Sharing Life Experience

Sunday’s gospel features a vineyard and reminds us that growing vines and grapes requires digging the ground, clearing rock, planting the vines, pruning, training them. As I drove home across the prairie this spring, I saw a familiar sight — a whole family of eight walking spread apart across a plowed field, picking rocks, and putting them on a flatbed trailer.

My nieces made up a song for rock-picking. One led, “Nobody hates it as much as I do.” Everybody answered, “We do.” Second line, “Nobody hates it as much as me.” “I do,” each affirmed with vigor. The work is dusty, heavy, sweaty, and often miserable. But one learns the land close up, step by step, stone by stone, and starts to feel belonging. Earth cares for us, and we care for Earth.

The vineyard workers in Sunday’s gospel are tenants. Like them, my family lived on someone else’s farm, worked the land, and shared the crops with the owner.

I like to drive past the farm where I grew up. I know the lay of the land like a pro golfer knows a course, the crests of the hills, the sloughs, the unmovable rocks along the fence lines. As I learned the land and worked it with Dad and Grandpa, it seemed to belong to us.

Many people in cities rent or lease apartments and offices, and live as tenants. For a company or person who owns buildings, an ideal tenant treats the leased space as if it were his or her own. But tenants always cause wear. Apartments need painting and repair. The rent due at the end of every month reminds tenants who the owner is. The end of a lease brings up settling the damage deposit.

On farms, tenants and owner square up at harvest. In Sunday’s gospel the owner’s servants discover trouble in the vineyard. The tenants feel the entire grape harvest belongs to them.

  • What is your experience of being a tenant? Of being an owner who rents to others?
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