A Prophetic Parable

This Sunday's Gospel reading, Matthew 21:33-43, is one of Jesus' harshest prophetic parables. In it he predicts his death and infers that his murderers will be his audience, the chief priests and elders who had just confronted him in the temple and asked by whose authority he had overturned the tables of the money changers and by whose authority he taught and cured people in the temple. 

‘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 watch-tower. 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.

No wonder the chief priests and elders were irate and wanted to kill him.