He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired workers.”’

Stay in that same house, eating and drinking what they give you, for the worker deserves his pay. Do not move around from house to house.

But the worker answered him, ‘Sir, leave it alone this year too, until I dig around it and put fertilizer on it.

But when he came to his senses he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have food enough to spare, but here I am dying from hunger!

So he said to the worker who tended the vineyard, ‘For three years now, I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and each time I inspect it I find none. Cut it down! Why should it continue to deplete the soil?’

But he will reply, ‘I don’t know where you come from! Go away from me, all you evildoers!’

Then he began to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, leased it to tenant farmers, and went on a journey for a long time.

When harvest time came, he sent a slave to the tenants so that they would give him his portion of the crop. However, the tenants beat his slave and sent him away empty-handed.