Keep On

Mark 12:1-11

This passage is a parable. Every time I read it, I scratch my head in puzzlement. I have trouble figuring out what it’s about. I suppose that makes it equivalent to a koan.

Neither koan or parables really fit into any category. They are not metaphors; they are not poetry; they are not allegories; and they are most definitely not prim, self-satisfied preachifying.

So, this is the story of the absent vineyard owner whose greedy tenants won’t pay their rent. The owner sends people to collect, and the tenants keep on beating them up or killing them. Finally, the owner sends his son, thinking (for some unknown reason) that the tenants will act differently out of respect for the fact that the latest rent-collector is the heir to the property.

No surprise, the tenants kill the son, and congratulate themselves that now they can do what they want with the property, and since no-one is left to inherit it, it will belong to them by default.

The coda at the end of this parable is a declaration that the owner will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. The tag line is a quote from the Tanakh about how amazing it is that the flawed stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

Well, of course, I start burrowing into the weeds asking all kinds of questions. The one thing I don’t do (anymore) is assign allegorical roles to the characters in the story. I’ve found that doing that obscures the actual facts of the story in a way that is detrimental to my understanding of the meaning.

Okay then, what’s left? The elements of the story itself.

I’m going to examine the verbs first. The very first action is that of planting the vines. Then, putting a wall around the land, digging a pit for the wine press, and building a tower. Then, the next action is to rent it out and leave. Oh, wow! I’ll repeat that: put someone else in charge, and go away.

Then harvest-time comes. (The Greek just says, ‘kairos’ — “the right time, the fitting season.”)

The owner sends a messenger “to receive” a portion of the fruit from the vineyard. Then come the beatings, and the tenants ‘sending’ the messengers back emptyhanded. Many messengers are sent, only to be beaten or killed. At last the owner decides to send his son, hoping the tenants will finally have some respect (‘entrepō’ – to ‘revere, regard, or feel shame’).

Of course it’s a useless hope, and the tenants kill the son and throw him out of the vineyard. Then comes a rhetorical question: “What will the owner do?” — “Destroy those tenants and replace them with others.”

Plant, protect, provide, watch over. At the proper time, send for what’s due. Keep on sending, no matter what happens, until the last messenger is spent. When there is nothing left to be done, wipe it out and start over again, with no guarantee that the same thing won’t keep right on happening.

There’s a Jungian method of dream analysis, in which each element of the dream is seen as an aspect of the dreamer. I’ve found it to be an amazingly apt tool for understanding the underlying meaning of Scripture. The really cool thing about it is that there doesn’t seem to be any end to the unfolding of meaning. Each time there is something new, something more.

Anyhow, here’s how it works with this parable:

To observe myself as though I were the absent owner, traveling far from my land in search of adventure, guilelessly leaving my security in the hands of others.

To suppose myself acting like the fiercely greedy tenants; beating and killing people who want me to give them something they think I owe them.

To stretch out in the sun,  as if the patient vineyard itself was me— sheltered behind my wall; holding a well full of grapes and singing grape-treaders; lifting a whole family’s daily life up in my tower above the fields— bearing my fruit in the proper season.

To imagine that I am the innocent messenger sent, confident that I’ll be successful, only to be rejected and beaten or killed.

It seems to make a deeper sort of sense that way.

To wipe out all the destruction I’ve caused

on account of my beginning-less

greed, anger and delusion….now I return to One-ness—

and keep on

planting,

protecting,

digging,

building,

traveling,

and at the right time,

sending gullible messengers

to receive my share.