27th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Philippians 4: 6-9
Matthew 21: 33-43
and given to a
people that will produce its fruit.”
In today’s gospel, Matthew narrates to us another parable of Jesus: The Parable of the Tenants. Clearly, this parable summarizes in a figurative language the sad “love story” of God and his people Israel. While God has always shown his constant and unfailing love to his people, the people in return have consistently shown their refusal and rejection. Thus, God seems to have suffered so much in this painful love story. But God triumphs, anyhow. God would finally have a “new lover,” a new people, a new Israel.
1. The story and history of Israel as a chosen race begins with God’s initiative of love. Sometimes, it appears quite unfair, but being the most free and the most knowledgeable, God has its own choices. And his choice for a people falls upon Israel. Thus, he chooses Israel from among all the nations. He picks the Jews from among all other peoples. He cares for them. He loves them.
This love of God is likened in today’s parable to a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it and built a tower. Vine is among the difficult plants to grow. It requires an extra effort, a considerable amount of patience and a tender loving care for it to grow and bear good fruit. Thus, aside from the climate, this could be the reason why grape growing here in the Philippines has not been very successful. Vine growing is just that doubly laborious.
It is for this reason, it seems that Jesus uses the allegory of the vineyard. By this figuration alone, we can just see God’s immense love for his people. Once he has planted his vineyard Israel, he then gives it extra care by putting a hedge around it, digging a wine press in it and building a tower to watch and protect it. God’s love seems to be that “laborious.” Right from the start, we see no superior qualities that would make Israel more qualified than any other nation. If Israel becomes indeed “qualified,” it is all because God makes her “qualified.” So, even at the initial stage of Israel’s love story, it is God’s effort, so to say, that makes Israel a chosen race. “To be qualified” is not even the right phrase for it. Israel has never merited her status as a chosen race. It is purely out of God’s choice that she becomes God’s beloved. Therefore, it is never surprising that God would expect a good harvest from his vineyard. And this means that Israel would love God in return and show this love by responsibly looking after the vineyard and generate a good harvest from it, just as God expects his trustees to work and his vineyard to produce.
2. But sadly, the history of Israel unfolds just exactly as the opposite of what God had expected. God’s generosity is repaid by ingratitude and God’s love by hatred. This parable portrays by the three attempts of the “landowner” to send emissaries to remind them about their responsibility over the vineyard and about their duty to remit a good harvest. All these attempts were in vain. And this is what exactly happened to the patriarchs, to the prophets and to John the Baptist.
Worse, the parable seems to suggest a very ugly character and motivations of the tenants to whom the owner leased his vineyard. Not contented with maltreating the emissaries, they wanted to own the vineyard by killing the owner’s son. This is precisely what happened to our lord. The cross and the Calvary are great reminders of such ingratitude and cruelty.
To be fair with the Jews, we may supposed that they were just acting and behaving in a way they thought was the best in protecting their faith and the faith of their forefathers. But what they did was simply going to far. They became closed and fixated. By “killing the son in order to own the vineyard” suggests that they thought and intended to make a monopoly of salvation. And this seems to be true. This is what Jewish history would tell us. This is what Jewish attitude as a people would show us. Perhaps becoming so proud as to be the chosen people of God, they seem to put up a wall that would separate them from other peoples, from the gentiles. While always convinced to be righteous and holy, they have discriminated others by treating them as sinners and second-class citizens. Salvation is for them and in them. There is no other way to God than the Jewish way. Because of this, they outrightly rejected all other ways even the way of God himself.
3. “What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes? They answered him, ‘He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times.’” This has two-fold sense. At first glance, it seems that God “withdraws” his saving grace from the people first chose. And this could be true. It is just matter of justice that God would deal most rightly such kind of ingratitude. Besides, what would happen to love when not repaid by love? But looking closely, there seems to be a deeper sense in it, which is also true and even much truer. That is, Israel loses such great privilege as a chosen race not so much because God takes it away from her, but because Israel herself refuses such privilege. God loves us all and being the chosen race, God even loves her all the more. So, if Israel (and anybody for that matter) falls away from God, it is more because she first and foremost rejects God’s offer of love.
4. In this sense, the church of the baptized is the result of Israel’s rejection of the Son of Man. The church is the fruit of Israel’s refusal to God’s greatest expression of love. But not only that. The church becomes the New Israel because she responds to God’s call of love. She is now the new people because she has accepted the love of God. Of course, like Israel, this new Israel has not merited God’s choice and can in no way merit it. Rather, the church was born on the cross, on the side of Christ when his last drop of blood and water flowed. Therefore, the new people are the fruit of Christ’s meritorious act. And she gets her life from the blood of the lamb, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And if one day, any member of the church rejects this love of God, he gets the same fate of Israel. He dies in his own wretchedness because by his own fault he loses the fountain of his life and love.
True love can never be frustrated. It can never be in vain. Like water that seeks for its own level, love always seeks for a beloved. And if the beloved takes not the love of the lover, the lover who cares so much for his love will always have a proper place and a proper time for his love to be cherished and cared by another beloved who truly accepts and treasures his love. Love is never sterile. It takes at least two to love. This is the triumph of love. This is the triumph of God’s love.