Who is Jesus according to this parable?
He is the Son who has come to reclaim what rightfully belongs to his Father. He is the Son whose mission is violently rejected by the Father’s own tenants. He is the Son whose rejection is vindicated by the Father. And he is the Son whose vindication prompts the final judgment of the unfaithful tenants. To avoid getting distracted by certain details in the parable which are merely stylistic (e.g., the Father having gone “to another country”), the preacher would do well to stay somewhere within this basic Christological plot.
In coming to reclaim what rightly belongs to his Father, the Son sets out to restore the world to its divinely created order. One need only look at Jesus’ ministry to see what this looks like: the sick are made well, sinners are restored, and God is praised (Matthew 9:8). In short, Jesus brings wholeness to a broken world, providing proleptic glimpses into what he elsewhere calls “the kingdom of heaven.” This is what God’s creation is supposed to look like.
