Is God stupid?

That's the first question that crossed my mind when I read the parable of the wicked tenants yesterday (Mark 12:1-12). I've never spent much time with this parable because it's never made a lot of sense to me, but as I'm making my way through Mark during my devotion time, I couldn't escape it.

Every time I've read this text in the past, my first reaction is, this vineyard owner must be stupid. A quick synopsis: Jesus tells this parable about this man who planted a vineyard and then leased it to tenants. The vineyard owner left the country and then sent workers ("slaves" as the text says) back to the vineyard to collect his share. The tenants, though, kept beating the slaves up and the slaves would return empty handed. The vineyard owner, not to be deterred, would continue this process. He'd send slaves. Tenants would beat them up and sometimes even kill them. The owner eventually sends his own son and they kill him, too. First reaction: Why would you keep sending slaves? Clearly this tactic isn't working!

Of course, this parable isn't about commerce and that finally clicked for me yesterday. I haven't read the commentaries to see if this interpretation is "right," but it seems to me that God keeps sending people our way (prophets, teachers, priests, even, as I believe, his son) and we keep ignoring, rejecting, even killing them. And yet God doesn't stop the process. When you first think about it, that's kind of stupid. Why would you keep sending them? Because, simply, God loves and every once in a while we receive the prophet/teacher/Jesus and begin to clue in.

This parable also has a pretty harsh warning for the tenants: "(The owner) will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others." So there's that and I don't want to simply ignore that part of the text either, but yesterday, I found it comforting that God continually does "stupid" things like bestowing love even when we ignore these entreaties.