10-4-27- 27 Sunday Ordinary Time
In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve are given a fruitful and beautiful garden. All they have to do is not eat of the fruit of a certain tree. However, they are tempted by the devil. The devil tempts them with promises that they can be as God is, if they but choose to eat of the forbidden fruit. However, once they eat this fruit, the result is not one of fulfillment and power but rather is of a sense of vulnerableness symbolized by their awareness of nakedness. Instead of seeing themselves as “Gods” they see themselves as naked and as vulnerable creatures. Frightened by this new appearance, they become anxious. That sense of anxiety will eventually lead them to guilt, and finally to a sense of being shameful. That in term leads them to hide from God when he comes looking for them. God decides they can no longer stay in the garden because their frustration of what they have done will lead them to anger. And that anger will lead them to further violate themselves and the garden. And even though they must leave the garden, God does not leave them. He stays with them to guide them through the good and the troubled times, the times of acceptance of him and the times of rejection of him. In the first reading and the gospel this weekend, we have the landowner who is God, creating a beautiful vineyard. He sends his workers into the vineyard to share in his creation and to help produce a bountiful harvest. Perhaps the laborers think that since they have cared for the garden and made it productive that the garden belongs to them and not to the vineyard owner. The only thing that the vineyard owner asks the laborers is that at the time of harvest, they give him his portion of the garden that he owns. The vineyard workers become very jealous and greedy and refuse to share the produce of the vineyard with the owner. How, like in our own world today do we, because of pride, see things or people as something that belongs to us solely. And in that prideful stance, we may feel at times that o9thers are more demanding of us than we are willing to share. We may even see them as encroaching on our own happiness, on our own world, or on our own choices. There was a movie some years ago called The Day the Earth Stood Still. It was a story about an alien who had come to earth to save the planet from the destruction by the earthlings. He comes as an ambassador for a constellation of planets who are concerned about what humans are doing to the planet Earth. Realizing that he might frighten the earthlings, he tries to blend in among them as a human being. However, as would be expected. the humans become very frightened of the presence of his alien spaceship and seek to find him and to kill him, fearing he has come to only destroy them. Eventually, they do capture him and interrogate him. In a very telling scene in those interrogations, some officials from the United States, seek to interview him. Their opening question to him is quite telling of their presumptive prideful attitude- “Why have you come to our planet?" they ask. To which the alien responds humbly “It is not ‘your’ planet." How often have we humans, under the guise of progress or ownership, desecrated and abused our planet, forgetting about the gifts that God has given us for our sustenance? How often have we not poisoned the waters with pollutants or, choked the air with toxic emissions whereby we have caused undo havoc in nature because of our pride and thoughts that we know better than God how the Earth should be tended and used? In the first reading this weekend from Isaiah, he is writing that he has a friend who sings a song. It is God who is singing about his vineyard that he has planted and what the workers of the vineyard have done to it such that, now it yields only wild, non-edible grapes, instead of good grapes. “My friend had a vineyard on a fertile hillside; he spaded it, cleared it of stones, and planted the choicest vines; within it he built a watchtower, and hewed out a wine press. Then he looked for the crop of grapes, but what it yielded was wild grapes.” (Isaiah 5:1-) “The point of the allegory is obvious: we are God’s vineyard. We are made by the God of goodness and gladness, and we are made for goodness and gladness, for justice and joy.”1 And yet are those the fruits we yielded from the harvest of our labors. In quiet reflection we might think of how often we have not taken care of those things that have been placed in our charge or under our care? Things like property perhaps but also and perhaps more importantly things like family, friends, or people with whom we might associate or people we may employ? In our readings, particularly our second reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, we are invited to ponder how we approach our actions and our relationship with others including our environment. He invited us that in everything t we do we should always strive to do “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious…” That is not always easy to do. For doing such may, at times, require of us to lay down our pride, to stop seeking to do only our own agenda, or our own way of doing things. Instead, he invites us to consider paying attention to the needs of others. In a way each of us, no matter our station in life, married, single, incarcerated, in hospitals or nursing homes are placed in situations where we can choose to produce choice fruit, or as Isaiah says, “wild grapes.” What we produce in that garden in which we may find ourselves, like the workers in today’s gospel, depends on our attitude and willingness to work in cooperation with God or to oppose God and seek our own goals. Wherever we find ourselves is a place in which we too can be faithful and fruitful. But like Adam and Eve, the choice of our cooperation toward that goal is dependent on us; and the results of our efforts, our labor in the vineyard is dependent on our faith in God, the vineyard owner. He, who alone can bring about a good harvest. In the garden of Eden, God told Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply.” He likewise invites us to be strong and faith-filled vines that produce good fruit, good grapes, by which we can multiply the good works or God.
1. 1. Food
For The Soul,
Reflections on the Readings, Cycle, Petere Kreeft pp.778-790
