Year A 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

[SPEAKER_00]: A reading from the prophet Isaiah, let me sing to my friend, the song of his love for his vineyard, my friend had a vineyard on a fertile hillside.

[SPEAKER_00]: He dug the soil cleared of stones and planted choice vines in it.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the middle he built a tower, he dug a press there too.

[SPEAKER_00]: He expected it to yield grapes, but sour grapes all that gave.

[SPEAKER_00]: And now, in habitance of Jerusalem and men of Judah, I ask you to judge between my vineyard and me, what could I have done for my vineyard that I have not done?

[SPEAKER_00]: I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield sour grapes instead?

[SPEAKER_00]: Very well, I will tell you what I'm going to do with my vineyard.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will take away its hedge fruit to be grazed on, and knock down its wall for it to be trampled on.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will lay it waste, unpruned, and dug, overgrown by the briar and the thorn.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will come in the clouds to rain no rain on it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah that chosen plant.

[SPEAKER_00]: He expected justice, but found bloodshed, integrity, but only a cry of distress.

[SPEAKER_00]: The word of the Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: The responsibility of Psalm is, the vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel, the vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel.

[SPEAKER_00]: You brought a vine out of Egypt to plant it you drove out the nations.

[SPEAKER_00]: It stretched out its branches to the sea, to the great river it stretched out its shoots.

[SPEAKER_00]: The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then why have you broken down its walls?

[SPEAKER_00]: It is plucked by old who passed by, is ravished by the bore of the forest, devoured by the beasts of the field, the vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel.

[SPEAKER_00]: God of hosts turn again, we implore, look down from heaven and see, visit this vine and protect it, the vine you right hand has planted, the vine of the Lord is the house of Israel.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we shall never forsake you again, give us life that we may call upon your name.

[SPEAKER_00]: God of hosts bring us back, let your face shine on us and we shall be saved.

[SPEAKER_00]: The vine of the Lord is the house of Israel.

[SPEAKER_00]: A reading from the letter of Saint Paul to the Philippians, there is no need to worry, but if there is anything you need, pray for it, asking God for it with prayer and thanksgiving, and that peace of God which is so much greater than we can understand will guard your hearts and your thoughts in Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, brothers, fill your minds with everything that's true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honor, and everything that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise.

[SPEAKER_00]: Keep doing all the things that you learnt from me and have been taught by me and have heard or seen that I do.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then the God of Peace will be with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Word of the Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks be to God.

[SPEAKER_01]: A reading from the Holy Gospel, according to Matthew,

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people, listen to another parable.

[SPEAKER_01]: There was a man, a land owner who planted a vineyard, he fenced it round, dug a wine press in it, and bolt a tower, then he leased it to tenants and went abroad.

[SPEAKER_01]: When vendage thyme junior, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his produce.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the tenants seized, as he servants, thrashed one, killed another, and stoned third.

[SPEAKER_01]: Next, he sent some more servants this time, a larger number, and they dealt with him in the same way.

[SPEAKER_01]: Finally, he sent his son to them.

[SPEAKER_01]: They will respect my son, he said.

[SPEAKER_01]: But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, this is the air.

[SPEAKER_01]: Come on, let us kill him and take over his inheritance.

[SPEAKER_01]: So they seized him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to these tenants?

[SPEAKER_01]: 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.

[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus said to them, have you never read in the scriptures, it was the stone rejected by the boulders that became the keystone.

[SPEAKER_01]: This was the Lord's doing, and it is wonderful to see.

[SPEAKER_01]: I tell you then that the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.

[SPEAKER_01]: The gospel of the Lord.

[SPEAKER_01]: Our first reading, response soil sum, and our gospel today all use the analogy of the vineyard to describe the duty of the church and for us, as its members, to produce the fruit that God has called us, to produce.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is to recognize that the vineyard is God's, not ours, and we are to produce his fruit, not ours.

[SPEAKER_01]: in as much as we endeavour to do this, as a church we will fall under his protection.

[SPEAKER_01]: But there is a flip side to that, in as much as we fail to produce his fruit, we will not enjoy his protection.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is not because God is vindictive, but what would he be defending or protecting if a church is not fulfilling his word or preaching his gospel?

[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't work for us, we work for him.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we'll take a look at the first reading and then the Gospel and then we'll finish with the reflection on the second reading.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the first reading starts out almost as guise does a love song, not only in what it says, but in the cadence the rhythm it adopts.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let me sing to my friend.

[SPEAKER_01]: In some translations it's translated not as friend but as beloved.

[SPEAKER_01]: Let me sing a song for my beloved, my beloved song for his vineyard, and you often goes on to recount how the blood-dugged the soil created of stones and planted choice winds in it.

[SPEAKER_01]: They now ever, things turn sour.

[SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly, it is no longer a love song, but it's a speech to a jury.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are called to judge between him and his vineyard.

[SPEAKER_01]: Everything he has poured so lovingly into the vineyard has produced this putrid rotten fruit.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the reason he will remove his protection from the vineyard is not because this is a sort of judgement of accounting, you do not produce what I made this vineyard for, so I'm going to take revenge.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's more that he got his taking action on behalf of the poor who have now none of the good fruits which his vineyard was supposed to produce for them.

[SPEAKER_01]: Why would God protect a vineyard or a church that is producing sour grapes?

[SPEAKER_01]: A church that is not producing the fruit of God is of no use to him.

[SPEAKER_01]: the reality that we have to come to terms with as Christians and especially as Catholics is that in choosing to follow Jesus we are choosing the road less traveled and there is a reason it is less traveled and before we were known as Christians we were known as the followers of the way we were called to follow the way of Jesus which is the way of a cross.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is not a passive acceptance of just accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior and everything is good.

[SPEAKER_01]: We just declare loyalty or our faith in Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is a walking with Him and carrying our crosses every day as we do so.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the gospel continues this theme.

[SPEAKER_01]: Matthew eludes to the description of Israel as God's vineyard in Isaiah 5, 17, and in fact many of the phrases in verse 33 are taken from the Old Testament.

[SPEAKER_01]: God as the owner of the vineyard has leased out his property, his leased out his kingdom in the sense to the religious and the political leaders.

[SPEAKER_01]: Many servants, which meaning the prophets who were sent to the vineyard were all

[SPEAKER_01]: and the owner expects that at least his son, Jesus, will be treated with respect, but in fact, he receives an even worse treatment and there is a shift in the detail from the Gospel of Mark, which was written earlier than Matthew, in Mark, they killed the son and then three math the vineyard.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here in Matthew, they cost him out of the vineyard and then killed him.

[SPEAKER_01]: which shows how the events of the passion influenced this parable with a took Jesus outside the city gate of Jerusalem to Golgotha and then killed him there.

[SPEAKER_01]: When the owner comes he will punish the tenant by destroying them and taking away the claim to be in the chosen in God's kingdom.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so the vineyard will be leased to others, meaning the church, and the people of God will yield an abandoned harvest.

[SPEAKER_01]: Matthew's community would find in the parable an explanation for the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 7080, and also the self-understanding now as church being the true people of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: While the main sort of outlines of the parable of the in-mock, this version of Matthew's probably inserted in the years just before the break between the church and Judea's Judaism, which occurred about 66 to 70 AD.

[SPEAKER_01]: One thing that you might have noticed is that in this dialogue with the chief priests, the harsh answer as to what should be done with the registered servants is ironically given by the very chief priests that are incriminated by the story.

[SPEAKER_01]: The fact that Jesus is talking to them does not mean that we can point the finger at them for this is also our story.

[SPEAKER_01]: will we as a church produce his fruit or will the kingdom of heaven be taken away from us and given to those who will be more fruit?

[SPEAKER_01]: This then is our challenge and note in the gospel the land under puts in a wine press.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the value of the produce that land under once from the vineyard is not just the grapes.

[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't

[SPEAKER_01]: it is the wine.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so through our crosses, when we are persecuted, when we are pressed by the outside world for preaching and living our faith authentically, as individuals end as a church, his fruit, which the wine is the wine of his grace,

[SPEAKER_01]: When that is released into the world, there is a cost attached to that and we pay that price with our crosses as a church and as individuals.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, my wife was telling me about people at a work that have got a number of family members with cancer and they're also colleagues of who are battling cancer themselves and others who have lost their jobs.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it reminds me that, you know, as I look also at our congregation, just how many are suffering quietly, you know, either through illness or the loss of this spouse or even a child.

[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot, you know, a congregation of facing crippling financial challenges in this economic climate.

[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of people are just exhausted under the burden of this absolutely unrelenting pace of life that just never lets up.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, we don't want to die, but just to say, how I want to say God, I just need to step off for a minute and just catch my breath and reset and find my footing.

[SPEAKER_01]: And now you might say to me, and now you also want me to take on this additional cross of living my faith, fearlessly.

[SPEAKER_01]: In a second reading to the Philippians, Paul encourages us as we try and live our lives as faithful disciples, encourages us not to worry.

[SPEAKER_01]: He makes the point that the peace of God goes beyond anything that we can comprehend specifically because it is given to us in the midst of difficulties.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just as our salvation always begins in the middle of our busy lives.

[SPEAKER_01]: I encourage you to go home and re-read the passage from Philippians, because the interpretive key, the way in which you interpret the passage is in the last sentence, Paul doesn't say that the peace of God will be with you.

[SPEAKER_01]: You might, for example, be in a situation right now where that is not possible yet.

[SPEAKER_01]: So Paul doesn't say the peace of God will be with you.

[SPEAKER_01]: He writes, the God of peace will be with you.

[SPEAKER_01]: In the chaos and the storms of our lives, he might not remove the storms, and we might not immediately feel his peace.

[SPEAKER_01]: But the closer that we draw to him, the deeper that we develop our relationship with him, the more we will experience him, and his peace, and then in turn be able to be challenged of their peace to others in whose lives he places us.

[SPEAKER_01]: And may the God of peace be with you and my brothers and sisters.

[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.