More tears in the vineyard
Rhona Cathcart
October 13, 2023
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Matthew 21: 40-41 (NRSVA)
40 Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’ 41 They said to him, ‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.’
This week’s wade through Scots’ expressions for rain brought me a couple I’d never heard of: ‘gandie gow’ and ‘plowerty’. A gandie gow is a squall or violent gust of wind bringing rain or sleet. Plowerty means messy, rainy, grey and miserable. Both describe disruptive weather but one is sudden and energetic and the other chronic and longer lasting.
Both seemed apt for today’s passage with its undercurrent of disruption. This chapter is one in which we see Jesus angrier than we are used to. He overturns tables in the temple, curses a fig tree, and takes no prisoners in his verbal ripostes to the manipulative and corrupt authorities. This particular vineyard parable is directed at the chief priests and the elders. Jesus has looked at the plowerty mess they have made of looking after and guiding God’s people, while keeping themselves secure and entitled. He warns them of a gandie gow to come, when their greed, jealousy, pride and hypocrisy will be exposed and overturned.
Sometimes we too are called to disrupt an unjust status quo — not with violence, but with a willingness to call out unacceptable behaviour or practices.
PRAYER:
God of the powerless,
There are things in the world which must rightly make you angry
Things like injustice, oppression, greed and hypocrisy
Empower us, not with our own anger — which too often makes a plowerty mess of things — but with your righteous, focused attention.
May we be gandie gows of justice, challenging oppressors to change direction and work with us to restore the vineyard.
Amen
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