The top one percent wealthiest people in our country could lose ninety percent of their wealth and they would still be the wealthiest people in the world. I believe that just about everyone here in our sanctuary today, if we lost ninety percent of our assets, we would quickly end up on the street, or at least be in extreme danger of doing so? General Electric and Exxon Mobile had huge profits last year, and they paid nothing in taxes last year, maybe even got some rebates. While the stock market is hitting record highs, based upon record profits due to price gouging and shrinkflation, because 50% of our recent inflation crisis was due to the companies raising prices on their products, just because they believed they could, the federal minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour, not raised in how long?
I would like to say that this is something new, but reading the prophets in the Hebrew Testament that points at the systems of power and profit two thousand five hundred years ago paints a similar picture, all condemning the hoarding of wealth into fewer and fewer hands and the call to stand up for justice for the widow, the orphan, and the poor. Not once did Jesus uplift the rich and the powerful as people to admire and follow. He rather condemned them for their greed as in today's parable.
The parable seems pretty straight forward in that it is God who is the owner who gives humans the world in which to work and cultivate. The human/tenants don't want to pay back the owner/God and so they beat or kill all who are sent to collect what is due. In the end, the owner sends his beloved son and they kill him to. Now, in our story line of Mark, Jesus has already entered Jerusalem and we are in the final week of his ministry. Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem as we would celebrate Palm Sunday has taken place in chapter eleven and now Jesus is coming to the Temple every day to teach. So the power groups in Jerusalem in these chapters try to trap him so that the crowds will turn against him. In the parable, this story talks about the greed and corruption of the current system in Jerusalem that lifts up the wealthy and keeps the poor powerless.
I believe that this is a parable in the way it ends in that God, the owner, comes and kills all the tenants. It is what those in power would expect because this is how they handle things. Those who stand in their way are jailed or killed. The gospel writer of Luke softens this a bit in that Jesus asks the question and it is the people, not Jesus, who says the tenants will die. Jesus points to the leaders in Jerusalem and the Pharisees and the Herodians in the next story of their greed and inhumanity.
Now, Jesus is not saying that more money should go to the Temple, the religious institution of God. He is saying that even the Temple is hoarding wealth rather than doing what is right with it in the story of the coin. How then do we pay God for the world and all that is in it? The answer is not blowing in the wind, it is in the story of the rich young ruler. Give it to the poor. In the gospel of Matthew, we are told that whatever we do to the least of these in society and the world, we do it to Jesus.
The systems that favors the rich in our country and throughout the world may be powerful, but they are not universal and they are not of God. Strikes by labor in the past couple years have exploded and they are winning. Even with a pathetic minimum wage, wages are increasing around the country, because people won't work for peanuts anymore. We are waking up that the American dream isn't for the lucky few to be obscenely rich, but it is for all to have the right to food, shelter, security, health care, and a healthy environment in which to live, work, and play.
May we not just give God their share in charity to the poor, may we continue to work for justice that put the goal of the systems: government, business, and religious; to care for the people, not accumulations of wealth and power. For in reality, they have worked and often work to perpetuate greed. But every now and then, they are upset and justice rolls down like streams of water for the good of the people. May we do so in our time. Amen.
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