Once upon a time, two families came to a rabbi wanting him to settle a dispute about the boundaries of their land.
He listened as the first family recounted how they had received the land as their inheritance from their ancestors and how it had been in their family for generations. They showed the rabbi papers and maps to prove their claim.
The rabbi then listened to the second family. They described how they had lived on the land for years, working it and harvesting it. They claimed that they knew the land intimately and that it was their land. They had no papers to prove it, but they had the calluses and sore backs that come from working the land and reaping its harvest.
“Decide, rabbi, who owns this land.”
The rabbi said nothing, but bent down on the disputed territory and put his ear to the ground, listening. After several minutes, he stood up and looked at both families.
“I had to listen to both of you, but I had to listen to the land, the center of this dispute also, and the land has spoken. It has told me this: Neither of you owns the land you stand on. It is the land that owns you.”
Our Lenten journey confronts us with the question, are we owned by our prejudices and biases, our desire for wealth and prestige, our fears, anger, hatreds?
In today’s reading, “owned” by their jealousy the brothers of Joseph are driven to do away with him, owned by their greed the tenant farmers murder the landowner’s son, then are destroyed by the outraged landowner.
Jesus calls us to true freedom, to break free from whatever may “own’ us, to break free from whatever makes us less than the people God has called us to be.