(18) After his overnight rest, Jesus is quick to return to the task before him. I need to be less irritated by the continual challenges before me and more appreciative of the breaks from them that God gives me, as well as of the affirmations he provides in the midst of them. Thank you, Lord.
(19-22) We aren't to be cursing the plants that provide our food, and Jesus himself didn't physically move any mountains around (am pretty sure I've just made this observation in a post about the Transfiguration, here's a link but there isn't much more there on this topic). Sometimes I take this scripture as an indictment of my faith rather than as a vision into the possible. And sometimes the first mountain that I must pray in faith for God to move into the sea is the mountain of my own habits, thinking and sin. That's what this beloved season of Lent is supposed to be about.
(23-27) It's pretty clear that Jesus is not just being asked about his day's teaching, but about all of the events that have led to his popularity, most immediately including his entry into Jerusalem and the casting out of the merchants from the temple, but certainly also such things as healing on the Sabbath and the other miracles he has performed. But he knows that those asking him have higher priorities than knowing him (the latter of which is, of course, the same thing as knowing the Truth). I lament the too-ever-present reality that I often choose not to truly know Jesus because my own agenda is more important to me.
(28-32) It is obvious, then, that I am often too much like the second son. Jesus doesn't remove the mountain of impediment from my life because I lack faith, but more importantly, because I have lacked the desire to know him enough to let go of myself. I am too precious to me. This is the power in the prayer of St. Ignatius, in whose Exercises I allege to be engaged:
Take Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess. Thou hast given all to me. To Thee, O lord, I return it. All is Thine, dispose of it wholly according to Thy will. Give me Thy love and thy grace, for this is sufficient for me.Lord, let me offer this prayer with my whole heart rather than clinging to those parts of myself that I deem more valuable to me than you are.
(33-45) The chief priests and the Pharisees are only partly correct when they perceive that Jesus is speaking about them, as we are when we perceive that he is speaking about us. For this parable is not primarily about the kingdom of God being taken from them and given to us, but is about the lengths to which the Father and the Son are willing to go to draw their beloved back into their love. It is limitless, and we can see that Jesus is speaking of himself when he speaks of the son who is sent and killed. It remains for us to humbly ask him to reveal those ways in which we are like the grasping, entitled tenants rather than like the humble eventual recipients of the Father's beneficence,
Too often missed in reading this passage: Jesus never says that they are right about the Father putting the tenants to death. He does not withdraw from them the opportunity to accept him even as they are plotting to kill him instead. Likewise, even as we are sinning against him he does not withdraw the opportunity from us to choose to love and follow and know him instead.
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