Friends
Peace be with you.
Have you ever tried to do a home improvement project that ended up actually making things worse? In a previous assignment, I had the bright idea of planting grapevines. There was an ideal plot of land that would get good sun and ample moisture. I contacted a local vineyard and had them test the soil and recommend the best variety of grapes. I had them come and plant them with my maintenance person so he’d have a say how far apart to space them for mowing. The vines started growing and producing leaves. I knew it was going to be several years before we saw grapes so I sort of checked out. About two months after we planted them, my maintenance guy came to me and said the guy from the vineyard was there on Friday and all the plants were dead. A week after that, he emailed and said that he only tested the first six inches of soil, which are ideal for growing grapes. When they all died, he tested deeper soil and found it became too acidic for grapes to grow and it was basically an unusable plot. I walked out after I talked to him on the phone and saw these little sticks sticking out of the ground and realized all the investment, both financially and temporally, was a waste.
This is a very unusual Sunday in ordinary time where there is a very consistent theme with the readings directly building upon each other. In the first reading, we heard the Prophet Isaiah use the image of a grapevine to describe God’s chosen people. God planted a vineyard, protected it, prepared for a great harvest, and, in the end, he got sour grapes or rotten grapes or stinky grapes, depending on your translation. In the end, the prophet asks the people what should be done and they seem to respond that the only thing that can be done is to knock down the fence and let the animals eat it. The last line is instructive. “he looked for judgment, but see, bloodshed! for justice, but hark, the outcry!” In other words, God expected for people to live in a way where we respected each other’s rights but, instead, he found us determining the rights by who was most powerful.
This theme of vineyards gets picked up in the gospel where Jesus appeared to be borrowing from the story from Isaiah but then took it in a new direction. Instead of producing bad fruit, we have bad caretakers. A landowner invests in everything he needs to grow good grapes and then moves and leaves the vineyard in the care of some caretakers. They decide that, rather than seeing themselves as caretakers, they’re going to act like it’s theirs. When the landowner sends people to collect the rewards, the caretakers beat them and kill them. Jesus used the rule of threes, increasing the importance of the visitors each time until the landowners sent his son. The caretakers realized they could claim ancestry rights if they got rid of the lone heir to the throne so they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. They’d become the stinky grapes. I love that, some of the same people who were in the crowd at his crucifixion saying “crucify him, crucify him” are condemning themselves here, when asked what should happen to the caretakers. They’re quick to condemn but slow to comprehend.
We have to be better than them. We have to see everything we have been given as a gift given to us to take care of. The tighter we hold onto it, the less focused we are on serving God and not ourselves. Bishop Barron will talk about how everything the church does needs to be at the service of the gospel. Catholic healthcare has to be at the service of the gospel, which is why Catholic hospitals shouldn’t be compelled to provide abortion services or contraceptive services. Catholic schools have to be at the service of the gospel, which is why they have to unapologetically preach the gospel and not be afraid of offending someone or, worse yet, be forced to teach something that is opposed to the gospel such as Marxist critical theory. Certainly, our parishes have to be at the service of the gospel, which is why we can’t expect our parish to fit into our schedule or have a message that strokes our egos.
As I look back on that vineyard, I realize how often in my previous assignments, I’ve taken on projects that are not directly related to the spread of the gospel. I have a tendency to want to plant a large garden that takes time in the spring, summer, and fall that I could have spent visiting the homebound or preparing for and teaching about the gospel. Especially in this time of Journey in Faith, I can see how important it is for our parishes to remain focused on the spread of the gospel and let go of things that distract us from that. But letting go is challenging because they are often social activities for which we have a strong positive feeling or activities that used to attract a lot of new people that now seem only interesting to the same group of people that are decreasing in number each year.
What do we have to let go in order to bear good fruit?
