Reading Parables Otherwise: Tenant Farmers' Revolt (13th Sunday after Pentecost; Mark 12:1-9; September 3, 2017)

Reading Parables Otherwise: Tenant Farmers' Revolt

13th Sunday after Pentecost
Mark 12:1-9
September 3, 2017

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

Roman Palestine was a powder keg with a fuse set. It featured an Empire determined to make the provinces there profitable. It featured a conquered people with a long memory of being the people of God's choice. The Romans were firmly convinced that it was the will of the gods that they rule the Mediterranean Sea basin and then some. Many of the conquered Jews were just as firmly convinced that it was the will of God that they rule themselves and that the rest of the world recognize their special status as those who bore the Torah--the way, the wisdom--of God. The Romans and their local collaborators were determined that the economy be converted to one based on the production of luxury goods. In pursuit of this goal they were forcing peasants off their small holdings and consolidating the little farming plots into plantations for the production of wine, olive oil, and dates, goods that fetched good prices in the major cities of the Empire. The ordinary folk were trying everything they could think of to stop this ancient version of neo-liberal globalization, with very little success.

The stage was set for a catastrophic collision, a slow-motion apocalypse, between the immovable object of a way of life that had persisted for centuries and the irresistible force of Roman military and economic might. The Jewish side of this confrontation was split among several parties.

On one end were the Herodians who had hitched their star to Herod's wagon and sought to be a part of the Romanization of Palestine. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" might have been their slogan.

More or less aligned with them were the Sadducees whose concerns revolved around the ritual life of the Jerusalem Temple. There was room for the Romans as long as the festivals could be kept and the sacrifices offered. And, of course, as long as they got a tenth of everything produced.

Toward the other end from the Herodians but toward the center were the Pharisees who put their emphasis on the assembly of the synagogue and on Jewish practice as the careful observance of the Torah to which they added the pursuit of justice as preached by the prophets. If there were an observant people among the remnant of Judah, God would safeguard them and eventually fulfill the promises of a land of their own and the restoration of David's kingdom.

I would say that Jesus' teaching suggests that he might have been found on the far end of the Pharisee movement.

Zealots were on the far end. They were convinced that God could be prompted to intervene if the people rose up and threw the Romans and their collaborators out of Judea. At least some of them could be compared to ISIS today. Far from fearing an apocalypse, they set out to provoke it.

Either as a part of the zealot movement or a separate movement were the sicarii, assassins who targeted collaborators and anyone else they didn't like.

Into this mix were stirred figures like John the Baptist and others who even styled themselves as messiahs, anointed by God to free God's people and lead them to new glory.

As the Romans built their empire they experienced a string of successes so complete that they had come to think of themselves as specially favored by the gods. Romans, after all, were the ones who had brought peace to the whole world. Who would not want to live under Roman governance?

When it turned out that many Jews did not want that, the Romans were confused and their attempts to pacify Palestine left them frustrated. They were frustrated and Jews were sullen and resentful. Every time Jews got agitated and unrest broke out, the Romans responded with military violence. Their use of clumsy violence based on their general ignorance of Judean culture and their invincible self-regard guaranteed that the people would continue to get agitated and restless more and more frequently.

Keeping a legion in Judea was expensive and the Romans were determined that Jews would pay for it. That meant higher taxes at precisely the time that ordinary people had fewer resources to pay those taxes.

It doesn't take much imagination to suppose that the people were ready to rebel. Add to that their conviction that God was on their side, and the many stories in their tradition of the weak overcoming the strong even in battle, and it is not hard to see that it would not take much to set off an explosive confrontation.

So Jesus told a story about a man who built a vineyard. Well, he didn't actually build it; his people built it. They built a fence around it, dug a wine pit to set up a press for the grapes, and constructed a tower. The landowner turned the management of the vineyard over to tenants and moved to Rome, Alexandria by Egypt, Antioch of Syria, Londinium, or maybe Chicago.

Here are familiar features: land that had been used for subsistence farming, to grow barley and wheat for peasant families, had been cleared of these less-profitable crops and consolidated into a vineyard to grow the strong, sweet wines the region was known for. Displaced peasants, no longer farming their own land, had become the care-takers for the land of a large land-owner, share-croppers. It was this sort of thing that made people's blood boil.

After the vines had been tended, the grapes picked and crushed, and the wine fermented, clarified, bottled, and sold--all by the tenants--the landowner sent a servant to collect his share. For whatever reason, the tenants decided that they could flout the landowner's demands. They roughed up the servant and sent him packing. The next servant they not only beat up, but insulted by striking him in the head. And so on until the landowner sent his own son. In reality I doubt it would have this far. The landowner would have written to the governor and the governor would have sent a detachment of legionaries and that would have been the end of the matter.

But the story says the landowner imagined that, while the tenants clearly despised and hated him, they would respect his son. Not so. They saw the son coming and they said to each other, "Here comes the heir. If we kill him, we'll be the heirs." These tenants were not too bright.

How will this work out for them? Will they end up with their own vineyard? Of course not! Will the landowner ignore this challenge to his power and authority? Of course not. He will either bring a legionary detachment or his own band of hired thugs. He will more than kill the tenants; he will "destroy" them. And he will make other arrangements for his vineyard. In other words, the violent resistance of the tenants will come to nothing.

And here, I think, is the point of the parable that Jesus told. However much we long for the fulfillment of God's dream, however much we can see the damage that is done when God's dream is delayed, however angry we can get when we see people and even the world hurt by those who oppose God's dream, violent resistance is not the solution.

Jesus, it seems was a pacifist. He may have been a pacifist on principle, but he was certainly what I'll call a strategic pacifist. He was a pacifist because violence doesn't work. It doesn't deliver what it promises.

When the tenants opt for violence, they play the Empire's game. The Romans knew all about violence. They reveled in it. They were good at it. They could deliver extraordinary, overwhelming amounts of applied violence anywhere in the Empire in a matter of days. To imagine that taking up arms against the Empire could lead to any end but defeat and death was as stupid as tenants imagining that they would inherit a vineyard if they killed the landowner's son.

As Jesus' followers our mission is to see God's dream as it emerges in the small places in our world and to open ample space in our own lives for its eruption in our hearts, minds, and actions. When it comes to nudging it along in our world, from this parable we learn that violence will not make it happen. "What will nudge God dream along?" you ask. I'm glad you asked that question. Next Sunday one of Jesus' parables will answer it as we consider the Parable of the Merciless Widow.

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