Ousted
By Anthony Casperson
8-16-25

It has been over half a decade since they’d interacted with her, but if the players of the fantasy tabletop RPG campaign that I ran were to be reminded of the name Avicia, I know anger would cross their faces.

She had been the local leader of a large city in the country that the players found themselves. The only person with more authority in that land was the king—whom they also wouldn’t remember very fondly, but I’ve told that story elsewhere. Avicia was like the Professor Umbridge to the king’s Voldemort.

Of course, it is understandable why the players still have utter disgust for Avicia. She had tricked them with enchanted plates and cups that caused them to become her mind-controlled minions for a few days—a timeframe of events which they never remembered. (The party had suspiciously tested the food and drinks the first time they’d met her, but not the dishware. Just as I…er…just as she had planned.)

Avicia had also ended up jailing the party after she was finished using them. But that had been the beginning of her downfall because the rebel allies of her cousin—Micah—aided the party in their escape from the jail. Micah had recognized the look of Avicia’s mind-controlled forces, so he didn’t hold the party’s actions against them. As well, he asked them to join him in ousting Avicia from the city’s noble seat.

The rebel leader also told the party a story of how Avicia had risen to that role. Both she and Micah had been far-removed members of the family line for the leadership role. But then, a mysterious sickness overcame everyone who held claim to the seat; the closer they were to it, the sooner they died. It had appeared to be an epidemic that could have been detrimental to the city. But, just as mysteriously, the illness disappeared as soon as Avicia was the heir to the leadership role.

Micah’s suspicion had been raised, even as he felt relief that he hadn’t succumbed to the illness as the next in line after Avicia. So, he had investigated his cousin. And discovered that she had invoked a curse upon their family line, all in a bid to rise to the very rank she now held. Every other contender to the seat had been taken out. (The king of the nation had also secretly backed the plan, but he’d be dealt with by the party at a later date.)

As if the party had needed another reason to hate Avicia, her actions as an evil usurper who forced her will upon the city had left the land in a terrible state. Somebody needed to do something. Micah had been trying to step in, but with the arrival of the party, he finally had a fighting force that could aid him in ousting his cousin.

Of course, the party succeeded, but it is Avicia’s actions as a power-hungry, politicking manipulator that I wish to emphasize in this week’s blog. She stands as an illustration of the type of person who stood before Jesus as he spoke the parable we’re covering in our “Mysteries of the Kingdom” series.

Last week, in a passage immediately previous to this week’s, we saw Jesus walking into the temple on the Tuesday before his sacrifice on the cross. The chief priests and elders of the city swiftly approached, asking by whose authority Jesus had acted, both in his teaching and in his driving the moneylenders from the temple grounds.

Jesus responded with a returned question about John the Baptist’s authority. Then, when the chief priests and elders refused to answer his question, Jesus told them a parable showing that eventual obedience was better than lipserving disobedience.

But with this week’s parable, found in Matthew 21:33-46, Jesus ups the ante with another parable about rejecting the will of the Father concerning how to handle his vineyard.

He tells the story of a landowner who built up a beautiful vineyard and winepress. A mighty wall defended the perimeter from thieves and bandits. And this landowner even built a watchtower to protect the area. Everything that a person tending the land could want for a good business was right there.

But this landowner wasn’t going to be the one to tend the land. No, he lived elsewhere. The land would be let out for tenant farmers to work. The farmers’ part of the deal was to pay a percentage of the land’s earnings. A usual tenant farming deal would include a 25-30% payment to the landlord.

So, off went the landowner to his home elsewhere. And the farmers tended his land. When harvest season came, the landowner sent one of his servants to collect. But the farmers beat him. The Greek word used here could also mean that they flayed or skinned the servant. And the next servant that the landowner sent, they killed. The one after that, they stoned to death.

You’d think that the owner of the land would’ve gotten the clue a little sooner. But considering that Jesus’ point in the parable was to speak about how the religious and political elite of the Israelites had, throughout history, refused to listen to the prophets that God had sent—often killing the prophets through various means—we’ll not hold the landowner as too oblivious. God had his purpose for the string of his servants that he’d sent.

Back in the story, we see that the landowner had grown weary in losing servant after servant to these usurpers who acted like they owned everything. He decided to send his son. Surely, they’ll listen to him, the landowner thought to himself.

However, his thought wasn’t proven true, because as the son strode toward the evil usurpers, who’d killed person after person to maintain their control of the land, they saw him coming. And hatched the plan to kill the son, thus taking the inheritance for themselves.

It seems that the farmers thought that if the father had still been alive, he would’ve come himself. And since the son was arriving, then it was likely true that the landowner was dead. All they had to do was kill the son and they’d be free to keep everything for themselves. (They would’ve been wrong, but when has a little truth stopped arrogant usurpers from their plans of self-aggrandizement?)

Jesus tells his audience that the farmers took the son, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Our Savior prophesied the very actions that these temple leaders would do to him in just a few days, taken out of the city and killed outside of its walls.

But rather than explain all of that about his own death, Jesus asks the chief priests and elders what the landowner would likely do to the usurping tenants. To this, they replied that the landowner would oust the usurpers, have them put to death, and let out the land to other farmers who would keep the covenanted agreement.

Just as Jesus’ words predicted the general events of his death, so too did their words predict what would happen to them.

God had let out the vineyard of his people to these leaders. In their case, it was the temple grounds themselves that were under their care. But they had desired money more than the worship of Yahweh. They’d used the vineyard, but refused to uphold their part of the covenant. The landowner hadn’t received his due for a long time.

Remember how this whole episode in the temple grounds started that day. Jesus had been confronted because of his table-flipping from the day before. Tables that taken up the only space in the temple grounds that Gentile converts to the faith could enter. That outer circle of the area had been designed by God to be there for when his covenant extended beyond the Israelites.

Thus, when the chief priests and elders allowed the moneylenders to take up that space, kicking out any Gentile worshippers who’d come to celebrate Passover, they kept from God the Gentiles’ proper worship. They’d stolen from God. Usurped his vineyard. And acted like it was theirs to control.

Now here’s the Son, sent to retrieve the glory due to his Father. Since the tenant farmers don’t like that idea, here they are questioning his actions. And in a few days, they’ll take him out of the city—out of the vineyard—to kill him, like their ancestors did to so many of the prophets before him.

Jesus tells them that just as those farmers had been put to death, so too would the stone that the builders rejected come to crush them in judgement. And the Kingdom of God would be given to a people who would produce fruit and give the owner his due.

I find Jesus’ terminology in verse 43 quite fitting, given the context. The Greek word for “people” used here is often translated as “Gentiles.” The vineyard will be given to the Gentiles who will produce fruit. It’s not only going to be removed from these religious and political leaders of the Israelites, but given to the very people whom they’d tried to keep out.

They’d tried to tell Jesus that he had no right to oust the moneylenders yesterday. But Jesus tells them to watch out because the Father won’t stop there. He’s going to oust the chief priests and elders too. And then invite in the Gentiles under his graceful covenant. Then, Yahweh’s due worship will come to him.

There’s a consequence for rejecting the call of God. A repercussion for refusing to listen to his Son. Death. Eternal death. Removal from the Kingdom of God.

Before us, we have two choices. Either reject the Son, or listen to him. Plot to kill him, or cling to his ways. Fall to your eternal demise, or rise to the Kingdom of God.

There are no other choices, as we saw last week too. Which are you going to choose? Because the parable can be about our choices as well. And only the farmers who give God his due worship will find themselves in the kingdom.