Holy week, particularly here at its middle, is about the “not yet.” Perhaps this is why I both dread and anticipate this week of the year. It brings home the reality of where we all live better than any other. The culmination of God’s great project has not yet come. We live in the meantime, waiting.
On his way to the long night of Maundy Thursday, Jesus tells a story, a tale that is full of betrayal, pain, and death. And a story without a resolution.
The story Jesus tells is of a landlord who owns a vineyard. His land is tended by tenants, men and women responsible for caring for the land and its bounty. At harvest time, the landlord sends a servant to gather part of the harvest, a portion of what belongs to the landlord.
The tenants, however, have hatched a plan. Perhaps it’s born one evening as the sun is setting and these tenants sit looking out over the vines hanging heavy with grapes. Sipping wine pressed from this crop, they realize that all of this could be theirs. How? They’ll kill every servant sent to them. Eventually, surely, the landlord will give up, surrender the land.
The story culminates in the landlord sending his beloved. By now, perhaps, the tenants have grown used to killing. Maybe their desire for wealth, growing sweeter each day like the grapes on the vines, is now so great that they are willing to do anything, sacrifice anyone to get it. And, so, they kill the landlord’s beloved.
This is a story of betrayal. Those responsible for the care and tending of something that is not theirs betrayed the one to whom it belonged. They became greedy, wanted what was not theirs, and did not care who was hurt in the process.
It’s sad that we find ourselves, this Holy Week, living in the midst of this story.
We have all been betrayed. Those who are the tenants of this land, the leaders from the local to the federal level, put themselves ahead of us. They sought the fruit of the whole vineyard, and did not care who perished, who suffered in order that they might get it. Democrats and Republicans both did not live up to their responsibility. And in the grip of greed, they lost sight of their first duty. Nearly thirteen-thousand servants have died because of it. And these are not the last who will perish.
If only there was a happy ending. Surely the landlord comes riding in, engages in a climactic battle and enacts vengeance for these innocent who have died. That’s the ending, right? Everything is set right, and the evil are punished?
Not yet.
The story Jesus told is on the same road this week lies upon. It’s a road where everything does not work out, where good does not instantly triumph. It ends with greater suffering before the day ends.
But, we’re told, the vineyard’s owner is coming.