TWENTY SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME A

[cappie]

Consider this parable alongside the events of Holy Week. During Holy Week, the pattern of worship in most of our churches moves from the loud shouts of Hosanna on Palm Sunday, to the softer notes of Ubi Caritas on Maundy Thursday, to the grief of Good Friday, and then the silence of Holy Saturday. We move, both literally and figuratively, from loud, to soft, to silence.

 And as Jesus’s lifeless body is taken down from the cross, we can imagine Pilate basking in the silence. Order is restored.

Back in the vineyard, as the tenants stand over the body of their landlord’s son, they’re surely thinking the same thing: ‘Well, that’s the last time they send somebody down here to try and tell us how to run things! The old landlord is out of options! He’ll surely leave us alone now! Besides, what did he know about making wine anyway? All he did was siphon off a hefty profit from our hard work. Now it’s all ours!’

 The tenants—and Pilate—may well have enjoyed a rare moment of satisfaction—a feeling of closure on the Saturday after they participated in the death of an innocent man. Finally, free from that nuisance.

But then Sunday comes.

And it doesn’t come with all the Easter fanfare and pageantry that we’ve come to enjoy during our Easter celebrations. In fact, whenever the dead are raised in Scripture—whether it’s Lazarus or Jesus or some other unnamed figure—people really don’t make all that big of a fuss—at least, not at first. The truth and the power of life breaking in on death’s well-worn territory takes time to settle in!

That first Easter morning was probably as quiet as any other Sunday morning, and over at the vineyard, the tenants probably woke up a little dazed from the big party they had thrown the night before.

But little by little, the news got around. This Jesus fellow whom Pilate had handed over as a price for peace? Word on the street is that Pilate couldn’t finish the job; that Jesus wasn’t dead after all.

After the haze wore off, it must have occurred to the tenants that they could claim the vineyard as their own all they wanted, but that the landowner still had the deed. Without it, their claims were meaningless. Sooner or later, the tax adjustor or the sheriff would come knocking. Jesus’s question to his listeners is chilling: “when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

When we slow down with Scripture,  this parable brings to bear a truth far greater than we might have first thought. This parable reminds us that even when violence and death and treachery seem to have won, they do not have the last word.

Going back to Holy Week, Pilate may have gone to sleep on Saturday, thinking himself a shrewd military leader, but little did he know that when he awoke on Easter Sunday, his name would be forever preserved in the creed of the very movement he thought he had defeated, next to the very man whose life he had traded as a bargain for peace—because, come what may, God will have the last word.

And those vineyard tenants? They may have very well given the vineyard a new name and a new coat of paint, but the word got around. When you deal in death, word always gets around, because, even in death, the last word still belongs to God.

In the wake of warfare and tragedy and death and chaos, whether today or two thousand years ago at Golgotha, it can be nearly impossible to see anything beyond the devastation that confronts us.

 God’s Kingdom will prevail and will be fruitful. Also, that it embraces all humankind, not just a select few, but in fact all creation. It tells us that God’s love will not be thwarted, no matter the misuse of privilege, authority and power.

The cornerstone of the Kingdom is Jesus, the Son, the one who was rejected. Our task, our mission, is to be faithful to Jesus’ teaching and fruitful in bringing about the Kingdom in our world, through works of justice, peace, and reconciliation, in love of neighbour, and in care and compassion for the poor, the lonely, and the marginalised. The letter to the Philippians assures us: Do not worry about anything. Keep on doing the things of the Kingdom … and the God of peace will be with us.