April 16                                                                   Mark 12:1-11

Time is running out. Today is traditionally known as "Spy Wednesday", the time when Judas is recruited to betray Jesus' location to the authorities. The shadow of the cross is falling over the story and our reading is not terribly subtle: the vineyard owner's beloved son will be killed by rebellious tenants.                              

The hope in what seems to be a tragic story is that God will bring something new out of apparent defeat. New tenants will be given the gift of the vineyard, and in a kind of divine jujitsu the rejected stone (the early Church loved Psalm 118) will in fact be the beginning of a whole new structure.                                              

Holy Week calls us to see God at work even in the darkest moments of our lives. That presence is not, despite what is so commonly said at those times, by way of God mysteriously causing the struggles in order to teach something, to carry out an unknown divine plan. Rather, God is with us on the cross, the beloved son being rejected and killed, sharing and knowing our pain and then rising with power to create something new. This is not cheap grace, an easy forgetting of the pain. The wounds will still be there with the Risen Christ, but God will have begun something new. "This was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes."

Rev. Bill Locke