Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Bishop Peter Muhich
Homily from the Televised Mass, NewsCenter1
Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 8, 2023

Here, another parable. There’s a landowner who planted a vineyard and leased it to tenants. The Lord Jesus is once again teaching in parables in the Gospel this Sunday. 

Parables, you might remember, are drawn from imagery and experiences of daily life for the people of Jesus’ audience, and they teach something important about the Kingdom of God. Another feature of parables is they oftentimes have a surprise, a challenging ending. So those are the hallmarks of a parable. It’s a comparison between a daily experience that people are very familiar with, and the Kingdom of God, and there’s some sort of surprise normally within that story to challenge and get us to listen. 

Today’s parable is about a vineyard. A reality that was very common in the experience of Jesus’ people in his day and first century Palestine. People were around vineyards a lot. They had hedges around them that functioned like fences to keep the animals out from grazing in the vineyard. They had wine presses to make the grapes, of course, into wine. And they had a tower so that you could keep watch and make sure that trouble wasn’t coming. 

The problem in the parable is that the tenants to whom the vineyard is leased won’t give the land owner his produce in the proper time. When it’s time for the vintage, the wine to be given to him, they refuse. When he sends his servants, they beat them and even kill some of them, and then when he sends his son, thinking they’ll listen to my son, they even kill him. 

You might have noticed, too, that this same imagery is in our first reading from the prophet Isaiah and in the solemn response, the responsorial Psalm for today. Isaiah, the prophet, did his work eight centuries before the coming of Christ. This was a time when the southern Kingdom and the northern Kingdom were divided so the twelve tribes of Israel had broken into two sections basically, governed by two kings. 

In the north, in Isaiah’s day, the Syrians, the regional power, had threatened and eventually displaced the northern Kingdom, and they’re in the process of threatening that in Isaiah’s day. He’s prophesying about the trouble that’s coming. He’s warning the people and their leaders to want to turn back to God. And in Psalm 80, our Responsorial Psalm, from a couple centuries later in the sixth century before Christ, is time of the Babylonians who replaced the Syrians as the regional power and now they’re threatening and then they will eventually destroy the southern Kingdom of Judah and the temple and cart the people off into exile. 

So, this idea of a vineyard is being applied in different historical circumstances, and Jesus knowing Isaiah and Psalm 80 very well, applies the vineyard to the people of Israel in his own day. Jesus, the great master teacher, makes this apply to a different sort of circumstance and he tells the parable we hear to the chief priests and elders of the people. God’s people are the vineyard in this story, and he is basically saying they’re being managed by corrupt leaders. Stewards who will even kill God’s son and we know that will come true with Jesus’ passion and death. And the surprise and the story in Jesus’ retelling of it is that the vineyard is taken away from its rightful leaders — the chief priests, and the elders of the people, who have a place of religious authority of the people — and will be given to a whole different set of leaders. This will be the apostles, and the Church will be born. A new Israel. A new reality for the Kingdom of God. 

So that’s the application in these three different historical circumstances, but the parable is told to us today. So, it’s a surprise for us too. We are now charged with taking care of the vineyard, of making sure the new Israel, the church, produces fruit for God in our time.

So how are we doing with that? Here’s a few questions to ponder as you reflect on our responsibility now for the Kingdom, for the vineyard. First, do I realize I actually have responsibility for the Church? Do I look at the Church as something that’s supposed to meet my needs primarily, or do I look at the Church as something I’m co-responsible for? The idea behind the Synod of Bishops, now happening in Rome this month, is that we’re all responsible for the church, certainly bishops, but also all the laypeople. Pope Francis has invited and included many more lay observers and actually voting members for the Synod to, in part, make that point. Were co-responsible for the church. 

Second, do I understand my vocation, my place in the church? We all have an awesome responsibility, whether it’s in marriage or family life or me as a bishop, to be stewards of the vineyard. 

And third, do I bring the teaching of Jesus with me into the world and evangelize it? This is Respect Life Month. Do I bring the great message of the dignity of human life, that is a sacred gift from conception to natural death, with me into my whole way of life in the way I live in the political order as well. 

Today we have the opportunity to listen again to the parable of the vineyard. And once again, to realize that it’s about us.