Sunday 8th of October 2023 - Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Isaiah 5:1-7/ Psalm 79(80)/ Philippians 4:6-9/ Matthew 21:33-43

If you enjoy gardening, you will know how much effort is required to keep even a small garden tidy and free from weeds. We know the disappointment that can arise after putting effort into trying to grow something only to find it is chocked with weeds or fails to germinate or grow properly. Looking around at houses these days it seems that many people have given up on their gardens and either turned them into parking spaces or put patios or even fake grass over them. The first reading, gospel, and psalm for today continue the theme of the vineyard and the effort required to produce good quality grapes from it. The vineyard in the first reading is understood to be the chosen people of Israel. God tended this vineyard with exceptional care. He dug it round, cleared the weeds and bracken, prepared all the ground carefully, building a protective wall before finally planting the vines. The expectation would have been for a fine crop of quality grapes to make the best possible wine. Instead, there was deep disappointment when only poor sour grapes were produced.

The psalm, one of the ancient prayers of the Jewish people, follows on from the first reading telling the same story. How the Lord cared for the vine only to have the crop fail. The lavish care God gave to encourage the vine of his chosen people was rejected and the crop failed. Not through any fault on the part of God but because the people failed to respond to God’s will for them.

In the Gospel Jesus is talking to the leaders of his community who would have been well versed in scripture and knew well the analogy between themselves and the vineyard planted by God. Jesus took his parable a stage further than the first reading and included himself in it as the son of the vineyard owner. He went through how the Old Testament prophets had been dealt with and followed it up with a prediction of how he, The Son of God, was to be dealt with by his own chosen people, he would be seized and killed. Jesus then encouraged his listeners to answer the very simple and obvious question, ‘when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? Out of their own mouths the chief priests and elders condemn themselves by answering, ‘He will bring those wretches to a wretched end and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will deliver the produce to him when the season arrives.’

After Jesus had been rejected, crucified, and had risen, the redemption he offered was indeed handed over to another people to produce fruit for the landowner. We are those people; we are the new vineyard and are carefully tended by God. We are expected to respond to this loving care and, in fidelity to God’s will, produce an abundant harvest. Will we also let God down through selfish disregard and treachery after all that has been won for us? We need to ensure that the Kingdom of God, the vineyard he so carefully tends for us, is not taken away because of our failure to respond to God’s will.

The worldly attraction of privilege and status are meaningless in the Kingdom of God. The people of Israel were the chosen people of God but his intention for them was to develop their fidelity to him and for it to spread out into the world. The chief priests and elders sat back in their seemingly privileged positions and failed to understand what was clearly set before them in scripture and through the parable Jesus presented to them. We become the chosen people through baptism and the result should be a grateful response to follow the will of God. In all religions there is the temptation to become rigid in the following of rules for the rule’s sake rather than the spirit of what they are there to achieve. Our ways are not God’s ways, and we must be prepared to be surprised about where the Spirit might lead us. Fidelity to God is all important but on God’s terms not ours. We do not have the full picture of God’s plan for us as individuals or for creation. We must be open to growth and development in faith that we might never have thought of.

As is often the case Paul has valuable advice which is just as relevant to us as it was to the Philippian church. In the turmoil, chaos, and confusion of life today we can, through prayer, achieve a state of confidence, peace and serenity. Through contemplative prayer we can gain a clear vision of where the Spirit is guiding us in this life meeting the daily problems we face. We can hear the call God has for us and respond to it making the most of the care God has shown in preparing the vineyard for us to grow in.

Living in fidelity with the will of God will produce an abundant harvest, a harvest that is a response to the loving care God provides for us. It is the failure of humanity to do God’s will that produces so much bad fruit we see in the world today, the bad fruit of suffering and misery. Let us use the perfection of creation to produce the good fruit that God has reason to expect from us.

God Bless, Brendan.