A man planted a vineyard, put a hedge
around it,
dug a wine press, and built a tower.
Then he leased it to tenant farmers and
left on a journey.
At the proper time he sent a servant to
the tenants
to obtain from them some of the produce
of the vineyard.
But they seized him, beat him,
and sent him away empty-handed.
Again he sent them another servant.
And that one they beat over the head and
treated shamefully.
He sent yet another whom they killed.
So, too, many others; some they beat,
others they killed.
He had one other to send, a beloved son.
Mark
12:1-6
The theme that God’s message will be
rejected occurs throughout Scripture. It is almost comic how often the
Israelites demand to be returned to Egypt as Moses leads them to freedom.
Jesus is in constant conflict with the religious figures of his day.
Today’s reading is a parable Jesus addresses to them to point out that
every prophet is persecuted by his people. The Pharisees were the
liberals of their day – accepting a loose, permissive interpretation of
Scripture. Their populist message resonated and they were successful
evangelicals, making converts throughout the Roman Empire. The Sadducees were
more conservative and insisted on strict compliance with Scripture even if it
required a harsh outcome. (They died out with the destruction of the Temple
in 70 AD.) Jesus was despised by both groups. What the Pharisees and
Sadducees had in common was a conviction that God punished sin with poverty,
sickness and social ostracism, and rewarded good conduct with wealth, health
and popularity. Jesus disagreed. He said the poor, the sick and the
outcast had not been cursed, but enjoyed the most sympathy and attention from
God. The rich, healthy and popular are not blessed; they're just lucky.
That made Jesus’s contemporaries really mad and it doesn’t sit well with us
either. We tend to believe God loves us more when we behave well.
The opposite appears to be true.
Photo
credit: Mark McCormick
