27th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Year A

Isaiah 5:1-7;Philippians 4:6-9; Matthew 21:33-43

A parable is scary because it has the power to ambush its listener and show him a picture of himself while his defences are down; before he can close his eyes the truth is staring him in the face.

The parable which Nathan tells King David is a prime example. David listens to Nathan’s parable and is outraged by the cruelty of the rich man who takes the poor man’s only lamb and calls for him to be severely punished.

You are that man! says Nathan.

David recognises his crime and repents immediately.

Not so, with the chief priests and the elders of the people in today’s Gospel; their hearts are too stubborn.

But let’s go to the First Reading from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah is singing a song of praise to God. He is singing of the love God has for Israel, his vineyard: My friend had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug the soil, cleared it of stones, and planted choice vines in it. In the middle he built a tower, he dug a press there too. He expected it to yield grapes, but sour grapes were all that it gave.

The words are carefully chosen. God plants his vineyard in the best possible place, not only on a hillside, but on a fertile hillside. He digs the soil, clears it of stones, and then plants choice vines in it. He places a tower in the middle so approaching enemies can be easily spotted, and builds a press in anticipation of the harvest. Isaiah laments: but sour grapes were all that it gave.

After all that God has done for his people they fail him. God is rejected by Israel.

In the Gospel today Jesus tells the same story in a different way: There was a man, a landowner, who planted a vineyard; he fenced it round, dug a winepress in it and built a tower; then he leased it to tenants and went abroad.

There is the same loving care by the landowner for the vineyard and we do well to linger here and dwell on the goodness of God. What could I have done for my vineyard that I have not done?

There is nothing like the misery of rejection; no greater, deeper, more scarring pain than the pain of being unwanted. This pain reaches to the heart of a person and when it begins early in life is almost impossible to heal.

Jesus knew this kind of rejection from the religious leaders and the people and was constantly being hurt by it. Look at him on the hillside weeping. He knew he could have saved Jerusalem but they refused. They would neither dance nor mourn. They rejected him; but he refused to reject them.

St John Vianney used to try to move his people to love one another, to love God, to be faithful to their Mass, to their marriage partner but he couldn’t and he wept. They asked him ‘Why do you cry?’ and he said ‘because you won’t’.

How powerful God must be that he can put up with our rejection of him – hour after hour, day after day, month after month, year after year, generation after generation!

Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?

When the day of justice comes we will be condemned out of our own mouths.

They answered, '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.'

The chief priests and the elders of the people get it exactly right. When it’s not about them they can see the evil rejection for what it really is, and in the objective light of truth and justice they can see the punishment it deserves.

It is now that the parable delivers its coup de grâce: I tell you, then, that the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.

He couldn’t have said it more clearly, ‘You are the tenants!’

And so are we! You and I are tenants of many vineyards.

• The vineyard of your marriage: are you looking after it? Is it bearing proper fruit?

• The vineyard of your family: mother – father; son – daughter?

• The vineyard of this parish: Are we listening to the Word of God, living it, proclaiming it? Are we drawing others to Christ?

• And finally, each one of us is the tenant of a special vineyard called our soul. It is the most important vineyard of all. What condition is it in? Is it bearing fruit?

We had all better know the answer to that question; it’s a matter of life or death. Jesus’ parable ends with a moment of judgment and threat: He will bring those wretches to a wretched end… .

If only the Pharisees and leaders had been ready to allow the parable to convict them of wrongdoing; they could have repented and all would be forgiven. If only we would let the parable convict us.

There’s one thing for sure. I’ll know when it happens by the number of people coming to Confession.

15th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Year A

Isaiah 55:10-11; Romans 8:18-23; Matthew 13:1-23

Imagine a sower going out to sow. Go on, use your imagination. Can you see him?

There he goes, stepping it out, up and down, backwards and forwards, tirelessly doing his work, casting the seed to left and right. He looks familiar, doesn’t he? Who is this sower? He looks like Jesus - in fact, it is Jesus. It is the Lord himself, hard at work.

Imagine the seed. Like rain falling to the earth, or maybe like snow, it covers the soil, seeking a crack to fall into so that it might take root and grow and become what it is meant to become. He scatters it generously over the entire field. He doesn’t seem to be looking where he is throwing it. It falls everywhere – beside the path, on the rocks, among the thorns. How strange! The seed is so precious but he doesn’t seem to care. He is sowing it in all the corners of this field – not a single square centimetre misses out. What is this seed? It is the Word of God. Jesus is busy sowing the Word of God.

Imagine the field. Let’s follow the sower as he walks the pathways through his field. It’s a narrow path, just wide enough for him to walk the length of his field, up and down. We see clumps of thorn bushes here and there and watch the seeds disappear into the tangle of their branches. Patches of rock litter the field and we notice the seeds lying exposed on their hard surface. And then there is the soil, wonderful, rich and fertile, greedily swallowing up the seed and its promise of a harvest.

Where is this field? Have you ever wondered? Don’t be shocked when I tell you it’s not far away – it’s in your heart. Yes, it’s in your heart - in actual fact it is your heart.

Now close your eyes and hold one hand over your heart. Imagine that field there where your heart is, and imagine the sower walking there, in your heart, sowing the seed. It’s Jesus himself and he is sowing the Word of God deep within you, right now.

All this makes Jesus’ parable rather personal, doesn’t it? It’s about you, and not only that, it’s about the most personal part of you, your secret inner self, the part no one else can see. What Jesus does by telling this parable is to make the invisible, hidden part of you suddenly all too visible.

The parable is not about four different groups of people - edge-of-the-path people, rocky people, thorny people, and good-soil people. No! The parable shows us four different parts of ourselves and then asks us to take a good, hard look.

There are two extremes indicated: those parts where the seeds never even get to germinate because they fall in poor soil on the edge of the path, and those parts where the seeds yield a harvest because they are received in rich soil.

So we can see – it’s all a matter of soil quality. It’s not the quality of the seed that's being questioned - it’s the quality of the soil, the soil of our hearts. The compacted, often trodden on soil beside the path give no shelter to the seed and it is eaten by the birds; the cultivated rich soil of the field accepts the seed and yields a harvest.

So now we need to clarify what makes for good soil and what makes for poor soil? It’s all too simple. Jesus tells us very clearly. The poor soil is the man who hears but doesn’t understand; the rich soil is the man who hears and does understand. How simple is that?

The word of God comes to us in countless ways. Jesus liked to express it in parables. A parable encapsulates the truth much like a macadamia nut or an almond or a walnut encapsulate the seed. They require effort to break into. Parables require effort too – they require goodwill. 

Some people are all too ready to say: Oh, it’s too hard! I just don’t understand! OK, that’s fair enough, so what can they do about that? They have to spend time, make an effort, study and pray. In this sense every parable is like a walnut. It’s a test of how much we want to get to the seed, a test of how much we want to understand.

As I said, it’s not the seed that’s on trial here - it’s us – it’s our desire to understand that’s being tested.

I see my sister knitting from a magazine. The instructions are complex and I don’t understand them – but she does. How come? Because she’s willing to make the effort and I’m not. And that goes for so many things in life we don’t really want to understand, including God’s Word. We say: It’s too hard! when actually what we mean is: I’m not really interested!

There are two other areas in the field of our hearts that prevent the seed from bearing a harvest even when we are of some goodwill. The first is the rock and the second is the thorns – the hard, unyielding, stubborn, proud, unwilling-to-change parts of our hearts and the deadly, immoderate passions which effectively smother the seed.

I’m not going to make a lengthy description of the thorns and the rocks in our hearts, that’s up to each one of us to do. Each one of us has to identify those things which prevent the word of the Kingdom from bearing a harvest in our life. This will take time and effort, prayer and study, patience and faithfulness but, of course, we’ll do it if we're really interested.