to make the ten­ants under­stand and respect the con­tract. If he could par­don their killing of his ser­vants, he would nev­er for­give them for mur­der­ing his own son. Accord­ing to the chief priests and the eld­ers, the landown­er will deal mer­ci­lessly with those wicked ten­ants and put them to a miser­able death. There­after, he will now give the vine­yard to oth­er ten­ants who will respect the agree­ment and give the landown­er his own share of the pro­duce at har­vest time. There­fore, the reward for wicked­ness is death. Not just phys­ic­al death, but espe­cially spir­itu­al death.

Conclusion

With the par­ables in Mat­thew 21:28–43, Jesus recalls the atten­tion of reli­gious lead­ers, espe­cially Chris­ti­an lead­ers, who seem to propag­ate and pro­mote their own per­son­al interests and selfish king­dom. The fact that one is an ordained min­is­ter of God does not mean such a per­son is auto­mat­ic­ally qual­i­fied for the king­dom of God. What qual­i­fies one for the king­dom of God is not office, but how that min­is­ter man­ages such office. If the pub­lic­ans and pros­ti­tutes will make heav­en before the priests and the eld­ers, then it is bet­ter they nev­er assumed such offices. If the king­dom of heav­en will be taken away from them due to their unfaith­ful­ness, then their offices have brought death rather than life to them. Instead of allow­ing our offices to devi­ate our focus, let us carry our offices along and use them to pro­duce fruits for the kingdom.

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE:
SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I‑II-III)!! The reflec­tion for the 27^th Sunday of the year (A) is found in The Word of Life, vol. I, pages 470–477. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo
or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com
or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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