In addition to last week’s parable, Jesus told another parable involving inheritance. A man owns a vineyard, leases it to some tenants, and goes off to a far country. The time comes for the harvest, and the owner sends some servants to collect payment. It’s only fair—it’s his land that they are farming, he’s owed payment for its use. Three times a servant is sent to the tenants; three times the tenants beat the servant and send him back empty-handed. Then, the owner sends his son—his beloved son—figuring that he would receive more respect than his servants. On the contrary, the son is beaten and killed. They figure they will get the land if the son is killed.

How ridiculous! Thinking that killing the land owner’s son will net them the land? But, that’s how Jesus told it: They beat the servants, kill the son, and refuse to pay the rent but expect to get the owner’s land. The land owner has every right to go in there and raze the land and slaughter the tenants.

Thus, Jesus said, “What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” His hearers scoffed at this idea.

“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.” (Isaiah 53:7) This passage from Isaiah was fulfilled in what you heard from tonight’s Gospel.

Prodigal: adjective; recklessly extravagant, characterized by wasteful expenditure, lavish.

This is perhaps one of the best known parables of Jesus, if not the best known. It has become known as The Prodigal Son, but that title doesn’t fit quite right. The parable is not simply about the son, though the story mainly follows his actions. It does so to set up who the parable is about—the father who is prodigal in his own right.

The prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel had spoken against the shepherds of Israel and Judah. These men—prophets, priests, and kings—whom God had set up to lead His people, care for them, feed them with His Word were not seeing to the tasks to which He had sent them. So He declared woe upon them.

Because they had done this, God declared that He will be their shepherd. (cf. Ezekiel 34:23; Micah 5:2) In a stable outside the little town of Bethlehem, that Shepherd was born. Conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary, Jesus is God-with-us, the Shepherd promised of old. He is the one who fulfilled the promise made through the prophet Ezekiel:

The same question and answer almost always come up when there is some sort of tragedy or disaster. Unfortunately, they are the wrong question and answer.

Let's look at the answer first: “Those people who died in the disaster deserved it. They had been living lives of manifest sin for too long, and God had had enough and brought destruction and desolation on them.”