A homily for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 8, 2023
Is 5:1-7, Phil 4:6-9, Mt 21:33-43
John Steinbeck’s prizewinning book, The Grapes of Wrath, has come to symbolize everything that was — still is — wrong with tenant farming in the United States and elsewhere. Even the book’s title sparks passionate feelings in anyone who hears it, even if they have never read the novel or seen the movie or listened to Bruce Springsteen.
We see and share the frustration and, yes, the utter despair of hard-working people as they uproot themselves in search of honest employment. We especially feel their anger as the system seems rigged against them. All they want, all they need is a hand up, not a handout, but all they get is a kick and a shove.
Which makes the vineyard stories today among the head-scratchers of Scripture. The farmer in Isaiah’s story who somehow grows wild grapes instead of a vintage apparently has never heard of “If at first, you don’t succeed…” when he trashes and then curses his plot. And unlike Steinbeck’s Joad family, the tenant farmers in today’s Gospel are greedy. Greedy and stupid. Justice for them is swift and harsh.
And if our Gospel passage had ended there, everything would have made sense. Better yet, in my feeble estimation, if the Bible’s editors had skipped over
Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures:
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
by the Lord has this been done,
and it is wonderful in our eyes?”
and gone right into Jesus’s heavy admonition to the Israelite leadership
“Therefore, I say to you,
the kingdom of God will be taken away from you
and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”
then the parable would not have introduced a stony metaphorical image into the figurative wine of the story.
Throughout this closing portion of the liturgical year, we see and hear Jesus trying to hammer home to the religious elite that they were wearing blinders, the kind horses do. They were thinking and doing what they always had, enforcing the Mosaic Law strictly and without compassion. They had closed their hearts and minds to the Law of Love that Jesus was preaching, and Jesus was trying to explain to them what the consequences would be.
As we know, they didn’t listen.
As we still know, there are people in authority — government, business and more — who have not embraced fairness and justice and equity and dignity, either.
Imagine the beauty of this world when they do, God willing.
Nevertheless, this Gospel continues to puzzle me. Not so much its content; it’s always been clear that the servants and then the son and heir symbolize Jesus and his disciples and their eventual doom. I understand that Jesus was pointing his accusing finger at the chief priests and the elders. Those aspects aren’t puzzling.
No, I wonder about the tone. Did Jesus really have to call out the Israelites’ top guys as knuckleheads and hypocrites and potential murderers and worse? Were the elites too stuck in their ways for figurative honey to work? Did Jesus have to bathe them in vinegar?
And what of the other people gathered around? Did the Messiah’s vitriol toward the men in the fine robes give them something to cheer, or did they think Jesus was a kook for denigrating the high-and-holies?
Oh, well… The mind of God.
There is one thing I’m certain of: Each of us meets people we’d love to invite into a relationship with our loving Triune God, bringing them closer to the Father and the Spirit through the Son. I don’t think we’ll succeed by scolding them; not many, anyway. Invitations are best accompanied by a smile and the occasional cuppa.
God’s arms are always open, ready to embrace. Our acts of justice and charity, our uplifting all in need of dignity and opportunity, our embraces will bring hope. Done right, through God’s grace, the hope we offer will make any cross-bearing possible and any cross-country trip worthwhile.
