Today's Gospel

When Evil Comes to Visit

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where we are exploring the genius of Jesus, the genius of His teachings, and learning how to apply them to our lives by exploring the Daily Gospel for a couple of minutes each day together. Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Mark 12:1-12.

"And he began to speak to them in a parable. 'A man planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it and dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower and then lent it out to tenants and went into another country. When the time came, he sent a servant to those tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Again, he sent to them another servant and they wounded him in the head and treated him shamefully. And he sent another and him they killed. And so with many others. Some they beat and some they killed. He had sent one other, a beloved son, finally. He sent him to them saying, "They will respect my son." But those tenants said to one another, "This is the heir. Come, let us kill him. And the inheritance will be ours." And they took him and killed him and cast him out of the vineyard. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read the Scripture? The very stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing, and it was marvelous in our eyes.' And they tried to arrest Jesus, but feared the multitude, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away."

What jumps out at you today? Is there a word or a phrase an idea? A parable is typically referred to as the parable of the wicked tenants. Two things jump out at me is how Jesus started the parable, I think, firstly is crucial. "A man planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it and dug a pit for the wine press and built a tower." What is Jesus saying? A man worked very hard to put the vineyard together. Jesus is acknowledging a great deal of work went into that. He didn't say how long, but I reckon back in those days, it's probably at least 10 years worth of work to do all that. That's the first thing that strikes me. And I think when some people have something, I think sometimes we think they got it without doing any work. And I think that's a dangerous assumption.

The second thing that strikes me is, this is, as I mentioned, often referred to as the parable of the wicked tenet. There is evil in this world. And sometimes we're uncomfortable saying that, and sometimes we're uncomfortable recognizing or acknowledging that. But there is evil in this world. And I don't know about you, but some days it feels like it's creeping closer. And then we will have experiences in our lives, in our family, where evil does reach right into our world and touch ourselves, someone we love, and we will know for certain on those days that evil is real, and it exists in this world, and people are capable of staggering evil. We're living in a time where it is critically important that we don't forget that. Have a great day. Remember, don't just be yourself, be the very best version of yourself, all that God created you to be.