Each week, Bishop Malesic writes a scripture reflection for the faithful. Follow Bishop on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Click HERE for the readings for the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Today’s first reading and the Gospel remind all of us that we are not the owners of this world. We are simply stewards of it.
In the first reading, Isaiah talks about a friend who planted a vineyard and worked hard to make it a place of beauty and protection. But it did not yield as expected. It produced sour grapes that were not useful to him.
Jesus takes this analogy further and says that the vineyard was given over to tenants. When the owner — who is God — wanted to enjoy his harvest, he sent servants who were abused or killed by the tenants. Finally, the owner — God — sent his Son as the last resort.
The tenants, however, thought to themselves, “This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.” They did not want to give anything back to God, and by killing God’s son, somehow in their twisted logic, they believed they would be done with God forever and become masters of their own destiny. This is the story of every human generation since Adam and Eve. We want to be the author and determiners of our lives – we want to take God out of the center and put ourselves there. We want to be the “owners” of our world. We want to rest on our own foundation, but not on the foundation of Christ, the cornerstone upon which God has built his Church.
We can all point to the things that have made God’s vineyard, this world, ugly. There is hatred, vitriol, death in and outside of the womb. We see bullying online and on our streets. People yell, shoot, mame, and kill. Walls are built to keep people out of our lives, even excluding those who need our care. Every time we do something to disrespect another human being we plant another weed in the vineyard and add a bunch of sour grapes to the original plan of God’s garden.
But, a time will come when God will expect an account of our stewardship. I hope that we will have good fruits and good works to present to Jesus, the Son, who will come looking for a vineyard that is in good order. We have time to make things right. So, let’s roll up our sleeves and get to it, beginning with our respect of life at its very beginning, when God plants the first seed of human life among us.
We can all do better in respecting one another, supporting one another, and understanding that every life is a gift to us from God, not something that we own, but something that we receive for a time until we must return it to it’s rightful Master, Our God.
Have a blessed week everyone.