Holy week, particularly here at its
middle, is about the "not yet." Perhaps this is why I both dread and
anticipate this week of the year. It brings home the reality of where we all
live better than any other. The culmination of God's great project has not yet
come. We live in the meantime, waiting.
On his way to the long night of
Maundy Thursday, Jesus tells a story, a tale that is full of betrayal, pain,
and death. And a story without a resolution.
The story Jesus tells is of a
landlord who owns a vineyard. His land is tended by tenants, men and women
responsible for caring for the land and its bounty. At harvest time, the
landlord sends a servant to gather part of the harvest, a portion of what
belongs to the landlord.
The tenants, however, have hatched
a plan. Perhaps it's born one evening as the sun is setting and these tenants
sit looking out over the vines hanging heavy with grapes. Sipping wine pressed
from this crop, they realize that all of this could be theirs. How? They'll
kill every servant sent to them. Eventually, surely, the landlord will give up,
surrender the land.
The story culminates in the
landlord sending his beloved. By now, perhaps, the tenants have grown used to
killing. Maybe their desire for wealth, growing sweeter each day like the
grapes on the vines, is now so great that they are willing to do anything,
sacrifice anyone to get it. And, so, they kill the landlord's beloved.
This is a story of betrayal. Those
responsible for the care and tending of something that is not theirs betrayed
the one to whom it belonged. They became greedy, wanted what was not theirs,
and did not care who was hurt in the process.
It's sad that we find ourselves,
this Holy Week, living in the midst of this story.
We have all been betrayed. Those
who are the tenants of this land, the leaders from the local to the federal
level, put themselves ahead of us. They sought the fruit of the whole vineyard,
and did not care who perished, who suffered in order that they might get it. Democrats
and Republicans both did not live up to their responsibility. And in the grip
of greed, they lost sight of their first duty. Nearly thirteen-thousand servants
have died because of it. And these are not the last who will perish.
If only there was a happy ending.
Surely the landlord comes riding in, engages in a climactic battle and enacts
vengeance for these innocent who have died. That's the ending, right? Everything
is set right, and the evil are punished?
Not yet.
The story Jesus told is on the same
road this week lies upon. It's a road where everything does not work out, where
good does not instantly triumph. It ends with greater suffering before the day
ends.
But, we're told, the vineyard's
owner is coming.
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