Homily Ordinary 27A: The Lord is both just and merciful

Homily for 27^th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A 2020

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.” Now as you can tell from my accent I am not from around here.  And I don’t know what kind of grandmas you have here, but my Ugandan grandma was no-nonsense, in fact, perhaps even tougher than my mother.

I bring up the easy-going American grandma, because she is a good example of the image of God that we have been hearing in the readings of the past few Sundays: a God who forgives over and over again, the God who pays a full wage even those who come at the eleventh hour, the merciful God.

But today’s readings complete the picture of God by showing us that he is also like 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.  By the way, in case you wonder why Jesus uses vineyards in his examples.  Well, that is what was available. If he were to come to Southern Louisiana today, he might speak of bayous, swamps, cotton fields, or even our malls.

Anyway, in the first reading, the vineyard, which represents the people, has been watered and tended well by its owner.  The vineyard owner, who is God, expects it to produce good fruit, but it has produced only wild grapes, sour grapes, that is, sin.  That is why God 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 to look briefly at the history of Israel to see for how long they took God's love for granted and how overdue their punishment was.

The first period of their history was the time of the PATRIARCHS: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  This vineyard was leased to them, 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, which is the second period. The people cried to their God to rescue them, and rescue them he did, appointing Moses to lead the exodus that brought them to the Promised Land.  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 the 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 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 and some they killed.

As punishment for their sinfulness, the two kingdoms fell, and the people were sent into EXILE, beginning with the Northern Kingdom which fell to the Assyrians.  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 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, where 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 had 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 correctly: "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, we the new tenants must also produce good fruit by being committed to the Lord in faith, hope and love.  How well have Christians done in this regard?  How much fruit have we produced?  How good is the fruit produced so far?

Clearly the many saints, the many martyrs, the many good examples of committed Christians in the world 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.  Surely the terrible crimes of clerical sexual abuse are wild grapes that do not please the Lord.  No doubt the pervasive culture of death even among Christians that kills the unborn and the elderly are sour grapes that make the Lord angry.  But so are the death penalty and mistreatment of prisoners and suspects.  We cannot forget some historical sour grapes of slavery, segregation and even racism today.  We also break the terms of our lease when fail to care for the poorest in our society especially since Jesus asked us to care for the least of his brethren.

Will God punish us for our communal sins just as he does for the personal ones?  You bet he will, but not in the ways people often think.  Perhaps you have heard people say Katrina was punishment for the debauchery of New Orleans. Or today some say that COVID-19 is divine punishment for our sins.  Since the coming of Jesus, that is not how God punishes us.  He does not use natural disasters, even though he allows them to happen.  You see natural disasters like Katrina and COVID-19 are blunt tools since they punish all, the guilty and the innocent.  But that is not how God works.

Do you remember in the gospel when people asked Jesus about the seemingly meaningless deaths of the Galileans at the hands of Pontius Pilate? Jesus said that those Jews weren’t more sinful than other Galileans, nor where the people of Siloam who died when a tower collapsed on them. The important factor in divine punishment is the refusal to repent.  That is why Jesus told them: “unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:5).

Conclusion

And so dear friends, instead of looking for divine punishment in natural disasters, let us be more concerned about the punishment that awaits us, if we do not repent personally.  We must also teach others, not just about God who is patient and merciful, but also one who is righteous and just.  Let us not replace the one-sided fire and brimstone God of the past with an equally defective anything-goes, I-am-okay-you-are-okay image of God.

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, of my Ugandan grandmother, knowing that we are the better for it, how much more should we accept the same tough love from God our Father?  Without mercy justice is cruel; but without justice mercy is fake.  But God’s mercy is real because it is just; God’s justice is real because it is merciful.