Tobiah went out to
look for some poor person among our kindred, but he came back and cried,
“Father!” I said to him, “Here I am, son.” He answered, “Father, one of our
people has been murdered! He has been thrown out into the market place, and
there he lies strangled.” I sprang to my feet,
leaving the dinner untouched, carried the dead man from the square, and put him
in one of the rooms until sundown, so that I might bury him. Tobit 2:3-4
He had one other to
send, a beloved son. He sent him to them last of all, thinking, ‘They will
respect my son.’ But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come,
let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they seized him and
killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. Mark 12:6-8
Piety
The
third degree of humility is that a person for love of God submit himself to his
Superior in all obedience, imitating the Lord, of whom the Apostle says, "He
became obedient even unto death."
(Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 7, “Humility)
Study
Allegory
or more?
The
parable of the tenants (or the parable of the vineyard) has parallels in
Isaiah. The vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, the
people of Judah, his cherished plant; He waited for judgment, but see,
bloodshed! For justice, but hark, the outcry!
(Isaiah 5:7)
However,
in both cases, these parables are more than allegorical. Jesus is the stone that was rejected. Jesus is the farmer’s son. Delivered in a highly charged political
environment where the plot against him has already advanced, by speaking this
aloud, Jesus has called out his opposition and they retreat to reorganize for
another day.
Ched
Myers reminds us that the story of the tenant farmers also was an accurate
depiction of the life of workers who had to hand over “the fruits of their
labors to the agent of the absentee landlord, and so decide to resist violently
all who come to extract the surplus.” (Say to This Mountain: Mark’s Call to
Discipleship, p. 160)
Myers
points out that Jesus reverses the roles at the symbolic level. He casts the rulers (landlords) as those who
are planning to resort to violence to kill the vineyard owner’s son. He convicts them of conspiring to 9658control
God’s gift to all. With popular support
for Jesus’ critique of the leadership, they cannot arrest him…yet.
Action
Today’s
story reminds us of the conflicts between people and their leaders. Control of something (land, money, resources,
phone records, etc.) is usually at the heart of such conflicts. Jesus reminds us that the humble
servant-leader will endure rejection even to the death in order to show his
obedience and humility.
What
conflicts and controls are you struggling with at home or at work? How can the stone that the builders rejected
help you to reframe to issue in seeking reconciliation?
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