SUNDAY, MARCH 3 2024 - MESSED UP!
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.