October 04, 2020

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)

Sometimes it can be difficult to find a common theme between the readings for a particular week. It may require several hours of research, examining the passages and reading commentaries. And still the themes may be vague and elusive.  For this weekend, however, the opposite is actually true. The common theme is readily apparent and plainly stated in the Responsorial Psalm: “The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel.” (Isa. 5:7a).

The metaphor is first described in the reading from Isaiah (Isa. 5:1-7) in a passage known as “The Song of the Vineyard.” This is a story used by the prophet Isaiah who is preaching to the people of Jerusalem in Judah. It coincides with the time period when the Northern Kingdom of Israel is being invaded by the Assyrians (740BC).

Isaiah recognizes that his people have become guilty of the same sins as their northern kindred. They have rebelled against and forsaken the LORD, offered empty sacrifices, and celebrated hypocritical feasts, mistreated the oppressed, the orphan and the widow, and prostituted themselves before foreign idols.

In today’s reading, Isaiah uses the image of a vineyard to represent the wicked people of Judah. It is a story of a friend of Isaiah who plants a vineyard on a fertile hillside and tends to it carefully. He spades it, clears the stones, and plants the choicest vines. Then he waits for the crop to grow. But much to his dismay, it yields only wild, unusable grapes.

The vineyard owner then ponders his dilemma and asks, “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?” (Isa. 5:4).

His decision is that he will take away its hedge and let it be grazed by intruders and trampled. It will lie in ruin, never to be pruned. And it will become overgrown with thorns and dried up for lack of rain.

This is the message for the people of Judah: This vineyard owner is much like God who delivered the chosen people into the Promised Land and cared for and tended to them. Like a “cherished plant,” God expected them to bear fruit – to worship their God alone with devotion and to show God’s mercy and compassion to those around them. But because they have failed to do this, they will suffer God’s judgement, and like the vineyard, be trampled and destroyed at the hand of their enemy.

The Gospel for today is a follow-up of the confrontation between Jesus and the chief priests and elders from last week. There he also used the image of a vineyard in “The Parable of the Two Sons” to accuse them of being evil, hypocritical, and unrepentant. 

Jesus continues his accusation against the Jewish leaders using another story known as “The Parable of the Tenants.” (Mt. 21:33-43). It is a parable about a landowner, like the one in Isaiah, who plants a vineyard with a wine press, a tower, and a protective hedge. This landowner, however, leases the vineyard to tenants and goes off on a journey

Once the grapes became ripe for picking, the landowner sends his servants to the tenants to obtain the vineyard’s yield. But the tenants violently abuse the servants, beating, stoning, and even killing one. The landowner then sends more servants, but these are also viciously mistreated.

Finally, the landowner sends his son to the tenants, thinking that he will surely be respected and well-treated. But when the tenants see the son, they take it as an opportunity to steal his inheritance. So, they seize him, throw him out of the vineyard, and kill him.

At this point, Jesus poses a question to the chief priests and elders. He asks, “What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?” (Mt. 21:40).

And they reply, “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times.” (Mt. 21:41).

Jesus then gives them the crucial meaning of the parable by quoting a passage from the book of Psalms. He says, “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? (Mt. 21:42 cf. Ps. 118:22-23)

Then Jesus follows up with a warning to the Jewish leaders. He says, “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.”

When we look at the characters in the parable, we can discern its meaning and also see how it compares to “The Song of the Vineyard.” Like with Isaiah’s story, the landowner is God and the vineyard represents the people of God who are chosen to yield God’s fruit in His earthly kingdom.

In Jesus’ parable these people can be divided into two groups. The tenants are the chief priests and elders who have been tasked with leading the Jewish people. The servants represent faithful prophets, like Isaiah, who God has sent throughout the years to the people of Israel.

More often than not, the people of Israel, especially the kings and priests with authority, have rejected the prophetic calls to repentance. So, too, the leaders of the time of Jesus who had rejected the preaching of John the Baptist.

Finally, with one last effort, God sends Jesus, who is the foundation of God’s kingdom. However, Jesus predicts what will happen to him. As foolish builders who reject the cornerstone, the Jewish leaders will reject him. Like their ancestors in the days of Isaiah, their stubbornness, hypocrisy, and ignorance of Jesus as the Son of God will lead to their downfall and that of their nation.

The importance of these stories for today can be seen in the Gospel Acclamation. Here John tells us, I have chosen you from the world, says the Lord, to go and bear fruit that will remain.”  (Jn. 15:16).

In other words, the Church has become the vineyard of the Lord. And the members of the Church today might be placed in one of the two groups in the vineyards of the parables. They may be the faithful believers and servants who like Isaiah, see, and perform God’s work in the world. Those who accept the Son of God and, through the power of the Holy Spirit, cultivate the Gospel message.

Or they may be like the Israelites of the eighth century BC and the tenant leaders of the time of Jesus. They are those who reject Jesus as the Son of God, instead relying on the ways of the world and their own secular beliefs as a guide to decision making and relating to others. Thus, they bear rotten fruit.

The question we must ask ourselves then is this: In the vineyard of the Lord am I a branch that bears good fruit or one that lacks production to be pruned and discarded?