Reflecting on Mark's Gospel - Mark 12:1-12

Jesus, as so often, speaks with a parable, but this one is clearly pitched against the religious leaders, and they realise that is so, but take no action out of fear as to how the crowd will respond.

The story is about a man who has planted a vineyard and leased it to tenants. He sends a succession of agents, or slaves, to collect the rent, but the tenants, unwilling to pay, engage in a mix of beating up and killing the rent collectors. In complete frustration, and probably something more, the vineyard owner sends his son, convinced that this time the tenants will respect their visitor. However, on the contrary, they see their opportunity to eliminate the one who would inherit the vineyard, and kill the son. The parable ends with Jesus posing a question as to what the owner will do, and juxtaposing that with a quotation from Scripture, specifically Psalm 118, verses 22 and 23.

In the repeated attempts to resolve the issue we see, as Brendan Byrne  (A Costly Freedom) points out – “the extreme patience and long-suffering of God who, in the face of repeated rejection reaches out … against the evil calculation of the tenants.”

However, the parable ends with the situation completely unresolved and indeed plunged into trauma and tragedy. However, as Byrne points out – “still outstanding, is the truth that, as far as God was concerned, the rejection and brutal death of the Son was not the last word.”

The quotation from Psalm 118 takes us where we need to be, reminding us that God’s values do not fit the expected standards of the world. The critical point is that the approach is transformational and fundamentally different. The rejected stone is actually the cornerstone. In a sense, this is the psalmist’s version of Jesus’ comment about the last being first, and vice versa. But even that does not complete what needs to be said, because we must include the next comment on the psalmist about this being God’s doing and the fact that we see it as amazing. I wonder whether we pause often enough to consider all that God has done for us, and just how marvellous it is.

The religious leaders recognise that this is an attack on them, and they want to resist it, but, for the moment, they dare not do so because they are afraid of the crowd. So, they leave him be and go away.