Too Little, Too Late to Matter

AM Psalm 55 • PM Psalm 74
Lam. 2:1-9 • 2 Cor. 1:23-2:11 • Mark 12:1-11

In Mark’s gospel, tenant grape farmers simply refuse at harvest time to pay the agreed upon share of ripe grapes in the vineyards, the owner has built with his own resources.

For many Episcopalians, this story sounds like the story of Cesar Chavez, and the United Farm Workers strike and the retail boycott of table grapes in the 1960s. Our hearts are instinctively with the tenants farmers.

But each servant sent by the owner to collect the grapes—as was negotiated well in advance—gets beaten up, some are actually murdered, as was the owner’s son. The prediction is that the owner will finally gather some mercenaries and with justice on his side, wipe out the murderers.

The essential question may not be “who is right,” but did it have to come to this? Weren’t there signs? Are people still that naive?

Willful disbelief in uncomfortable truths is sadly still very common. These include rising rates of hospitalizations or deaths because acknowledgment would seem to undercut undying loyalty to the world’s greatest expert on everything, except reading. Doctors and nurses routinely recount stories of patients who resisted getting vaccinated until they are on their death beds, and then agreeing at the last minute that they want the shot.

When it is too little, and too late.

Written by Tony Stankus

Tony Stankus, now 71, is the Health Sciences Librarian at the U of A. He became an Episcopalian in 2016, because he could neither resist the transcendent joy of St. Paul’s liturgies, nor the warmth of its priests and people.