27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year
A. Is. 5:1-7; Mt. 21:33-43.
AIM: To help the hearers see how much God has given us, and hence how
much he expects from us.
Jesus had a way of seizing people’s
attention at once. He spoke about things that vitally interested people. Today
he might speak about the war in Afghanistan
and Syria,
affirmative action, the death penalty, abortion, feminism, illegal immigration
— all subjects about which most people have strong opinions.
A matter about which people in Jesus’
day felt strongly was the amount of land in Palestine owned by foreigners. Jesus’ fellow
Jews resented the windfall profits reaped by wealthy tycoons in far-off Rome from some of the most
fertile property in the country, while those to whom the land rightly belonged
often had difficulty eking out a bare existence. The story we have just heard
about tenant farmers who mistreated the agents of an absentee landowner may
have been based on an actual case familiar to Jesus’ hearers.
Three details in the story would
immediately have seized the attention of anyone familiar with the Hebrew
scriptures: the hedge around the vineyard, the wine press, the watchtower. All
three details are mentioned in Isaiah’s tale of his friend’s vineyard which we
heard in our first reading. Jesus’s hearers were familiar with that passage
from Isaiah. They knew that the vineyard in that passage was a parable of God’s
loving care for his people, and of their ungrateful response. Isaiah is quite
specific about this. He represents God as saying:
What more
was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done? Why, when I looked for the
crop of grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes?
Isaiah used the parable to expose the
ingratitude of God’s people for all the care he had lavished on them, and to
warn them that a day of reckoning was coming. The warning came from God
himself:
Now, I will
let you know what I mean to do with my vineyard ...
I will make it a ruin.
In retelling the familiar story, Jesus
makes it clear that Isaiah’s day of reckoning is now at hand. The religious
leaders of his people are about to reject him. Up to now they have held back
because of Jesus’ popularity with the crowds.
Now, however, the small ruling clique is becoming bolder. Jesus gives
them a final, solemn warning:
The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and
given to a people that will produce its fruit.
Is that all long ago and far away?
Don’t you believe it! Jesus’ warning is as up-to-date as the morning headlines.
It contains lessons for us today: for our country, for us American Catholics,
for each of us personally.
First, the warning for our country.
Few nations have been so blessed by God as ours. We are rich in natural resources,
and rich in the diversity of races, nations, and tongues which have come to
these shores seeking a new and better life. For more than two centuries two
protecting oceans enabled us to develop a largely unpeopled continent. St. Louis, the “Gateway to
the West,” played a key role in this development. For most of our country’s
history we were able to work out our national destiny little troubled by conflicts
elsewhere. Even today the United States, despite all our problems, remains the
richest and most powerful country on earth — since the fall of communism in
1989 the world’s only superpower. Jesus’ parable warns us that all this wealth
and power will be taken from us, and given to others, if we are not willing to
share with those less fortunate than ourselves the abundance God has given
us.
The parable is also a warning to us
American Catholics. The position of
influence we enjoy in the Church, because of our numbers and financial
resources, will be taken away from us and given to Catholics in Third World countries, if our Catholicism is complacent,
conventional, and lukewarm — while theirs is dynamic, daring,
enthusiastic.
In 1974, forty years ago now, a
Capuchin Franciscan priest from Switzerland,
Fr. Walbert Bühlmann, wrote a book which the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner
called “the Catholic book of the year.” It was called The Coming of the Third Church. Bühlmann’s “Third Church” was the
church of the southern hemisphere: Latin America, Africa, parts of Asia. By the end of the twentieth century, Bühlmann said,
most of the world’s Catholics would live below the equator. The older churches
of Europe and North America would no longer
rank first. Bühlmann’s prophecy has proved correct. The majority of the world’s
Catholics now live in the southern hemisphere.
For each of us personally Jesus’
parable is a warning that merely conventional, formal religion is not enough.
And our religion is conventional if
all it means, at bottom, is fulfilling a list of “minimum obligations”:
dropping in at Sunday Mass to get our
card punched, avoidance of serious sin, but not much beyond that: little
generosity, little love or consideration for others, because we’re too busy
looking after Number One. How much would a marriage be worth in which the
spouses were merely concerned to fulfill their “minimum obligations” to one
another? Think about it!
In the great family of God which we
call the Catholic Church God lavishes on us treasures beyond counting: all his
truth, all his goodness, power, and love (which the theologians call “grace”).
He looks for our answering love in return. The treasures God bestows on us are
meant to be used, not put away for
safe-keeping. They are to be shared,
not hoarded. If we fail to pass on to others what God so generously give to us,
we shall lose God’s gifts. We can’t
keep them, unless we give them away! That is what Jesus’ warning words mean:
“The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and
given to a people that will produce its fruit.”
Someone has said: It doesn’t take much
of a person to be a Catholic Christian. But it does take all of him — or her —
that there is!
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