TWENTY-SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME “A”
October 5th, 2008
A little boy was visiting his grandmother for the first time. She lived in a small Wyoming town in cowboy country. On arrival, the boy’s initial reaction was to cry out: “Grandma, look at those bowlegged cowboys.” The grandmother was shocked and embarrassed, fearful that someone might have heard the outburst. Consequently, she immediately took her grandson to her home, and there devoted much of the day trying to refine his vocabulary. The next morning, as they were walking through town, the lad again commented on the locals, this time trying his best not to embarrass his grandmother. He said: “Grandma, hark. What manner of men are these, who wear their legs in parentheses.?”
This little story illustrates that there can be many different ways of saying the same thing, of making the same point. Jesus used many different ways to communicate the Good News of God’s love for His disciples, for His people. He taught them through prayer, both by word and by example. He taught them by His miracles. He taught them using Sacred Scripture. He taught them in His ordinary conversation with them, and He taught them using parables, as in today’s Gospel passage about the landowner and the wicked tenants.
We heard in the parable today that the owner of a vineyard leased it out to some tenant farmers, while he traveled to another country. When the time came for the harvest, the tenants refused to give the owner his rightful share of the harvest. They murdered the agents he sent to collect his share, and they planned to take over ownership of the land for themselves, claiming I suppose what we might call “Squatters Rights”. The owner of the vineyard tried to reason with them and, when that failed, he sent His Son thinking: “they will respect my son”, but the wicked tenants seized his son, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him as well. Jesus told this parable to the chief priests and the elders of the people and then He asked them: “when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They answered: “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”
Jesus’ reason for telling this parable just as His public ministry was coming to an end , was to give the chief priests and elders of the people, the Scribes and Pharisees in particular, a wake-up call. Right from the time Jesus first began to preach to the people, He claimed the right to exercise His Father’s authority over His people. He claimed to be the Son of God and said, on one occasion, “The Father and I are one.” However, instead of believing Him, instea of respecting Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God in human form, the Scribes and Pharisees saw Him primarily as a threat to their own authority and rule over the people. Therefore, as their animosity towards Jesus grew, they adopted the attitude that “Jesus had to go” and both they and Jesus knew that they would soon take action to remove Him. By telling them this parable of the wicked tenants, Jesus was, in fact, saying to these religious leaders: “You may think that getting rid of Me will resolve things in your favour, but you are wrong, just as the evil tenants in My parable were wrong. Killing me will not end in My defeat, but in your own ruin. You will never be able to successfully resist My Father’s claim to absolute dominion over His people - even if you kill His Son. Death has no power over God’s people, for He will never abandon them.” That is the very important message Jesus wants all of us to hear and to take to heart today. God’s love for us is so great that He will never, under any circumstances, abandon us. We are His people, chosen by Him.. We belong to God and He will never abandon us.
Several of the great spiritual writers of old wrote tell us about the value of the practice of the presence of God. It is a powerful way for us to grow stronger in the spiritual life, to become more aware of God within us. To practice the presence of God means that we consciously and regularly bring to mind the fact that God, Who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, lives within us now. It is to be aware that God is not far away and oblivious to us and our needs, but rather God is with us in the present moment and will not abandon us. Often, we fail to realize that, just as we often fail to recognize that Jesus is among us as well. In His human nature Jesus made God visible on this earth. In His humanity, Jesus showed God to us and He did so in unexpected ways. While He lived on this earth Jesus was considered by some to be a kind of outcast, certainly someone out of the ordinary. He was a poor itinerant preacher who had no money, no valuable possessions, no political power, and no army at His disposal. Therefore, we should not be surprised to find Jesus today among the outcasts or the poor of our time. Jesus was a true servant of God as well as of others. His whole life was lived for the benefit of others, as the Gospel tells us that He went about doing good for others. Therefore, we should not be surprised to find Jesus in those who serve others with unselfish love today in soup kitchens, in shelters for the homeless, and so on. Jesus was a member of an oppressed people. The Jews were under the brutal rule of pagan Rome, and were kept in a downtrodden, poverty-stricken state. Therefore, we should not be surprised to find Jesus on the side of the oppressed people in the world today, and in the voices of those who promote justice and human rights for today’s oppressed people of the world. Jesus is among us today, but often we don’t see Him.
Yet, He tells us clearly:: “Whatsoever you do to the least of My brothers and sisters, you do to Me.” By practicing the presence of God in our lives, by trying to have a greater awareness of God’s love for us now, we can serve God better by serving others who are in need, and in that way we give thanks to God Who loves us so very much as His own, and Who will never abandon us.
In the first reading today, God spoken to us through the prophet Isaiah and said that, just as a farmer expects His vines to produce good grapes, a good harvest, so God our loving Father expects us to do good things with our lives as well. Paul reinforces that message in his letter to the Phillipians where he says that we need not worry about anything, but just pray to God with thanksgiving. The result will be that we will have God’s peace in our hearts for the “kingdom of God will be ---- given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” (Mt.21:43).
Once there was an elderly woman who began to have hearing problems. Quite reluctantly, she gave in to her family’s suggestion that she consult an ear specialist. After the doctor had made a thorough examination of her ears he said to her: “You have a condition which can be corrected by minor surgery. I suggest we do it as soon as possible.” She replied: “There will be no operation, thank you, doctor. I’m eighty-nine years old and I’ve heard enough.”
I believe most of us can say there are times when we’ve heard enough too - enough bad news about evils in the world, in our country, in our cities, in our neighbourhoods. When we are fed up with hearing about all the evil tenants and what they are doing, out of greed or selfishness, as they put themselves first, it is then that we need to welcome Jesus,, God’s Son, and hear the Good News He gives us about God’s love for us as His chosen sons and daughters. It is then that we need to hear that God is with us, and that He will never abandon us.