Monday in Week 9 of Ordinary Time, June 1, 2020

Mark 12:1-12

Jesus began to speak to the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders in parables. “A man planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenant farmers and left on a journey. At the proper time he sent a servant to the tenants to obtain from them some of the produce of the vineyard. But they seized him, beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. Again he sent them another servant. And that one they beat over the head and treated shamefully. He sent yet another whom they killed. So, too, many others; some they beat, others they killed. 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. What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come, put the tenants to death, and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this Scripture passage: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes?’ ”  They were seeking to arrest him, but they feared the crowd, for they realized that he had addressed the parable to them. So they left him and went away.

Until the calendar reform instituted by the Second Vatican Council, the weeks between the feast of Pentecost and the season of Advent were known as “the time after Pentecost”.  This term, used for nearly two thousand years, worked well in explaining where the Church was in the year since it related those weeks to Pentecost and the Easter season.  It had the effect of anchoring these weeks to that season, reminding believers that we have seen the risen Christ in the liturgy and the Scriptures, we have heard his Great Commission to preach the Gospel, and that we look forward now to the time when “this Jesus who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come as you have seen him going into heaven” (Acts 1, 11).  The use of the term “ordinary time” does not sufficiently do this, I think.  The word “ordinary” is a translation of the Latin ordinalis, which means nothing more than “an ordinal number, e.g. “first”, “second”, etc.  

The resumed public Masses went fairly well this weekend.  About eighty people came to each on the seven Sunday Masses.  Everyone wore their masks properly.  And it was so good to see familiar faces again!

The behavior of the man who owned the vineyard should strike us as odd, not to say, reckless.  He works very hard and at great expense in transforming his plot of land into a vineyard.  Then he leases it out to people who presumably know how to tend a vineyard, and he goes on a journey of several months duration.  He might be making a tour of his other properties and enterprises.  When the time comes for the harvest, he sends servants to bring back some of the produce.  We would expect that the tenants would send him the best portion of the harvest in order to give him reason to keep them on for another year.  Instead, “they seized him, beat him, and sent him away empty-handed.”  Those who heard Jesus tell this parable would have been shocked at this.  In no way could the tenants have imagined their behavior would benefit them.  In the normal course of events, the owner or the local authorities would have come at once to drive them out.  More disturbing, however, is how the farmer reacts to this show of contempt.  He merely sends other servants on the same mission.  This seems to show, among other things, a preference for the well-being of the tenants to that of his own servants.  It was also plainly unreasonable to expect that the behavior of the tenants would improve.  The owner might just as well have written off the vineyard as a loss and ignored it from then on, at least sparing his servants.  Meanwhile, the servants show their love and loyalty for their master by carrying out his orders, no matter the danger, instead of running away once they got on the road. Most incomprehensible, though, is the owner’s sending his son to collect the produce.  Even beyond this, though, is the tenants thinking that somehow the vineyard would become their property if the son was killed.  Only after the son is killed does the owner come and put the tenants to death.

Now, the the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders recognized right away that the Lord was speaking of them as the tenants of the vineyard, and the behavior he ascribed to them enraged them to the point of seeking to arrest him.  But they had no cause for doing so, and this would only have caused the crowd to act against them, so they leave.

But what are we to do with the thoroughly insane behavior exhibited by all the characters in the parable?  What we need to understand is that Jesus is not merely telling a story; he is representing reality.  Sin is insanity.  To act against the God who gives us all that we have, including life and breath, is insane on the face of it, and yet “rational” people decide to do so, acting against their own interests in favor of some fantasy.  The loyalty of the servants does not seem possible, and yet perfectly reasonable men and women give up everything to follow the call of Jesus, even to the point of joining religious orders, becoming priests, and going out as missionaries.  When we consider these people and who God is, we may come to the conclusion that it would be more unreasonable if we chose not to follow his call.  Finally, we come to the owner, who appears to prize the tenants above members of his own household — indeed, above even his beloved son.  But this is the love of God.  This is how God loves us, even when we disobey him, even giving us a multitude of opportunities to repent of our past sins.  It is only when we “kill” his Son in our hearts, rejecting the Sacrifice his Son willingly made for us, that he is roused to anger.  We “kill” his Son in our hearts when we obstinately persist in sin until our last moments, rejecting all chances of repenting.  

Perhaps what offended the Pharisees and chief priests the most was not the Lord’s identifying them as the tenants, hurting their pride and undermining their authority.  Perhaps it was his portrayal of God’s love as going against all human expectation.  By any secular standard, God’s unconditional love for us is insane.  It does not make sense.  St. Alphonsus Liguori frequently comments on this in his writings on the Passion and Death of the Lord.  But with whose understanding of the world do we align ourselves?  That of the world, or that of the Lord?  Love will not make sense to those who do not know it, have not experienced it.  But for those in love with the Lord Jesus, who know his love for what it is, it is the only thing that does make sense.