Workers in the Lord's Vinyard

Workers in the Lord's vineyard today - how do they shape up?



It's Sunday!



Oct. 2 - XXVII Sunday in Ordinary Time


Isaiah - the Shakespeare of the Old Testament - in this First Reading tells a familiar story: God is faithful and generous with his People (Israel) but they are not. In fact they were the first called and privileged but failed the test, somehow missed the message of the Prophets down the centuries and not only rejected the owner of the vineyard but put him to death!


That was their mistake. Now there is another situation: we, the members of the Church, are their successors and for us the challenge is exactly the same. The new vineyard, must bear fruit, and the workers in the vineyard must be honest and diligent. Unfortunately, even the most optimistic assessment of today's Church would have to conclude that the Lord would have to address to us the same lament: "Why, when I looked for the crop of grapes did it bring forth wild grapes?" Wild grapes indeed - and sour grapes too.


The Responsorial Psalm is the voice of the faithless workers who realize that their livelihood is in danger of being taken away and ask the Lord to give them one more chance to prove their worth. Not many in today's Church are apologizing for what is going wrong - rather, they feel the Church must reform, not them!


The Second Reading from St. Paul, while very beautiful in itself, is not quite in line with the overall thought of the liturgy - there is just a typical Pauline appeal to love God and live well. Right on. Paul!


The Gospel finds the Master in one of his many tense encounters with the religious leaders as he moved to the end of his time on earth. We can imagine them following the story with increasingly-darkened faces not to talk of curling toes. When he challenges them to draw the obvious conclusion it seems likely that they answered through clenched teeth, but perhaps not fully expecting what he was going to say next: "the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit!"


This was too much! "Why is this journeyman from some place called Nazareth even allowed to speak to us, not to talk of insulting us to our faces? " And we know the conclusion they drew: let's get rid of him!" And our Catholic Church today? It's religious leaders have been routinely insulted not, however, by a charismatic figure such as Jesus was, but by the rank and file and there is a near-breakdown of the organization matched, we may note, by a similar breakdown in civil society. The owner of the vineyard has much work to do to repair everything!