Got to love Matthew… where a parable about some ill-behaved tenants is really about the end of the world! The disciples and early church genuinely believed the end of the world was imminent. I imagine such cosmic worry about the end of humanity, all life on earth, and the universe would lead everyone to teeter on the edge of a stressed-out baseline of angst and anxiety. That is a hard way to live, but that sense of generalized, urgent panic is not new. I’m sure many felt this during the world wars, particularly if they lived in Europe, during the Cold War when the threat of nuclear annihilation became a reality to so many. The early days of the pandemic caused this sort of widespread, baseline panic as well.
So, while as a society perhaps we’ve faced such worries before, generally, every year when we visit the eschatology readings as we prepare for Advent, many of us think about our own end times. We know not the day or the hour. Matthew is clear that who will be saved and who will not be, cannot be manipulated or engineered by human beings. People cannot buy their way to being saved when the end comes. Reward and Punishment is not ours to determine. Still, the Early Church members appeared to have had a sense of duty to introduce others to Christ before the apocalyptical end befell them all.
But not everyone is worried about either the personal or the cosmic end. Many feel that this is it. They might as well take what they want, get what they are owed in the here and now as there is no ‘later.’ This is the attitude of the tenants in today’s gospel parable. We are automatically on the side of the landowner, and thinks its awful that they killed his servants and his son. But they probably felt they were owed. They worked the land, after all, and some absentee landlord wants to swoop in and take what he didn’t labor and toil for… he did not endure the hot sun, the bending and stooping for ten hours, six days a week, dust in the lungs.
There I days where I catch myself … as if I am owed quiet neighbors when I want to think, friendly drivers when I make a last minute turn, or help when I am overwhelmed and frustrated. Often our wishes become expectations, and like the tenants, we think it should just go that way. Sometimes, we don’t even remember that the Lord, our Landowner and Boss, exists and that we are answerable to Him. Maybe we forget accidentally on purpose. Sometimes, perhaps, we are angry and resentful that someone else is in charge, so like the laborers, we go ahead and take our reward in the here and now. Jesus, Matthew and Shakespeare remind us, “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.“
Journal for Reflective Prayer
Like dreams, we are every character in each parable. Recall a time when you felt you were owed, misunderstood and under-appreciated. What did you do, what do you wish you did, and what would you do now? Write the situation as if it’s a scene, adding dialogue where appropriate. Finally, once that scene is laid out in your mind’s eye, read today’s second reading, to the you in the scene.
Writing to Pray 