Friday of the 2nd week of Lent

The vineyard is an image used in Isaiah, when he talks about God tending the vineyard, watering and digging around the vines.

I will sing for the one I love
    a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
    on a fertile hillside.
2 He dug it up and cleared it of stones
    and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
    and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
    but it yielded only bad fruit.

God through Isaiah was lamenting for the lack of response from his people to his work in nurturing them. And now we have Jesus telling a parable that uses the same imagery. His audience - the Pharisees - would have been able to hear Jesus' sub text - that the parable was about them, and they were not nurturing the vineyard of God's people. No wonder they got angry! They, like most people, were not able to see that they must change, and be a humble people willing to seek for and to do God's will.