Rev. George Miller
March 3, 2024
Mark 12:1-12
“God, the Lord is my strength, he makes my
feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights.” (Habakkuk
3:19)
Once upon a time, in the land of Israel,
there lived a prophet named Habakkuk.
Legend has it that he was named after a plant that grew in the North.
Habakkuk loved the Lord. But he felt restless. He was a man attuned to the temperature of
his time and he could sense that war is about to begin.
He sees the injustice. He’s been witness to senseless violence. He’s tired, so tired of the strife and
suffering of the people.
But more than that, he’s tired with
God. He’s disappointed with the
Lord. He thinks God is just being deaf
and acting lazy.
While other prophets place the blame on
the people and want to blame the leaders, Habakkuk does something else- he
places the blame on God.
Habakkuk doesn’t mince his words; he
doesn’t play nice and gentle.
He sees all the mess, all the chaos, all
the fuss around him and he says to God very bluntly “How long? How long are you going to let things keep
going the way they are going?”
Habakkuk speaks directly to God and asks,
“How long do I, how long do we, have to cry out for help before you hear
us?”
“How many mothers need to see their sons
die and how many fathers need to hear their daughters cry before you step in
and do something?”
Habakkuk’s faith is unwavering; fearless. His faith is formidable.
He fully believes in God. He fully believes in the God of the Red Sea
who heard the cry of the captives.
He believes that God is strong, God is
capable, and God cares enough about the least of these.
With that knowledge he says “How long are you going to let sin surround
us before you do what you are supposed to do?”
…and here is the cool thing. God hears.
God hears Habakuk.
God acknowledges his concerns.
God accepts the challenge.
God responds.
God says “Believe me when I say that I
see; believe me when I say that I hear; believe me when I say that I know.”
God hears all the bad that Habakuk says
about God and God says “Hold on. Be faithfully
patient. And wait.”
“I know waiting is not your strong suit,
but wait…and you will see just how much I do love, how much I do care, and how
much I can do.”
And though this message doesn’t solve all
of the current problems Habakkuk sees, it gives him space to breathe, time to
reset.
And it gives him Hope. Hope that God is still there; hope that God
is still being God.
With that hope comes a sense of peace, and
a sense of comfort.
At the end of his conversations with God,
in which Habakkuk feels heard and comforted, he says-
“God, the Lord is my strength, he makes my
feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights.”
And that is so beautiful.
What else is beautiful is that through
Habakkuk we have a biblical role model of how we can be honest with God, how we
can say what we mean, we can discuss what distresses us…and God hears.
What’s so beautiful is that we can
question, we can wrestle, we can even disagree with God, as long as we stay in
communication and relationship with our Creator…
All of this leads us to today’s
reading. It is a reading I dislike, a
reading that comes across as most uncomfortable.
For me, it doesn’t feel like it fits;
doesn’t seem to reflect where we have been in our journey with Jesus.
This year we’ve presented a vision of
Jesus who is right there, hands on, validating the life and intimate aspects of
the human experience.
Jesus has been at our workplace, in our
bedroom, in our places of mental disarray and medical issues.
Jesus shows us again and again that the
Lord is our strength, who makes our feet like the feet of a deer, and makes
us tread upon the heights.
When not visiting with us, Jesus has been
telling parables about things we know.
Sowing seeds, planting crops, baking bread.
But here comes a parable in which the
every-day person is presented as evil, the workers are the bad guys.
Modern theologians question if this story
was even told by Jesus or if it was made up by Mark or inserted by someone else
to make the religious leaders of their day look bad…and I may agree.
The story starts with a man who plants a
vineyard, puts a fence around it, and then leaves for another country.
Right away, with the mention of the fence,
there is a visceral reaction.
Sure, fences can be a good thing. They can keep you safe, keep your dog from
running into the street, but they also separate.
Right away, I think of my childhood neighborhood
where we had a grouchy neighbor named Frank who was always complaining, always
yelling at us kids when we played in front of his house.
We’d be playing football, baseball, tag
and at some point Frank would pop his angry head out the door and yell move
away.
So this parable rubs me the wrong way, as
if God is an middle aged grump who doesn’t want anyone to have fun.
What’s worse, though, is this sense of
desertion.
After this man puts up the fence, and
leases it to the tenants, he ups and leaves, he goes to a different land, never
to be seen again.
This does not strike me as the God in
Genesis who walked with Adam in the cool evening breeze.
This doesn’t sound like the God who sat
with Abraham under the oaks of Mamre.
It certainly doesn’t sound like the God
who wrestles with Jacob.
This does not sound like God is the Lord
of our strength, who makes our feet like the deer, and our spirits tread upon
the heights.
This sounds as if God is absent, uncaring,
and too busy with foie gras and Cuban cigars to care about the people in God’s
care.
Yes, there’s the wine press, yes, there’s
the watchtower, but they seem more as a babysitter than the actual presence of
the landlord.
So when his slave is sent to the people,
they don’t respond so kindly. Maybe what
they really wanted was the man. They
didn’t want some peon coming along.
Maybe they really missed the man, maybe
they wished there would be some more “water from the rock” and “manna from
heaven” moments.
Maybe like Habakkuk, they felt the owner
of the vineyard was away too long, and therefore too uncaring and far too
inaccessible.
So instead of being like Habakkuk and using
their words, they use their actions, they use their hands, they use their
fists.
This is not to get the tenants off the
hook, but what if part of what was really going on is that they really missed
the man, they really missed his presence, they really missed his miracles?
What if what they are feeling is “Does it
matter? Does anything we do make a
difference if the landlord is far far away, so distant, and so uninvolved in our
lives?”
Like Habakkuk, like Jacob, I wrestle with
this parable, because it feels upsetting that a fence has been put up and he
went away.
And it so goes against what Jesus has been
talking about.
Throughout Mark, the God that Jesus seems
to embody, seems to represent is a God who is very hands on, who is very
present, who is very much there.
Throughout Mark, the God that Jesus seems
to embody is one who has no fence, who is not Frank the neighbor, who is right
there, right amongst the people be it work, field, home or graveyard.
The one saving grace is that this parable
is not aimed at the every day person, this story was not told to point a finger
at the average person just trying to make ends meet and see another weekend
come along.
This parable was aimed at the chief
priests, scribes and elders who were the head of the religious institution.
This was aimed at those who were supposed
to know better and act differently.
Still, this scripture sits uncomfortably,
and it leads more to a set of questions than to any kind of answer.
How do you perceive God to be? What do you imagine your relationship with
the Lord is like?
Do you see God as close at hand or do you
see God as out of the country, and how does this affect your relationship?
Do you see God as active in your garden,
or do you see God as walking away once it’s built?
Do you see God as putting up fences or
tearing them down?
And if you believe there are fences that
God constructs, what are their purposes and are they for good?
We ask these questions and we continue to
speak with God as we make this Lenten journey, knowing that just as God heard
the captives and God heard Habakkuk, God hears us.
May we each be able to receive an answer. And like Habakkuk, may we each be able to say
“God, the Lord is my strength, he makes my
feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights.”
For that, let us say “Amen.”
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