Today’s Scripture Readings

Gospel Reading

NRSV

‘Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watch-tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, “They will respect my son.” But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’ They said to him, ‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.’ Jesus said to them, ‘Have you never read in the scriptures: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes”? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

There’s a smell of death in the air as Joseph’s brothers plot to kill him and the tenants kill not just the servants, but the heir. Looming over all this is the figure of the crucified Lord, towards whom the whole of the Lenten journey looks. For the Bible, there’s a sinfulness in each of us, which for the most part lies hidden beneath a veneer of respectability.

The brothers of Joseph, one imagines, weren’t habitual murderers. They were probably decent enough most of the time. Same with the tenants. But in both cases the power that brings the violence to the surface is jealousy. The brothers are jealous of the place their young sibling has in their father’s affections. The tenants are jealous because the heir has what they want. The brothers can’t accept that they are brothers; Joseph is their enemy. The tenants can’t accept that they are tenants; the heir is their enemy.

Jealousy turns the whole world into a battleground where no one else’s achievements or good fortune can be celebrated. Serious Lenten questions for each of us are these: Where does jealousy live in my life? Of whom am I jealous? How does the jealousy show itself? How might I move beyond it?

Only if the power of jealousy is broken does the battleground turn to a playground where there is peace and joy.