27th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 08 October 2023

For the third Sunday in a row, Jesus offers us another parable about a vineyard. The image and symbol of the vineyard begins in the first reading today from the Prophet Isaiah. ‘The Song of the Vineyard’ as it is called tells the story of man who carefully dug the soil, cleared the stones and planted the best vines. He does this in the hope that it will produce the best of grapes. Sadly, it produced the sourest of grapes. When Jesus speaks to the chief priests and the elders in the gospel, he retells this story knowing well they were familiar with its origin but not its deeper meaning.

A man creates a vineyard and rents it to tenants. When the time comes, he sends his servants to collect the harvest that is rightly his. However, they beat and kill the servants. He sends even more servants and they treat them similarly. In the end he decides to send his only son believing that they will respect him, but sadly the tenants seize and kill him too. Jesus asks the elders what the owner of the vineyard should do. They reply that the vineyard should be taken from the useless tenants and given to others who will both respect the owner and the vineyard.  In reality, they themselves are the tenants who have neither respected the owner who is God, nor the vineyard, which is the Kingdom of God. It is they who have ‘destroyed’ the vineyard and kept all others out whom they consider unworthy; people such as sinners, the poor, the sick, the tax collectors and the prostitutes. These are the very ones for whom Jesus came with the Good News that they are loved personally and intimately by God. As Jesus says to elders very directly; ‘The Kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to people who will produce its fruit.’