The vineyard of the Lord is within us.

 

Twenty Seventh Sunday in OT  A  2023

 

The Scriptures today speak of the vineyard of the Lord. The vineyard of the Lord is the reign of God, the blessings of the Lord. The vineyard of the Lord is among us.

In the first Scripture reading and in the psalm response, the vineyard of the Lord is the House of Israel.

In this homily, I invite you to ponder where the vineyard of the Lord is to be found?

n  IN YOUR OWN HEART.

n  IN THE CHURCH

n  IN THE WORLD.

In the Gospel parable the vineyard is the reign of God that is to be found within us. The vineyard of the Lord is to be found in our own hearts. God goes to great lengths to prepare incredible blessings for the vineyard. We are nurtured by God’s Word, fed at God’s table, helped by the commandment of love. All we need do is to let God tend us and bring us to produce good fruit. We are invited in this celebration of the Eucharist to invite Christ into the vineyard of our own heart and to open our hearts and our minds to his loving presence.

 We become our best selves when we open ourselves to giving and receiving the love of others. The vineyard of the Lord is to be found within us, but this vineyard is connected to our brothers and sisters with Christ as our cornerstone. This is the mystery of the Church of Jesus. We are better together.

This leads us to a second image of where the vineyard of the Lord is to be found. The whole Church is the vineyard of the Lord. Ultimately, in a wider sense, the whole world is the vineyard of the Lord.

The Gospel parable gives a warning of what can go wrong with this beautiful imagery of all of us together being the vineyard of the Lord. From the Gospel parable, the tenants to whom the vineyard is entrusted got greedy and wanted everything for themselves. Plain and simple, there is rebellion in the vineyard. Yes, there is sinfulness and demons in the vineyard.

There is rebellion in the vineyard of our own hearts when we get greedy and want everything for ourselves and are unwilling to share. In the end, the greed of the tenants becomes their undoing for the king will have no part with them.

What would life be like if we had the spiritual sightedness to believe that everything is on loan to us from God? We are temporary tenants. We don’t own anything, even though sometimes we act as if we own it all. Everything ultimately belongs to God.

We must also look within and ask whether we at times we are the tenant farmers who abuse the giftedness we have been given? What is the produce that comes from the vineyard of our own heart, and do we give it back gratefully to God our landowner?

Our lives are a vineyard that God entrusts to us. Each of our lives, each of our vineyards, is richly blessed. The voice of God’s Son calls out to us to share our talents, our riches, our giftedness with those around us and with those who have less. May we be conscious that like the tenant farmers in the Gospel, we are tempted to be greedy and provide only for ourselves. When we excuse ourselves from generous sharing and love of others, when we become more interested in security rather than a Gospel commitment to sharing, we fail to respond to the call of God In our lives. The vineyard of our own heart is ripe for the harvest, and God calls out to each one of us: “Come, share what you have and discover that the real treasure is not what you possess but in what you are willing to give away.”

As we reflect on the vineyard of the Lord as being the Church, we pray for the success of the synod that is now talking place at the Vatican at the invitation of Pope Francis. In calling the synod, Pope Francis desires us to a listening and a discerning and a welcoming Church. All the people of the God, the community of the baptized need to be listened to, in their particular place and time, in order to know that the Spirit of God is calling the Church to be.

Now you may ask what in the world is a synod? It is another word for collegiality.        A synodal church is a listening Church, a church of encounter and dialogue. It is not afraid of the variety of Catholic ideas and people but values it. A synodal Church is open, welcoming and embraces all.

Ultimately a synodal church is a church of discernment where we listen attentively to each other’s lived experience, we grow in mutual respect and begin to discern the movements of God’s Spirit in the lives of others and in our own. Pope Francis is aware of different points of tension in the Church, not conflicting hopes conflicting identities, our different understandings of what the Catholic Church should be -- issues around the expanding role of women in ministry, the inclusion and welcome of LGBTQ sons and daughters of God.

For some, the idea of a universal welcome, in which everyone is accepted regardless of who they are, is felt as destructive of the Church ‘s identity. They believe identity demands boundaries, but for others, the very heart of the church’s identity is to be open and welcoming.

Pope Francis wants us to be Church, the community of the disciples of Christ listening to the Spirit and continuing Christ’s mission in the world.

Now I think Pope Francis has a wonderful vision for our parish and for the whole Church – that we listen to each other, we learn from each other, and the workings of the Holy Spirit is to be found in our love for one another.

But going back to the gospel parable, it is easy for us to be the rebellious tenant farmers who get greedy and self-centered in the vineyard of the Church. We too easily find division and debate and tension in what the Church of Jesus should be. There are both critics of People Francis and people like myself think that is leadership of our Church is Spirit driven. Yes, the sinfulness that is in all of us can work havoc in the vineyard of the Lord.

 

What is the take home message of today’s Scriptures? We are tenants of this earth, stewards of what has been entrusted to our care. We are stewards of the church, entrusted with the awesome task of ministering to the needs of a broken and hurting world.  May we offer back to the owner of the vineyard a portion of the giftedness we have been given.

 

 

Have a Blessed Day.