For Sunday, October 5, 2014 – Matthew 21:33-46
In elementary school I remember getting high marks for Reading Skills but not quite as high for what was called Comprehension. Similarly, we can “read” Jesus quite fluently without truly comprehending him. It is easy to point at the chief priests and elders who were listening to Jesus without comprehending and call them slow, but the rest of us are not winning any races when it comes to comprehending some of the most basic truths. Just look at us, light bearers stumbling over each other in the dark. People of forgiveness, called to be heralds of peace, yet too often silent and complicit in greed and violence. Called to extreme generosity and the rule of love, we seem unable to grasp the seriousness of our failing to steward the earth and one another.
We hear another of Jesus’ parables about workers in the vineyard, the owner away and the tenants acting irresponsibly. In the story these tenants have fallen into horrifying carelessness. They lose perspective, forgetting that they are not masters and rulers but caretakers of a vineyard not their own. On top of that, they have a violent streak that cannot be curbed. Not only do they turn out to be poor stewards but shockingly greedy and violent as well. We are quick to judge the tenants as wicked. We are sure we would never be as uncaring as they. Surely we would rise to noble action to ensure the owner’s harvest.
The chief priests and elders agree—the renegade tenants in the story need to be removed. What they do not comprehend is that they are the tenants. Dare I say that we, too, are the tenants? We have been entrusted with an awesome responsibility to care for all creation. We are not meant for violence and greed. Aggressive love and forgiveness are our calling, not aggressive apathy or aggressive avoidance of the realities of war and poverty and the destruction of our earth home. Isn’t it time to slap our global forehead in disbelief that we have been such thoughtless stewards? Isn’t it time to beg collectively for pardon and seek to make amends? Or we can just keep plodding along, acting and reacting mindlessly, reading the signs of these times without comprehending. It is our choice. I wonder what kind of marks we will receive.
