Isa 5:1-7; Psa 80:9,12-16,19-20; Phil 4:6-9; Matt 21:33-43
Theme: What God Orders Versus What He Gets
The first reading and the gospel of today speak of ‘vineyard’ of the Lord. In the first reading, Israel and Judah are themselves the vineyard of the Lord, the vineyard God planted, nurtured and protected, looking forward for the wonderful grapes it would bear. But in the gospel, Israel and Judah are presented as tenants in the Lord’s vineyard. In both readings, we see the theme of wickedness, abuse of grace and the good will of the owner of the vineyard.
WHAT GOD ORDERS
The imagery of a vine and vineyard in the ancient Israel is such powerful that a king could destroy another king and his people in order to take over their vineyard. Ahab and Jezebel could kill their own subject, Naboth, just for them to take over his ancestral vineyard (1 Kgs 21). This is because wine being one of the most precious products in the ancient Near East and even in the Greco Roman world, vineyard is protected at all costs. So, when God uses the imagery of vineyard to describe the people of Israel, he wants us to see how precious, valued and important they are to him. In this vineyard, God wants to have just a good grape, which actually is what every farmer expects to gain from his vineyard. But to get the good grapes, God, as a good farmer, provides everything for the vineyard. Before he plants the vine, he first finds a fertile hillside, digs the soil, removes every stone, then plants the best vine. Hence, the site of the farmland is good (fertile); the farmland itself is free of any foreign object (hard soil and stones) and what is planted is the best seed (choice vine). Having done everything that both the vineyard and the vine need in order to produce wonderful grapes, God builds a tower and a winepress, ready to begin to produce wine from the good grapes of the vineyard.
We are all wonderfully made by God (Psa 139:14). Every one of us has been given great potential to be productive. We all have this particular wonderful grape which God expects from us. He is not just expecting us to produce wonderful grapes, before he made us, and in creating us, God puts everything in place that will enable us to produce wonderful and great fruits. No one is a cursed vineyard, nor a mal-planted vineyard. Everyone is a cherished vineyard of the Lord, which he planted by his own hand. Everything we are and everything that happens to us must be seen as God’s calling on us to bear wonderful fruits out of that situation.
WHAT GOD GETS
Imagine a farmer who owns a plantation. He invested everything he had in it, worked day and night on the farm. Then when the stems begin to produce, they produce rotten plantains. Upon everything God did in order to ensure that the vineyard produces the best of grapes, it rather produces sour grapes. The grapes are not rotten, they are sour. That is, they look good by their appearance, but produce bad taste. All the beauty of our creation notwithstanding, we end up producing bad and sour fruits. We do not, by the way we live, appreciate, and reciprocate the goodness of God. In his goodness, he made us to be good and to produce good fruits, but we always come short of this expected. How is the fruit that you bear? Are they sour, rotten, salty, or tasty? How are you doing as the Lord’s vineyard? Are you using all the gifts he has planted in you, and all the opportunities he has given you in life, to yield fruits of love, kindness, peace, mercy, and humility? Or are you producing thorns and briers?
WHAT GOD WILL DO TO THE WASTEFUL VINEYARD
Why wasting time and resources on a vineyard that produces worthless grapes, even after every effort? God felt the pain of how Israel made mockery of his goodness. He brought them from Egypt, situated them on a fertile land. He gave them everything they needed to be faithful and productive. But the more God is making every effort to make them produce lovely and acts, the more they are producing sour and rotten grapes, becoming wasteful of God’s kindness. In his anger, God decided to withdraw from his own vineyard. He will leave it without rain for it to dry off; he will give it out to be grazed upon, he will command thorns to grow in it.
God gives a list of what he will do to his wasteful vineyard. The emphasis is not on the evil that God will command on it, but that the people may hear of God’s disappointment and repent. When God sounds a note of on-coming destruction, it is for the people to turn away from their evil deeds and bear good fruits of faithfulness. If you are the owner of that vineyard which you are, will you be happy with what it is producing now? A man stopped paying for his son’s school fees, chased him away from his house, and withdrew all the life support he has been offering his only son, because the son entered university, joined bad groups, became a cultist and was living a wasteful life in the university. You can imagine how wasteful we have been of God’s abundance grace and opportunities, yet he never disowns us, nor has he ever withdrawn his life support. He only keeps calling us to appreciate everything he is investing in to see us succeed. Will you give a listening ear to his warnings that call for repentance?
WE ARE NOT THE OWNERS OF THE VINEYARD
In the gospel reading of today, the problem the owner of the vineyard had with the tenants, is that the tenants were no longer satisfied with being tenants, they want to be the real owners. They killed the servants sent by the owner, they killed the son, and if they had seen the owner himself, I am sure they would have attempted killing him too. Man wants to be the owner of what does not belong to him. How many people kill others in order to possess a land they do not know how it came to be in existence. How many people kill others in order to possess what would not last? Man forgets that the world and its fullness is the Lord’s (Psa 24:1-2); and that he is a mere tenant who can be asked to leave any time.
We are all tenants of and in the vineyard of God. We are never meant to be the owners. As tenants, we partake of the produce of the house where we live; we also help in keeping it clean, and in making it a home. But we must never forget that one day, we must surely leave behind everything and go. As the chief priests and the elders of the people responded, when we become wicked tenants, God will surely bring our lives to a wretched end and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will deliver the produce to him at the due season. We are the vineyard of the Lord; the world is the vineyard of the Lord. We are only tenants even to the things we are and have. Our beauty, our wealth, our gifts, our successes, our positions in life, yes…even our sufferings, they all come from God and belong to him.
GOD IS EVER READY TO RESTORE HIS VINEYARD
We must always remember how important we are to God. If God wants to destroy us or to render us useless, he would not have created us in the first place. God does not create us to destroy us.
Even when as his vineyards we fail to produce good characters, he only wants us to turn back to him and pray that he restores us. We must therefore go to him in prayer, praying as the Psalmist does “God of hosts, turn again, we implore, look down from heaven and see. Visit this vine and protect it, the vine your right hard has planted” (Psa 80:14-15). Yes! you are the vine which God’s right hand has planted. Even when he is angry with us because of our bad grapes, he is always ready to exercise his mercy and restore us. He has gone so far in planting us, in making us his own. He will always look on us with his merciful and healing gaze. Let us always pray to God: “God of host bring us back, let your face shine on us and we shall be saved” (Psa 80:20).
Wishing You a Lovely Day of the Lord
Fr. Chukwuezugo Nnama