Good Morning Friends,
Time for another cup? Me too! Here’s a different way to look at one of Jesus’ more familiar parables. I was 10 minutes into writing one thing about it and then I had a thought that gave me a chill and so I deleted it and started again.
I hope it encourages you!
Much love and more ☕️,
Glenn || PATREON / BUY ME A COFFEE
In Mark 12 (1-12) Jesus told a parable about a man who owned a vineyard. It was crazy big and had all of the bells and whistles ...
A fence around it.
A pit for a wine press.
A watchtower.
... All the high end, quality items. After it was built and ready to go Jesus said that the owner leased the vineyard to some tenants and went away to another country.
Time went on.
And some more time went on.
And some more time, still.
Then the time came for the crops to be gathered and so the owner of the vineyard sent a slave to go gather his share of the crop from the tenants - the tenants would get to keep a portion of it for themselves and the rest would go to the owner since the land was his.
To his surprise, however, the tenants of the vineyard grabbed the slave, beat him, and sent him back to the owner empty-handed.
"We're keeping it all for ourselves", they said.
The owner of the land figured he'd try again and so he sent a second slave to which they did the same thing - knocked him over the head, insulted him, and sent him away with nothing.
Then he sent another and they killed him.
And another, and they killed him.
And another, and they killed him.
On and on this went until finally the owner said, "I'll send my son - surely they will respect him!"
When they saw the son coming, though, they cooked up a scheme - "look, here comes his son! Let's kill him too and then the man's inheritance will be ours!"
And so they did to him the same that they did to the others - they grabbed him, beat him, killed him, and tossed his dead body out of the vineyard.
Jesus then says that the owner would come back and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to some other tenants for "the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes."
Jesus was sharing this story with the Temple leaders who (Mark says) quickly realized was about them. I'm no theologian, but the idea that Jesus was getting across was that God had given these people the world to take care of and to steward (back when he initially called Abraham to be a "blessing to the nations") and when God sent prophet after prophet after prophet into their midst (think of all the Old Testament stories) to call them to attention and collect the crop, they killed them.
Instead of listening to them.
Instead of taking their messages to heart.
... they mocked them, beat them, killed them; and now they were on the verge of killing God's son, as well.
All of their killing, though, would be in vain, Jesus said, because God would take all the tragic death and the rejected stone of his son and make it the cornerstone of something new - a new movement built on the love and grace and inclusive spirit that God's initial call to Abraham was built on all those years ago when God promised to make Abraham into a "great nation" and called him and the one day Nation of Israel to be a "blessing to all the nations".
God was in the process of doing something new and no matter how much the leaders in the presence of Jesus resisted it, this new thing would not be stopped.
What I love about this story is that DEATH and HEARTBREAK and FAILED PLANS become the cornerstone upon which something new is built. They don't have the last word.
Right?
And that's what I wanted to encourage us with today - no matter how much your plans didn't go according to plan and no matter how much the people around you may try to kill your dreams or tell you that your dreams are dumb or pointless or unachievable ... your feelings of defeat and the broken pieces of your failed attempts and busted up plans may very well be the cornerstone upon which you can begin to build something new.
This is a story about persistence and refusing to give up, about death and destruction not having the final say. Perhaps that's why Mark included it in his Gospel - to remind his readers (the Messianic Jews) who were living in the aftermath of Nero's genocide that death and destruction would not have the final say, that although all had seemingly been lost ... something new was coming, and the death and wreckage and carnage in their midst would be the cornerstone upon which the new thing would be built.
Don't give up, friends. New things are ahead.