A Reflection for Friday of the Second Week of Lent
Find today’s readings here.
The Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.
With one terrible act of violence after another, the story in today’s Gospel makes me uncomfortable each time I hear it. Why would the tenants destroy lives to satisfy their own greed? So much about this story feels ancient, but the motivations of greed and violence are all too easy to find in our world today. All too often, we observe the misuse of our land and mistreatment of our neighbors in the name of profit. We see nations endangered and jobs lost, the sick neglected and the hungry turned away, all so a few can claim more for themselves. Perhaps we even ignore or deny our own participation in it. But as hopeless as things may seem at times, today’s Gospel also reminds us that a reckoning is coming.
The retribution for the tenants’ actions seems imminent and definitive.
"He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times."
The Kingdom cannot be built by those who try to store up more than their share for themselves, by those who reject what Christ stands for. Instead it will be “taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”
Our society does not yet offer equal opportunity to all. And the timeline of justice on earth does not always move at the pace for which we hope. But we must continue the work. We must continue to try to produce good fruit as we strive together to build the Kingdom of God.
Mary reminds us that God “has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.”
May we build a world in which all may share in both the riches of our earth and in the richness of the love of our Lord, who gives endlessly and bountifully to all.
