Dear Parishioners,
We have all experienced that feeling of sadness and disappointment when our expectations or desires are not fulfilled. In today’s reading, the prophet Isaiah beautifully lays out a drama that unfolds between God and his chosen people. It is the story of a loving relationship that has turned sour. God’s love for his people seems to have produced no good fruit. The people God made his own repeatedly failed him.
God chose to love us, and he chose to personalize that love by revealing himself to Abraham and his descendants. He entrusted them with his promises and made them guardians of his covenant. These chosen people were called to make God present to all humanity. In choosing the patriarch Abraham, God forged a bond and covenant with the men and women of Israel, calling them to be ambassadors of his joy, mercy, and tenderness. However, this relationship falls short of what God intended. Instead of producing the good fruits of fidelity and peace, the people produced jealousy, violence, and hatred.
The prophet Isaiah sums up this failed relationship between God and his people with these words: “God looked for good grapes but received wild berries.” The vineyard did not yield good fruit. As a consequence, the vineyard would lose God’s protection, and destruction would become unavoidable because the people had failed to live according to His Will. This was the consequence of their wrongdoing.
We can see ourselves in this experience. Jesus takes up this powerful imagery of the vineyard when he addresses his audience. They would have immediately remembered the words of the prophet Isaiah.
Jesus, however, offers a new perspective. He speaks of a man who “planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug out a winepress, and erected a tower.” The owner then sent his servants to collect the produce from the vineyard. To his dismay, the servants were badly treated, and some were even killed.
Here we learn something about God’s extraordinary kindness and patience. God did not give up on his people. He repeatedly sent messengers to call them back to faithfulness. Finally, he sent his own Son to speak to the chief priests and elders.
But when they saw the Son, they said, “Let us kill him and then we shall have his inheritance.” And that is what they did. How quickly do we get rid of anyone who speaks the truth to us, especially when we are confronted with our own wrongdoing? How quickly do we become angry when our conscience is disturbed? Throughout history, martyrs have shed their blood for the Gospel. Likewise, many political and social leaders have suffered or even died because they challenged injustice and called people to account for their wrongdoing.
The tenants wanted to kill the Son and take possession of the vineyard. When greed and avarice corrupt the human heart, we can lose our sense of perspective and begin to pursue what does not belong to us. It is a grave evil to live as though there is no God or to act as though God is absent from the world. There are those who strengthen their own authority by grasping for power and wealth, with little or no regard for God’s message or his will.
We are now the new community, the vineyard referred to in Jesus’ parable. Our faith community, and every ecclesial community, is called to be a source of God’s creative and life-giving power. The ministry of Jesus continues in the Church, and through the sacraments we are renewed and sanctified. The sacraments give us life and unite us with the owner of the vineyard. The power of the Holy Spirit is poured out upon us, but we must be careful not to abuse this gift or take it for granted.
The Kingdom of God that Jesus speaks about is a gift, not our personal possession. Like the vineyard, we cannot claim the Lord’s vineyard as our own. As Jesus puts it: “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation that will yield a rich harvest.”
Our success as God’s people will come through deep-rooted fidelity, humility, and self-renunciation. We are called not to possess the vineyard but to care for it faithfully and to bear fruit for the glory of God. Fidelity to
God’s will produces an abundant harvest.
In His vineyard, I remain yours,
Rev. Vitalis Anyanike, Pastor
