Journey's Weekly Homilies
October
6th (27th Sunday, Ordinary Tine)
(Is.5:1-7,
Phil.4:6-9, Mt.21:33-43)
Homily by Jim
When Jesus began to tell the
parable that is the gospel of today he began with an image
familiar to his listeners--including you and me. This image is the
vineyard, and the word 'vineyard' usually symbolizes some
kind of spiritual good.
But now Jesus took this image, surely dear to the hearts of the Galileans
who listened, and turned it on sort of up side down.
You know, it's not unusual for Jesus to take a word or an image
associated with the holy and turn it around and associate it with
the dark. He did it in the Parable of the Leaven for
example.
So as I understand this parable, it is Jesus' commentary about
groups and about what happens when there is no real community,
only collections of people, none of whom understands or cares
about other each other. We have come thousands of years
since Jesus told this parable, and in some ways we have made
wonderful progress in
community building--even our nation is one example, another our
own Journey Community. There have also been disasters too.
Take this country again--and our present readiness to
destroy others to preserve our own. Is this the way to
fulfillment?
But now the parable and its plot: A landowner goes to a
distant country and there he establishes a vineyard--in
imagination it is in Galilee--and he rents or leases the vineyard
to local people and agrees to accept a portion of the produce as
payment. He then returns home--probably some cosmopolitan city
such as Caesarea Philippi, Jaffa or Jerusalem.
Time passes; the harvest season comes and goes and so does the
time when he is supposed to receive his payment. The grapes
that the vineyard produced he might now be willing to
accept as raisins, but he receives nothing. He is troubled,
downright angry. He expects his payment when it is due, and
nothing arrives, not even an explanation.
There is a total lack of moral involvement here; the landlord
buys, leaves, and waits for his money. He is totally indifferent
to what is happening back at "the farm." He probably
lives like a king many miles away. The lives of the tenants
are as nothing to him. He could present day C.E.O.
and millions of stock holders who have no
clear idea to what use their investment are used.
This landlord sends his slaves, emissaries or the Rent Squad, as
you will.
A party of three goes to the vineyard, and being completely
unprepared for a violent encounter, they suffer greatly. One is
knocked in the head with a rock, another is beat up and a third
one is actually killed.
We can only guess at what the landowner makes of this situation.
Perhaps he does not even know what has become of his rent
collectors, so he sends a second deputation consisting this time
of a more than three persons, a cadre now--but they receive a
similar rough reception of beatings and a killings. But still no
rent.
In this parable, there are potentially three communities: tenants,
rent collectors, and landlords; they are totally separate from one
another. Community requires shared beliefs, and in this parable
there are none. We could hear in this details the
present day situation among Israelis - Palestinians here; we hear
Indians and Pakistanis here too. Enmity that never is
soothed.
Eventually the owner in a truly idiotic fashion sends his own son
who is, the owner thinks, able to protect himself by his status in
society alone so it seems. When he shows up, the
tenants perhaps miscalculate and presume that the owner is dead.
So, believing the son to be the sole surviving heir, they kill him
in the expectation of acquiring the vineyard for themselves. The
plan is absurd and illegal, just as it would be today, but they
are driven by their otherwise hopeless economic situation.
These tenants, probably decent, honest people in the beginning,
have now become truly a dangerous band, and now they have gone
beyond the law and are criminals. The reason is the
desperate need for money to survive. Under these circumstances,
their behavior is not surprising.
[Think about it this way for a moment. We are all tenants on
borrowed land; none of us owns the earth. Do we care
for this piece of 'land' we've been given? We are also
landlords and might lord it over others. We need to see how
we treat those who share the earth with us.]
Now near the end of the parable, Jesus asks "... when the
owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those
tenants?" And the answer is that the owner will put those
wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other
tenants who will give him his produce at the harvest time. Perhaps
. But the he same lack of trust will spring
up on both sides again.
Tenants such as these become hard strapped for cash and simply try
various strategies to avoid paying to the landlord fees or rent or
a portion of the produce. The story is about to repeat
itself until some saving insight develops on all sides. Half of
the world's population lives even today on less than $2 a day! And
a billion go to bed hungry every night.
Jesus' parable is provoking; it is a strong warning about the
consequences of groups estranged from one another. In
it, all are 'foreigners' to one another; nothing is in harmony;
the world is out of order, and it was against that state of things
that Jesus social teachings were directed.
By way of contrast to so such negativity, the parable
implies that we are the tenants of the new land where we are
called by Jesus. We both cultivate and receive cultivation We have
been given a treasure within us and around us and asked to take
good care of both.
Well then having spent these minutes dwelling with such awful
disorder, shall we close with what are more happy, consoling
words, lines from another source--from one who was a worker in the
vineyard of the Lord; he truly was a worker, a true tenant.
I am referring of course to Paul and his letter which is the
second reading for today. It is a beautiful piece of English,
and we hope that we can come to offer a praise like this one:
My dear people,
whatever is true,
whatever is honorable,
whatever is just,
whatever is pure,
whatever is lovely,
whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence,
if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.