Tuesday: Fifth Week in Lent Year B

Lent for Everyone
Mark Year B
WEEK 5 TUESDAY...

...Mark Twain is reputed to have said that history never repeats itself, but that it often rhymes. In other words, although every event is unique, many events resemble others. They fall into a pattern. Sometimes, looking back along the line of unrepeatable events, one may detect a kind of poetry. A sequence that makes sense, that echoes and resonates down the years.

There are two senses in which the present passage, one of Jesus’ most famous stories, ‘rhymes’ in that sort of way. To begin with, rather obviously within the story itself, the point Jesus is making is that the vineyard owner has sent one servant after another to the vineyard, and each one has been treated – well, not exactly alike, but all alike with violence and contempt. This reaches a crescendo when the owner sends his own beloved son. This is how it works, Jesus is saying; listen for the rhyme, and see what’s going to happen next...

Taken from Lent for Everyone Mark Year B by Tom Wright