“Control” by Brian Flanagan

“Control” by Brian Flanagan

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Raise your hand if you’re a control freak. Okay, the rest of you are lying. All of us love to be in control, and in today’s world we can control just about everything. Too hot or cold? Just crank up the central heating or air conditioning until it’s just right. Instead of going to a diner with the only two coffee options being regular or decaf, we can go to Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts and get 47 varieties of lattes and find the one that perfectly suits our taste buds. Don’t like what’s playing on your 5,000 cable channels? No problem! That’s what Netflix is for.

There’s only one thing harder than not being in control – and that’s giving up control. Anyone who’s ever had a temporary leadership role knows that. You go from head honcho one day to rank and file the next, but it was nice while it lasted.

Apparently this struggle is nothing new to humanity. This is exactly what’s happening in Jesus’ parable in this Sunday’s Gospel. The tenants are put it charge of the vineyard while the landowner is away, and when it comes time to hand over the produce, they decide they’ll hang onto this control they think they have. They beat, kill, and stone the servants in a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable. They even kill the landowner’s son! I don’t know what their plan was for when their boss finally returned.

This parable reminds me of a scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King when Denethor, who is the Steward (the temporary ruler) of Gondor, starts getting defensive when he hears that Aragorn (the rightful heir to the throne) is back in town. He says, “Gondor has no king; Gondor needs no king.”

We are so reluctant to give up control and power because deep down we’re afraid we’ll never get it back. We’re afraid we’ll be forgotten. The tenants therefore said, “This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.”

The heir in the parable represents Christ, and ironically it is precisely in his Passion, Death, and Resurrection that we do indeed receive his inheritance. As the priest prays in the Mass, we are made “co-heirs” with Christ. Yet this is not because we tried to seize it; it is gifted to us.

I’ve often found in my own life that it can be better to be the right hand man to a good leader than to be the top dog anyway – there’s a certain paradoxical freedom in it. So let’s be good stewards of what we are put in charge of and be ready to hand the reins back to the landowner when he comes.