Mark 12: 1-12, C.f. Isaiah 5: 1-4Human agony is a reality. We frequently ask, why me Lord? Why does my friend suffer? Why are those people so poor? One woman who came for counseling asked me amidst heavy sobs, “Why did my project fail after I did everything I could?” I was tempted to focus on management issues of her project before I quickly realized it was much deeper; it was about the depths of everything she is. One of the age old problems of humanity is the question of suffering. Even the Psalmist asked, “how long will you forget oh Lord, how long will you hide? How long must I struggle with my thoughts oh Lord? (Psalm 13)”
It might occur to you, but do you seriously think God also agonizes? Frequently,the Bible vividly portrays God's disappointment with his chosen people. Nowhere is this more poignant that in the passages in Mark 12, a retelling of Isaiah 5. In Isaiah’s version of it, God did everything for his vineyard—Israel—and then he looked for good grapes but it bore only wild grapes. Isaiah sets the divine problem before human minds, “Oh dwellers of Jerusalem, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? Why did it only yield bad grapes?” (Is 5:3,4).
Jesus echoes Isaiah, “what will the owner of the vineyard do?" Mk 12: 9. God has withheld nothing, having given all that he could to help man. But man is unresponsive. Other prophets are sensitive to God’s agony and disappointment as well “My people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me! (Micah 6:3). Jeremiah cries out, “What fault did your fathers find in me, that they should stray so far from me? Does a maiden forget her jewelry or a bride her wedding ornaments? Yet my people have forgotten me days without number! My people have committed two sins; they have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, cisterns that cannot hold water. Why? How did you turn against me (Jer. 2:5, 13, 32)? Jesus expresses this agony again, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Mt23:37).
If you think about them, these scripture are disturbing. The image of an all powerful God is very attractive to us. But a suffering God? We don’t know what to do with that. The story of Jesus and his cross is the only possible response to the agony of God, and of humanity. On the cross, all this age-long anguish of God is consummated. It did not mean that men stopped rejecting God. Even after Jesus agonized for Jerusalem, the city was destroyed in the next generation because they did not repent. Suffering of innocent people continues.
People continue to reject God—and to persecute his followers. To all this, the cross does not answer the big “why?” of God or of humanity. But precisely for that reason, it is firmly planted in the midst of God’s and our disappointments. It is a solid witness to the presence of God in the midst of all the evil and suffering in the world. And there-in, alongside the paradox, lies our hope, “Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, your dominion endures through all generations (Ps 145: 13). God is still the triumphant one, and we his faithful ones triumph with him.
Once again, our call is to contemplate on the full implication of God's agony. I believe that if we allow the truth of what led him to crucify his own son to sink in our lives, we shall have strength to live through the circumstantial agonies of our lives. We shall also speak credibly to a suffering world. And we shall find the basis of a selfless devotion to a God who fully identifies with us in wholeness as well as in suffering.
Please share your reflections.
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