(this is a retelling of Matthew 21:33-46 and Isaiah 5:1-7)
There was a watchmaker who really enjoyed and was very good at making watches; really, he was the best at it! He was never alone because his son was a good helper and liked making watches as much as the watchmaker did. It was together that they made watches, but it was the son who wound them all and made them run. One day they decided that they wanted help making watches because with help they could make even more watches than normal. With his knowledge of inner workings and small parts, the watchmaker designed and made machines to help with the task. The son made sure they were all wound tightly and started them up. They gave their creations a nice space to work within the workshop where they could watch over them.
Before they started the watchmaker told the machines one thing: “Make watches with me.” That wasn’t enough to tell the machines, however, because one of the watchmaker’s enemies convinced them they could do things other than just make watches. This meant they spent time otherwise preoccupied, and therefore the watches they made weren’t as good nor as numerous as they could have been. Despite being sad his creations didn’t follow his intentions, the watchmaker let them continue helping but decided to make new machines with new instructions.
The next machines the watchmaker designed were told “Make watches with me, and make them as good as you can.” Convinced that was enough for their creations to follow, the watchmaker and his son continued their own work. Eventually the watchmaker started to notice unfamiliar noises in his workshop. When he checked on his machines they were using techniques to make the watches that he hadn’t taught them! He asked where they had learned those methods and they told him, “Another watchmaker taught his workers to assemble this part like this. We thought it was better than the way you taught us, so we started to use it here too.”
Again upset that his machines had done different than he intended, but still glad he had made them, he designed a few new machines to watch what the others were doing. He told them, “Make watches with me, and make sure you and the others follow my directions.” They were made to give the others reminders and written instructions if necessary to make sure they followed the watchmaker’s plans. For a while after that things went very well! Eventually, though, one of the watches his machines made reached his desk for review. He noticed it wasn’t as high quality as previous ones had been, but figured it was just a mistake so he let work continue.
When a sample from the next batch was brought to him he noticed it was even worse than the last one, so he and his son went to watch his machines work. They saw their creations focusing more on the instructions than on the watches they were making! Somehow the instructions on how to make the watches had become more important than the watches themselves, and so the machines had stopped caring how the watches looked. They were so disappointing to the watchmaker and his son that they decided to send them away to punish them.
When he brought them back, the watchmaker had hoped the time away from his workshop would change their minds regarding what was more important, the watches or the instructions. The first watches they made were wonderful! As time progressed though, the quality started to decline again, so the watchmaker’s son had an idea. “Send me to the floor, dad. I’ll teach them how to make watches the way you taught me to make watches.” Loving his son and wanting his creations to succeed, the watchmaker agreed. His machines were important to him, enough so that he would do anything to help them make watches how he intended.
As the watchmaker’s son walked the floor, he talked with many of the creations. The ones that needed slight adjustments in their work would get a friendly correction. Other machines that were following the original instructions were praised for their work. The presence of the son vastly improved the work of many machines! All of the machines that heeded what the son said were granted a special winding that helped them continue doing the work of the watchmaker. Some of them even started telling others about how they were made to work according to the son.
There were a few, however, that somehow had gotten the wrong idea into their heads about what the watchmaker wanted. Those machines still believed that the instructions the watchmaker had given them were more important to the watchmaker than the end result of the watch. The son tried talking to them about what they were doing but they kept going and told others to do it their way.
Even after speaking firmly and directly, some machines kept making watches by focusing on the instructions and not paying attention to the watch. They knew what the watchmaker had said: “Make watches with me;” “Make them as good as you can;” and “Make sure you and the others follow my directions.” To be sure they could continue doing that, they organized a way to make the son go back up to the watchmaker’s workbench and leave them alone.
What does the watchmaker do next?
