SUNDAY, MARCH 3 2024 - MESSED UP!

Recorded Worship on Youtube

March 3, 2024

Deborah Laforet

Messed Up

Let us pray. May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by

your Spirit and be words of wisdom for this day. Amen.

Every day proves to me that our world is messed up (our word for the day). I went home

from work on Tuesday in heavy rain and then hail. The next day it was minus 11 and the

morning after that there was a blanket of snow on the ground. This weekend, it’s been above ten.

It’s February, just three days into March.

Ukraine is entering its third year of fighting with Russia as Putin prepares to be re-

elected. Although many are pushing for a cease fire in Gaza, thousands are dying, up to thirty

thousand Palestinians, and being displaced from their homes. They’re predicting famine. Oh,

and Trump keeps winning primaries and could potentially be president again.

Journalists keep getting laid off as disinformation increases. Houselessness is increasing,

the number of people who need food banks is increasing, while grocery corporations increase

profits and governments sell protected green space to developers who build million dollar homes.

People are suffering for who they are. White skinned people have more privilege than

black, indigenous, and other people of colour, all over the world. People who love someone of

the same gender or who want to be a different gender are still being jailed, beaten, ridiculed, and

ostracized. Indigenous people all over the world continue to face genocide and continue to fight

for the land on which they’ve lived for centuries. Meanwhile, war crimes are being committed

and no one is being held responsible. Laws that promote hate and discrimination are being

ignored. Elected leaders, who should be caring for their constituents, are catering to the rich and

powerful while the most vulnerable suffer.

We live in a messed up world, my friends.

And our parable today? Whew. It’s not an easy one to interpret and there are a lot of

messed up acts happening. Let’s look at it. There are four characters in the parable: The

landowner, the tenants, the slaves, and the landowner’s son. You might even say the vineyard is

a fifth character. Simply, the landowner buys the vineyard, leases it to tenants and then goes

away, expecting that he will get a portion of the harvest every year. Every year, he sends a slave

to bring this portion back to him, and every year, the slave is beaten and sometimes killed. The

landowner does this several times and for several years. Finally, he sends his only son, believing

that no one would hurt his beloved son, but the tenants beat and kill him too. The story ends

with the landowner killing the tenants and finding new ones.

Traditionally, Christians have interpreted the story in this way: the vineyard represents

the land of Israel and the landowner is God. The tenants represent the Jewish people, who have

not cared for this land. The slaves, sent by the landowner, are prophets sent by God to deliver

messages, who are run out of town, beaten, and sometimes killed. And of course, the

landowner’s precious son is Jesus, who is also beaten and killed. Now, if you read it this way, as

many Christians have done for many hundreds of years, the Jews are the ones in the wrong and

God will punish them for killing his son, Jesus. As difficult as this might be, I now need you to

wipe that interpretation from your brains. Christians have been blaming Jews for the death of

Jesus for way too long. This is an anti-semitic way of reading this story and we need to use fresh

eyes to revisit this parable. Jesus was a Jew and would not have told a story about the

destruction of his own people.

So wipe that interpretation from your mind, and let’s look at it in a new light. This week,

I read a quote from David Castillo Mora, and it helped me to see the relationship of the

landowner to the tenants in a different light.

Many of the inhabitants of Galilee and other areas of Palestine were tenants who had lost

their land or inherited family debts due to economic pressure from the Temple, the

Herodian monarchy, and the Roman Empire, and they rented land to landowners such as

the one in the parable, to produce and earn daily sustenance. ... In this context, the violent

reaction of the owner of the property against those who did not pay taxes or did not deliver

the produce of the harvest was also common. Such a conflict scenario must have been

familiar to Jesus’ audience, as well as that of the Gospel of Mark.

In this context, the landowner no longer represents God which helps us see this parable in

a very different way. Maybe the tenants were justifiably resisting the landowner. Maybe the

tenants were upset with the unfair practices of this landowner. Maybe they resented having to

work for the landowner on their own land and maybe the landowner demanded for more than

what was fair, leaving the families of the tenants with very little. The landowner is also a

slaveowner, which doesn’t sound very godly. He sends his slaves to these tenants, year after

year, knowing that they will get beaten up and that some will never return.

The landowner then decides to send his only son. This sounds foolish to me. If your

slaves are being beaten up and killed, what makes the landowner think the tenants will play nice

with his only son? Maybe he thought the tenants wouldn’t dare touch someone with such status,

power, and riches, but the tenants proved him wrong.

This parable is messed up. We have slaves being killed, landowners sending these slaves

to be killed, tenants killing slaves and sons. What is the point of this parable, Jesus? After the

parable, he then quotes from Psalm 118: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the

cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’?” The chief priests and

scribes, we read, then realize Jesus had said the parable against them. So they leave.

The chief priests and scribes, the temple authorities, were complicit in the policies of the

day. Just like politicians in our world, they ‘wheeled and dealed’ with the Romans and benefited

off the backs of their people. The parable still doesn’t make complete sense to me but I do think

Jesus was holding these temple authorities responsible for their actions. He was advocating for

the tenants, for the slaves, for all those who were suffering in a land which they had been taught

was flowing with milk and honey for everyone. Maybe the stone that the builders rejected were

the many people throughout our gospels that Jesus encounters that had been rejected in some

way or another: because they were disabled, because they were women and children, because

they were poor, because they were struggling with demons.

According to Jesus, these rejected stones will become cornerstones. They will be the first

stone of a foundation that will be strong and firm. The first shall be last. The last shall be first.

Imagine our messed up world if we lived in this way. Dream With Me as we heard in our

anthem. If we treated the last as first, on what foundation would we be building this world. If

we didn’t treat the earth like a commodity and resource but as sacred and abundant, from which

all life comes, could we turn our climate crisis around? If we treated people, every single one, as

sacred and as a gift, would there be less war, would genocide become an unheard of act? If those

with illnesses, disabilities and those with mental health challenges were cared for first and

foremost, what might they teach us about compassion, accessibility, and the gifts that each one of

us have? If everyone was guaranteed a home and enough food each day, would food banks and

shelters become a thing of the past, and would we have more healthy people in our community?

If each of these individuals, who are often rejected in our communities, were made the

cornerstone, it would be amazing in our eyes. We wouldn’t be saying that our world is messed

up. We would discover that the world in which we live is beautiful and wonderful and sacred

and blessed.

The world won’t ever be perfect. People will always hurt. We will always experience

struggles, but imagine if our struggles didn’t include being hungry, losing our home, feeling left

out and alone, feeling less than and not valued, or fearing for our safety or our lives or for those

of our loved ones. Maybe the M in lament might stand for the miraculous, marvellous, and

magnificent world in which we live, the world we can create. May it be so. Amen.

Mark 12:1-17

(Introduce yourself.)

In the chapter before the passage I’m going to read, Jesus had entered Jerusalem on a donkey to

much fanfare from crowds of people and he has turned over tables in the courtyard of the temple.

The chief priests and scribes were afraid of him. They began to plot ways to kill him. They

asked Jesus upon whose authority he was doing such things. After a non answer, he then shares

the following parable. I'm reading the first seventeen verses of chapter 12 from the gospel of

Mark.

12 Then he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it,

dug a pit for the winepress, and built a watchtower; then he leased it to tenants and went away.

2 When the season came, he sent a slave to the tenants to collect from them his share of the

produce of the vineyard. 3 But they seized him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed.

4 And again he sent another slave to them; this one they beat over the head and insulted. 5 Then

he sent another, and that one they killed. And so it was with many others; some they beat, and

others they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying,

‘They will respect my son.’ 7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir; come, let us

kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8 So they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of

the vineyard. 9 What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the

tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Have you not read this scripture:

‘The stone that the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone;

11 this was the Lord’s doing,

and it is amazing in our eyes’?”

12 When they realized that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to arrest him, but

they feared the crowd. So they left him and went away.

May God grant us understanding of our sacred text. Amen.

tracy chippendale