"Then the owner of the vineyard said, 'What shall I do? I will send my son,
whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.'
"But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. 'This is the heir,'
they said. 'Let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.'
So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
"What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and kill
those tenants and give the vineyard to others."
When the people heard this, they said, "God forbid!"
(Luke 20:13-16)
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I’m struck by the last two words in this passage.
Just as Jesus finishes a pointed parable that describes how he will soon be killed, the crowd responds with disbelief: “God forbid!” “Surely this will never happen! Surely we will never turn on you like that!”
And yet in just a few short days, they do. In just a few days the same ones who said ‘God forbid!’ begin the chant to ‘Crucify!’ at the top of their lungs.
How did this happen?
Here’s one takeaway: We humans are a fickle bunch by nature.
It’s our nature to move constantly from bandwagon to bandwagon. The grass is always greener someplace. Like these followers of Jesus we are continually tempted to jump ship when things get tough, and this holds true in all avenues of life—in marriages, friendships, church affiliation, addiction-recovery, you name it. We tend toward the same behavior as those who one day followed Jesus, and the next shouted for his death.
So here’s my prayer today:
‘God give me courage to stick things out when times get tough--be that in a marriage, a friendship, or even in my walk with you. Break me of my fickleness, my bandwagon-hopping tendency to cut and run. Break that fickleness in me, so that I might stay faithful over the long haul.
That’s my prayer after reading this passage.
What’s yours?
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