those wicked tenants

I wrote an exegesis paper (for the 99% of normal people who don't know what that means, go here) on Mark's version of the Parable of the Wicked Tenants. Let me tell you, they were some wicked folk. What is striking in both versions (its in Matthew also, but I'm not as familiar with that text) is just how foolish the landowner looks. In Mark, Jesus explains the allegorical interpretation of the parable with God playing the role of the landowner. God sets up a perfect vineyard so that all the tenants have to do is work the land and harvest the crop. God sends one servant, then another, and another, (in Mark he sends many more), and finally sends his only son; "surely they will respect him." But they don't. They kill the son in the hopes of having the vineyard to themselves. God looks like such a fool in this parable. Sending people over and over and over again to a group of hard-hearted tenants who want nothing more than material things.

Oh, wait, that's what God has done in salvation history. God sent prophet after prophet calling the people to repent (to turn around) and follow the will of God. Then, when that didn't work, he sent his only Son, God incarnate, to call the people back. And he was killed for power and prestige. Still today we can hear the voice of God calling us away from our lives enslaved to sin, and we ignore, we rationalize, we church-hop. God is foolish, but God's will is perfect wisdom. God knows that without him we are doomed to failure and God, who in the trinity is perfect relationship, eagerly desires relationship with us. And so he tries over and over and over again. We fill our lives with sex, with drugs, with material things, all in an attempt to drown God out, but as is the case in the parable, God will keep trying over and over and over again. Thanks be to God for his foolishness.