I bet this parable makes you quite uncomfortable.
If it helps, the initial hearers didn't seem to care for it too much either. The reason we don't much like this parable is because it gives you the real understanding that you can play a game, and lose. Most of the time, we like to forget that's possible. We like to think that this is participation trophy time, and that everyone, no matter how well or how poorly they do, will come out okay in the end. Consider the end of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Willy Wonka says of the children who come undone in his factory that "It'll all come out in the wash," even as they are turned purple and maimed. Fine fine, so even though Charlie Bucket wins, nobody else really loses. Nobody else really suffers the massive consequence that their behavior would suggest.
That's how we like to think about things. It'll all come out in the wash. There will be more time, more moments, everyone will get a shot to be right with God in the end. But Jesus, when he speaks to his audience in the reading from the Gospel, is making it clear that the vineyard will be given to other tenants who aren't quite as willing to kill the landlord's son.
So maybe it doesn't all come out in the wash. Maybe CS Lewis is right when he says that if you're playing a game, you have to be able to lose. That's real stuff that happens, to be sure. When it comes time for the good people of the time of Christ to pick a side, they define themselves by rejection of Christ and his word. I want you to think about the specific time that these readings take place - Jesus has just cleared out the Temple, has just set up court there, and is teaching and preaching from there, and when he does, the people listening to him get angrier and angrier the more he talks. They do so because Jesus is telling them, parable after parable, that they've chosen the wrong path forward. This is easy to do, of course. Though the Bible is quite clear, we like to behave and act as though it's supremely complicated - that is, how could we possibly understand the subtle nuance of the words '[the lord of the vineyard] will bring those wretches to a wretched end and will rent the vineyard to other tenants who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.' How could we possibly work out the subtlety of the son being sent to the tenants, the tenants killing the son, and then the vineyard being taken away from them. If you want further clarity of this, the Bible straight up tells you in black and white what's up "When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus' parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet."
The Pharisees and the chief priests get this, why don't we? Why are you carrying water for the Pharisees so hard, to try and get them to not be held to account by these very simple and straightforward words. And why are you doing the thing you're not supposed to do, which is after Jesus says what's going on, to step to him and say, in the words of Peter "Never, Lord." Who are you to say that?
Now what the Pharisees didn't get is that the Parable isn't a guarantee of the future. Think about Scrooge's conundrum where he faced his grave, saying to the ghost of Christmas future 'are these the signs of things that will be or can be?' For the Pharisees, they could ask that same question. This parable, is this a parable of what must be, or what will be if things do not change? And the answer is that these things are not set in stone. They're not a guarantee of what must be in perpetuity. The people who are having the vineyard wrenched away from them don't have to. This isn't a predestined racial thing, where the citizens of Israel are being passed over for the Gentiles. This is something else entirely. How do I know?
Because of Paul.
Paul walks this through in his own body. Paul lives this out in his flesh. He talks about himself as being a Hebrew of Hebrews: Circumcised on the 8th day, of the tribe of Benjamin, a persecutor of the church, zealous as to the law, all that stuff. But Paul, when he runs into the reality of Christ as relates to forgiveness of sins, counts all those things to be rubbish for the sake of gaining Jesus Christ as his savior. Paul lives this in his own flesh, as someone who had been disregarding the owner of the vineyard, as someone who had been dismissing the landowner, had not been bearing fruit in keeping with repentance, all that. Paul has to confront the Savior, Jesus, and the conflict between the two cornerstones that were the possibilities for him. On the one hand came the cornerstone that Paul had been building up off of so far, circumcision, tribal membership, all that stuff, contrasted with the cornerstone of Christ, which was forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the body and life everlasting. For Paul before, the law was a way of attaining God, of obedience and arrival into God's vineyard. But for Paul as a Christian, he understood that the law was not something that he could ever attain, and by thinking that he could, the law itself became twisted and misunderstood.
Here's the best way that I've found to be able to explain it. If you're thinking that the law is something that people should reasonably be able to keep, then these things should be observed, and done. But if the law is too hard, then it must be changed to fit what is possible. That's what happens with the law of the land, you know. The law of Canada changes over time to fit new realities, generally conforming itself to the behavior of its citizens. If people are incapable of keeping the law, then the law tends to change to fit what people are currently doing. Instead of posting a sign saying 'keep off the grass,' the attitude becomes to put a path wherever people are currently wearing through the grass down to the dirt.
But if you keep on changing the law to fit where you are currently at, then the law becomes baser and baser. In effect, if the law gets ground down to the lowest common denominator, it will end up being only what we are capable of doing fully, and given how broken people are, it will end up being less about what people are able to do, and more about who people were able to be. Think of how things get defined over time - becoming a matter less of faith, of duty and obedience, and more a matter of right birth, right opinion, right ritual. And the problem with this is that it becomes defined by an ingroup with a very large outgroup.
When the owner of the vineyard comes to the vineyard looking for the fruit in keeping with repentance, with the fruit of the Spirit, the people were incapable of bringing it forward because they'd redefined things so heavily to be about who they were rather than what they believed. And when Jesus arrives to tell them to repent, they resist, fighting him all the way, believing that they have nothing to repent of, given that they've been right this whole time.
Paul believed that until he encountered Jesus, and grappled with his ideas with seriousness. There, he found something intense. The law was far larger than he'd ever expected, and that his plan to make it smaller had led to him keeping all of God's messengers out of the vineyard. When the son comes to the vineyard, what is he looking for? Faith, repentance, belief all those things, not for you to keep the law perfectly, he has done that for you. Then the law can stay what it is, pure and holy, and not dependent on our ability to keep it.
Paul, in working that out in his own flesh, brings forward to his hearers then as well as now, the reality of what was possible, and what the Pharisees should have realized as well. That you can forget what was behind, and strain on towards what is ahead. All are invited, you know, and Jesus desperately wants the Pharisees to be in the kingdom. And what it comes down is that vineyard will not belong to those who cast out the the prophets and kill the son. It will belong to the ones who offer up the fruit in the proper season.
But those, as Paul himself found out, can be the same people. Alleluia.
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