The Parable of the vineyard: the story continues...

And as we wind our way down to the 20th century, we find that the story is still unresolved. The vineyard is still doing business. The master is still on the scene, but the evil tenants are alive and well too, and the killings and the violence and the senseless bloodshed continues.

Some years ago, they held a service to remember the fallen Jesuit priests who had died in El Salvador. At the service they began reading from a list of the names of other Christians who had died there in the struggle - missionaries, church workers, priests, and ordinary Christian lay folk. They had to stop, for there were 60,000 names on the list.

One fears that East Timor could go the same way. The list of names there is probably already way too long to include in our weekly prayers.

And so the story goes on. The business of the vineyard continues, and the killings continue. Servants are still being sent out to contest the inheritance with the violent and the unjust. And we still don't know when it will all come to an end.

Yet some things we do know. We know: That violence, pain and seemingly fruitless struggle has always characterised and will always characterise the “battle for the vineyard”; That one day justice will come; That while it has already cost the master a terribly high price to stay involved with the vineyard, he is willing to pay that price.

This leads us to the final story which we must tell today - the story which we retell here every week. It is the story we will not only continue to speak of in this service, but the story we will re-enact together when we share the Eucharist together again. At the heart of our relationship with God, there is blood and there is pain.