Devotion - Tuesday, August 27

In Mark 11, Jesus tells a parable about a man who plants a vineyard and lends it out to tenants.  When the time comes for the harvest, he sends servants to collect his rent.  The tenants treat them shamefully; they do not give them the owner's portion of the harvest.

After several attempts, the owner of the vineyard sends his son.  He thinks they will respect the son.  You probably know what happens next; they kill the son.

Jesus tells this parable as he is in the midst of an unpleasant encounter with the leaders of the synagogue.  These chief priests and scribes were asking him on what authority he was teaching and casting out demons.  Jesus tells the parable as a way of exposing them as the ungrateful tenants.

Whenever I read such parables, I will always here Jim Reneke saying to me, "The Jews get a bum rap!"  He was complaining about all the sermons he had sat through in which the preacher blamed everything on "the Jews," without acknowledging the possibility that other ethnic groups or differing collections of individuals might also "act shamefully."  I am grateful to him for encouraging me to read Mark 11 (and other passages) as instruction for my life rather than simply reading them as condemnation of the life lived by others.

Jesus' parable calls upon us to see ourselves as the tenant to whom a great and luscious vineyard has been entrusted.  His parable asks us how we view that which the garden produces.  Do we recognize the one who planted the garden and placed us in it?  Or do we assume full credit and ignore the opportunities to share?

Those of us in the LCM group are pretty good at not stealing, or killing, or ignoring the Sabbath.  Can it be said that we are equally attentive to God's instructions to return to God a portion of that which has been entrusted to us?  

Look over the past 168 hours of your life - how many were given over to service of others?  How many hours did you spend focused on God's agenda for your life?

Look back over the receipts from your debit card.  Among the charges at Cookout and Walmart, are there any for Feed the Children, or Clemson Community Care?

In Mark 11 Jesus speaks of the ungrateful tenants.  Was he talking about them?  Or might he have been talking to us?  We underestimate the importance of scripture unless we realize he is doing both.