Friday of the Second Week of Lent
To read the Old Testament is to marvel at the amazing things God has done for His people, building them up into a great nation from a single man, using even the most unlikely people to achieve mighty deeds, and bringing impossible victories from the greatest defeats. When we come to the time of Jesus and we see how so many of His own people reject Him, and even later demand His death, it is heartbreaking and frustrating to see. But that is the corruptive power of sin, especially when cultivated in the soils of pride. Thus our parable today, in which the nation of Israel is likened to a vineyard that is taken over by the tenants to the point of murdering the son of the owner. Jesus says at the end that the Kingdom of God that is to come—a masterpiece even greater than what was done in Israel—will be given away to others, chiefly the Gentiles, among whom the sown seeds of the Gospel produced far greater fruit.
But today’s parable ought to be a lesson to all of us, for if we reflect on our own lives we can see that God has done tremendous things for us as well. Are we not all and each His temple? And yet in our sins and ingratitude we so easily come to worship ourselves in it, and possess ourselves for our own, ignoring His sign above the door, placed there by His own hand at our baptism. We remove the Spirit of God from the sanctuary of our hearts and place idols of ourselves there, and live lives of self-worship, forfeiting the Kingdom God offers us for a little hill of dust that we cannot take with us when we die. Let us gratefully and humbly reflect upon all that God has done for us—what He has done personally for ourselves—that we might not forfeit what more He has promised to give.