Homily for 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A 2017
Isaiah 5:1-7; Philippians 4:6-9; Matthew 21:33-43
Introduction
I once saw a T-shirt that said, “When mummy says ‘No,’ Call 1-800-GRANDMA.” Perhaps the readings of the past few weeks have painted God as an easy-going grandma, who forgives over and over again, who is generous even to those who don't deserve it. Today’s readings balance that picture by showing us that God is also a parent who metes out tough-love.
Scripture and Theology
Both the first reading and the gospel, use the image of a vineyard to contrast God's great generosity with the rejection of that generosity by the people. In the first reading, the vineyard, which represents the people, has been watered and tended well. The vineyard owner, who is God, expects it to produce good fruit, but it has produce only wild grapes, that is sin. That is why he now abandons it and lets it be trampled upon. The message is that when people repeatedly reject God’s love and mercy bad things will happen to them.
We need only look briefly at the history of Israel to see for how long they took God's love for granted and how overdue his punishment for them was.
The first period of their history was the time of the PATRIARCHS: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This vineyard was leased, you might say, when God called Abraham, who lived in what today is Iraq, to become the Father of his people. God promised him descendants, land and most of all blessings. Abraham agreed and moved to what is now Palestine. For his part, God fulfilled his end of the bargain when Abraham’s wife Sarah gave birth to Isaac, who in turn gave birth to Jacob or Israel, whose name became the name of the whole nation. Jacob and his family later moved to Egypt during the famine, and grew into a large community there, grew into the Hebrew people.
Unfortunately during their time in Egypt, Jacob’s descendants, the Hebrews, were ENSLAVED. The people cried to their God to rescue them, and rescue them God did, appointing Moses to lead them to the Promised Land in the exodus. But even during that journey of 40 years, the people were often rebellious. For example, they made a golden calf to worship and often whined about the kind of food God gave them.
The third period of their history was the MONARCHY, the time of the Kings. No sooner had the people reached the Promised Land than their rebellious attitude began to rear its head again. They did not want to be ruled by Judges who represented God, but by powerful kings like other nations. The patient Lord granted their wishes. But these kings, one after another, began to lead the community astray, just as the Lord in his immense wisdom had foreseen. For example, they brought in false idols for the people to worship. Worse still, the kingdom was divided into two: the North and the South. The two kingdoms continued on separately. But both did not adhere to the laws of the Lord, despite the preaching of the prophets he sent them like Elijah, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah, whom they persecuted.
As punishment for their sinfulness, the two kingdoms fell, and the people were sent into EXILE, beginning with the Northern Kingdom. Then despite the preaching of more prophets like Jeremiah, the Southern Kingdom of Judah also did not heed the teachings of the Lord and fell to the Babylonians soon after. But again the Lord was kind and merciful, and after about 50 years of punishment in exile, he brought the Jews back home.
Finally God sent his son, Jesus to be the Christ, to bring the final good news of salvation. But they rejected him, preferring to stick to their old sinful ways. That is what the gospel parable is speaking about. In the gospel parable, the people are now represented not by the vineyard but by the tenants of the vineyard. God's hope that “They will surely respect my son,” came to nothing. They have Jesus killed as a criminal on the cross.
And so, after this troublesome history, Jesus asks, “What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?" And his listeners answered: "He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times."
And true to his word, the vineyard, the promise of salvation, was taken away from the Jewish people and given to others, that is, the Christians.
Christian Life
But this new lease of the vineyard to Christians has the same conditions as the previous one. While God promises his immense providence and love, the new tenants must be produce good fruit by being committed to the Lord in faith, hope and love. How well have Christians done in this regard? How good is the fruit produced so far? How much fruit has been given?
Clearly the many saints, the many martyrs, the many good examples of committed Christians in the world today suggest that some have taken the terms of the lease very seriously. But that great picture is contradicted by the many less than stellar examples of individual Christians and of the Church as an institution. Our sins, especially the more pervasive ones are clearly a rejection of the terms of our lease.
- As both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis have said again and again, the terrible crimes of clerical sexual abuse were a failure of commitment to Christ, the wild grapes that do not please the Lord.
- The pervasive culture of death, often promoted by Christians is also another breach of our covenant with the Lord. For you have Christians who insist that they have a right to terminate the development of a baby or the life of an elderly person, for no other reason but convenience. Then you have those on the other end of the spectrum who support the death penalty, which has no demonstrable purpose or justification except the exercise of vengeance. In both cases we forget that life belongs to God and only he should end it.
- We also sin grievously and therefore break the terms of our lease, when we ignore care for the most needy in our society, especially those on the peripheries, because of our personal acts of omission, but especially because we support political, social and economic policies that depart from Jesus' call to care for the least of our brethren.
Perhaps this pervasive condition of sinfulness continues on because we forget that the God of Jesus Christ is both a God of mercy and a God of justice. Particularly we modern Christians have replaced an obviously incomplete message of fire and brimstone in the past, with an equally defective anything-goes, I-am-okay-you-are-okay brand of Catholicism.
But if we can learn anything from the readings of this Sunday and the past few Sundays, it is this:
- That we must see the Lord as being both patient and merciful, and also righteous and just.
- That we must combine the heightened sense of God’s justice of our predecessors, with our recently recovered sense of God’s universal love and mercy.
- That we must have serious commitment to a deep faith in God that the generations past held so dear, without losing our newly found commitment to the service of others.
Conclusion
Only when justice and mercy meet, can we have the perfect recipe for growing in relationship, not only with each other, but also with God. If we accept tough-love parenting from our parents, knowing that we are the better for it, how much more should we accept the same tough love from God our Father?
Without love justice is cruel; but without justice love is fake. But God’s love is just because it is tempered with love; God’s love is real, because it is also just.
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