1 March 2013 - don't burry the word

1 March 2013 - don't burry the word

Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.

The inheritance wasn't theirs to claim apart from from the vineyard owner and his son.  Together with them the tennets could have prospered securely.  Instead they only had eyes for the blessings and wanted to separate them from the relationship which necessarily underpinned them.

They said to one another: “Here comes that master dreamer!
Come on, let us kill him and throw him into one of the cisterns here;
we could say that a wild beast devoured him.
We shall then see what comes of his dreams.”

Often the message of the messenger seems too lofty.  The dreams are too intangible.  We want something that is more here and now.  We want the practical and immediate.  The messenger dreams of the world that is to come.  He dreams that we'll be there with him.  But we tend shut down before such great promises.  Perhaps he is promising to fix a relationship in our lives.  We think that is just a dream, humanly impossible, and so we'll just want want our own comfort by avoiding that relationship.  Usually we have some sense of the importance of the messenger and like Reuben are unwilling to kill him directly.  But Reuben's solution is far too common for us as well.

Instead of shedding blood,” he continued,
“just throw him into that cistern there in the desert;

This is analogous to our unopened bibles, or inattentiveness to homilies, and our spiritual sloth generally.  We place the word of God somewhere it can't effect us.  We place it somewhere distant so we can be safe with the status quo.  

God does not abandon us when we do.  In fact he escalates in his efforts:

Finally, he sent his son to them,
thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’

We have the opportunity to turn back toward him, but we often harden our hearts instead.  Think about it, the more tenderly and intimately he reaches out in love the more we pull back.  We've probably seen this pattern in our human relationships when we aren't ready to forgive.  In those cases too, greater tenderness can be harder to bare.

Let us take confidence because "the word of God is not chained." (cf. 2 Tim 2:9).

The king sent and released him,
the ruler of the peoples set him free.
He made him lord of his house
and ruler of all his possessions.

Whether we are like the brothers who sold Joseph and 20 pieces of silver or even like Judas who sold Jesus for 30 pieces the thing we must remember is that it is never too late for us to turn back.  Even if God has been reaching out to us and we've only responded with hardness of heart it is never too late.  He won't let the word stay bound in our lives.  He will continue to knock at our door (cf. Rev 3:20) and invite us more and more.  Let us surrender to him so we can see the full glory of his plan, not selfishly apart, but with him as the very center

The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
by the Lord has this been done,
and it is wonderful in our eyes