"Listen to another parable.  There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower.  Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country.  When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce.  But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.  Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way.  Finally he sent his son to them, saying, 'They will respect my son.'  But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, 'This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance."  So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.  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."  Jesus said to them, "Have you never read in the scriptures: 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes'?  Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.  The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls."  When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.  They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

This parable shows that the mercy of the Father is long in its patience but when his justice comes it is swift.  For hundreds of years he sent prophets to Israel to collect the produce of righteous souls but they were all systematically destroyed by the established religious order of the day.  Finally he sent his only beloved Son and the chief priests and elders, to whom this parable is being addressed, envy and hate him to the point of plotting his death so they can receive his inheritance of renewal.  They succeed in Christ's death but the result is that the Church becomes founded on a group of fishermen and tax collectors instead of those who occupied the chair of Moses.

The lesson for us is the same as the lesson of the cursed fig tree.  Though we have been baptized into Christ's death and so are sharers in his resurrection and heirs of eternal life, all this can be taken from us in a moment if we do not produce fruit for the kingdom.  Disregard the anxieties and worries about what you have not done until this point in your life and begin anew today as though your lease on the vineyard has just been renewed.