29 " 'I will not,' he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.
30 "Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, 'I will, sir,' but he did not go.
31 "Which of the two did what his father wanted?"
"The first," they answered.
Jesus said to them, "Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. 32 For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.
33 "Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. 34 When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.
35 "The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. 36 Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. 37 Last of all, he sent his son to them. 'They will respect my son,' he said.
38 "But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, 'This is the heir. Come, let's kill him and take his inheritance.' 39 So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
40 "Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?"
41 "He will bring those wretches to a wretched end," they replied, "and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time."
42 Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the Scriptures:
" 'The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes' ?
43 "Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. 44 Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but anyone on whom it falls will be crushed."
45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus' parables, they knew he was talking about them. 46 They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.
My thoughts -
We're pretty well trained to think that criticism is a bad thing. If someone criticizes you they're coming down on you, right? They don't like what you're doing. It's not pleasant. But if you don't receive criticism how can you grow? How can you know you're doing the right thing if the only person evaluating your actions is you?
Jesus reserved his sharpest criticism for the religious leaders of his day. Clearly in this scripture they didn't take it well. Granted, Jesus had some very harsh words for them. I'm not sure I would react well, either. But it makes me wonder: How would Jesus respond to us, the Church?
Sure, there are a lot of denominations and congregations within them and not really any universal Church to speak of. But hypothetically, take the cumulative actions of those claiming to be the hands and feet of Christ: How are we doing? Would Jesus be proud? Would Jesus be ashamed? Would Jesus be angry? What would Jesus's response to us be?
I don't know if I can answer that question. But I'm pretty sure if we're not asking ourselves it and evaluating all that we do against the teachings of Christ then we run the risk of being on the business end of some pretty harsh criticism by our Lord.
If there's one thing Jesus showed during his life it was a willingness to aggressively oppose the religious establishment. And guess what. That's us.
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