Hi everyone,
My apologies for being late again with this post, we ran into some technical difficulties yesterday with our website and email. But as you can see, everything is back up and running and all is peachy. I’m just glad that it wasn’t some catastrophic failure of some sort, because it’d be a lot of work building this website up again. I’ll be honest, at first I was afraid that it was a hacker who decided to just delete all of content and emails, which just thinking about sends chills down my spine.
Because we put a lot of trust on the internet, don’t we?
I mean, we use it to communicate, to connect, and to curate all this information (some good and some absolutely useless). We rely on it to care for our calendars, our information, even our banking. Really, without the internet, we’d be very different people. Even with all the junk, fluff, and apparent fake news on the internet, it still remains a huge part of our lives. And even when it fails us, we continue to go back and rely on it again and again.
Hard to believe that it’s only been in our hands (as in the average consumer) for less than 30 years. Yet we can’t imagine life without it.
Here are the readings for next week:
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:7-15
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46
Usually when we read this parable, I think we take it as a warning as to how not to act. We take it as a warning of the wrath to come, and focus on the punishment of those wicked tenants. But for some reason, this time when I read it, I thought about those the landowner sent, including his own son.
I mean, how did they feel about it all?
The first group was innocent enough, not thinking much of of menial task in front of them. But it ends up anything but ordinary. The second group might be thinking, err, maybe we should go with weapons. And then when the son was sent… dang. Personally I would have brought some friends along. Like, big burly friends with tattoos and scars.
And not only did I think of those sent, but what on earth was the landowner thinking? What did he think was going to happen? Well, I think we know what he thought was going to happen, but it didn’t turn out that way. At all.
But he still sent them. He still trusted them. He still extended this call to serve to those who might not get the job done, to those who will definitely stand in the way. Sure, this doesn’t instill a lot of confidence in those being sent. It is still scary. It is still intimidating.
But it is also an honour. It is so very empowering. C’mon, the landowner trusted them. Trusted them. In spite of the odds, the landowner made them part of his life and he felt that they were the ones to get the job done. Then it seems that the call that was given wasn’t about results, but it was about trust. It was about loyalty. It was about faith in each other and community.
And I believe God calls all of us. Not to certain death, of course, as our lives just aren’t that dramatic. But God calls us into the world, to face the evils that lies therein, and reveal God’s grace and mercy and love as it’s been revealed to us.
That is an honour. That is empowering. That is God’s faithfulness and trust, gifting us with confidence and joy in living and serving as a community in the kingdom.
Thanks be to God! Have a great week, everyone!
Photo by Leon Seibert on Unsplash