Everything That Makes For Life And Devotion

Recently when the staff was on retreat together, we saw a group of crows noisily circling a tree. This often means that there is a larger bird of prey – like an owl or hawk – in the tree. Someone from the group said, “I think it’s an eagle!” Most of us couldn’t see it, however, and we needed to move our position so that the eagle came into greater view. It is always amazing what might come into view when we shift our vantage point a bit.

In our first reading from 2 Peter 1, Peter is addressing people and reminding them that God’s divine power has “bestowed on us everything that makes for life and devotion” and that through this power we may “come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world.” And so Peter encourages his hearers to complement their “basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others.” He says, “Without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you…(The Message)”

While I do not see the world as essentially corrupt or as a binary (meaning the world is “bad” and the divine is “good”), I do acknowledge that there is a great deal of corruption and distraction all around us.  And I love the list that Peter gives us as a way to cut through the noise of this world and get to the heart of the matter. I imagined what might be possible if we took one of those attributes each week and dedicated ourselves to embodying it more fully.

And Peter concludes that without these practices and disciplines, we will not be able to see what is right in front of us.

Which takes us to our gospel (which I have written about before).

In Mark 12 Jesus tells a nuanced and complicated story about a landowner. “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.” The landowner sends some of his workers back to collect some rent, and the messengers are either beaten or killed! So the landowner decides to send his son, and the son is killed by the tenants as well. The landowner is furious and comes back with a vengeance.

Passages like this one are not easy to decipher because they are not always what they appear to be. I know that for this passage, I always refer back to the work of Ched Myers who has done some amazing scholarship related to Mark’s gospel.

Ched says that Jesus intentionally uses the idea of a “vineyard” to evoke images of the world being God’s vineyard (referencing Isaiah 5). The “tenants” who lease this vineyard are the corrupt, ruling elites of this world who have turned a call to stewardship into an impulse for domination. And the tenants essentially try to “kill” off the prophetic tradition that keeps calling them back to their original instructions.

He also says that Jesus specifically uses this land-based metaphor because this is exactly what was going on in 1st century Palestine.

Wealthy, absentee landowners would come in and buy up large tracts of land and lease them out to people – sometimes literally stealing the land from under people’s feet and “renting” it back to them. The landowner would charge rent – sometimes in the form of crops – a system which we know well in this country (sharecropping). This system made it so that the tenants could never earn enough to actually make a profit – condemning them and their families to ongoing debt, dispossession and suffering.

So at one level, this story is about what has happened to God’s vineyard under the weight of empire and corrupt players in the systems (including religious so-called authorities). And it becomes an indictment of an extractive system that concentrates wealth and power while excluding the poor.

Both continue today.

Jesus’ warning, however, (quoting Psalm 118) that, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” is his way of reminding us that – even as the harm continues – a new world and a new order is emerging. That which was cast to the margins will be centered again. The vineyard will find new life. The oppressed will find justice and freedom.

And we’re called to participate in that work and reality as much as we can.

So combining the insights of today’s readings into a little poem, I would summarize it to say:

The stone that the builders rejected
Has become the cornerstone
The vineyard will bloom again
Relationships will be made right
And we have everything that we need
To share in God’s divine life and plan
But
We must be willing
To shift our perspective
With alert discipline
Passionate patience
Reverent wonder
Warm friendliness
And generous love
Lest we miss what is essential
And emerging
Right 
in 
front 
of 
us