Thursday, October 5, 2017

Caring for the vineyard

The parable in some ways addresses the Jewish people and the way they had misused the trust put in them by God to take care of the world into which they had been placed. they had been placed in the position of caretakers. they had been given a position of trust and privilege and they had misused it.
           A strong parallel could be drawn between this situation and our modern world which God has created and placed in our care.
           But what does this say for us in our spiritual lives? What can be said from this parable that we can take away in a transforming, liberating way. Firstly, perhaps, that the sort of relationship that God wants to generate with us is one of trust and intimacy.

Perhaps secondly, we have reaffirmed that God is a god of passionate justice. Thirdly, that in our trusting relationship, we have let God down in terms of the environment, in terms of just relationships. In this story, we are called to be faithful, but we are also called to play the role of the messenger. We need to hear God’s disappointment about our relationship with our world and respond out of that to behave in a radical manner to take care of the vineyard that is on loan to us. Albert Schweitzer spent all his life exploring the meaning of a little phrase “reverence for life”. If  we explored this sufficiently then we would find our lives revolutionized. Perhaps we would be more moved to live a life of ecological sustainability.

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