Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time - A October 5, 2008

Isaiah 5: 1-7 Philippians 4: 6-9 Matthew 21: 33-43

Over the years, when I have gone aay for a few days of retreat, I have used an old family house near Cambridge, Ohio. In referring to this as a house, I might be rather generous by our standards today. It is not a cottage or vacation house. It is a house on a country road near an old and abandoned mine. Some similar houses are still present. But they have been updated and remodeled. This is not the case in this instance. It is still the same four room house. It has electricity and running water - just barely. It still has some of the old furniture, including a pot-belly stove for heat. The outdoor well is still used for drinking water and there is no indoor plumbing, just and outhouse.

This setting offers the opportunity for what I call quiet simplicity. But it is also a source for thought and reflection. I think about how a family lived and grew there, in those circumstances. By determination and hard work, by using the opportunities offered and making the efforts necessary, descendants of that family now live in circumstances and settings that have to be far beyond the dreams of those who once lived in that house. In many ways we call this typical of the American dream. Many of us can tell similar stories about generations past in our own families, about what so many did in order that we can have and enjoy so much that is ours.

This imagery, these thoughts, in a way, seem to be in direct opposition to the story that is told in the Gospel today. The story of the Gospel can be summarized as an account of persons who wanted it all without the necessary effort, to have what the owner of the vineyard had, without doing what he had to do. They wanted not only the income from the vineyard, but the very vineyard itself, even if it meant killing the son in order to possess it. They wanted to have what the vineyard owner had, without being what the vineyard owner is, that is, the one who made the effort, made the investment, did the work so that he could be in the position to hire workers to reap the harvest so that he might enjoy the product and proceeds that were rightly his.

As in the case of the old mine house, a lot of effort, determination and hard work was necessary before the dreams of what could be were accomplished.

The thought that came to my mind was that what we often want, what we often expect to have, can be related to what we can understand as being proper to God. We want such things as love, honor, respect, dignity, importance, as well as all we believe we need in order to be comfortable, healthy and untroubled. We often want to have all of these things and more, without being what we need to be in order to possess them. We want to be God-like in what we have, without being God-like in what we are.

This is the challenge of Christ’s teaching, the call which Christ makes to us. In order to be one with God, to have the peace of mind and heart that comes from being united with, in concert with, the very source of life, the Creator, in order to possess a way of living that enjoys and possesses all that is good and true and beautiful, we have to be, we have to reflect that way of existence in our lives. Listen again, carefully, to what St. Paul wrote: “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about theses things. Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard and seen. . .”

If this is what we want to have, this is how we are to be: doing, acting living what we have learned, what we so hope for. We must also realize that this has been made available to us the sacrifice of the Cross which led to the Resurrection. Like those who have gone before us, with hard work, commitment and sacrifice so that we might have and live far beyond what they dreamed about and hoped for and in order to enjoy and possess all the opportunity that comes from living in harmony with the creative source of life, with God, we must act, we must be, in the lives we lead and the choices we make, genuine examples of what is the goodness of our loving God.