Mark 12:1-12 - A Modern Parable

A coalition of Christian Nationalists came to Jesus, and he began to speak to them in parables. “A man owned a bodega. It had been passed down by his grandfather to his father, and from his father to him, it was all he had in this world. Each week a rich businessman who lived on the other side of town would come into the bodega, take whatever he wanted, and leave without paying. This went on for so long and the rich businessman took so much that finally the owner of the bodega could no longer afford to stock his shelves. Eventually, he could no longer even pay his taxes on the property, and the bodega that had been in his family for generations was seized by the city, sold, razed to the ground and turned into a parking lot. What then will the owner of the bodega do? The next time the rich businessman comes, looking for the bodega, the owner will strike him down, go to his house, take back all that the rich businessman had stolen, and rebuild his bodega. Have you not read this scripture: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’?” When they realized that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowd. So they left him and went away.