Homily for the Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A – Harvest Sunday

Which is better? Blunt honesty and refusal, or hypocrisy? But conversion is better than either. God asks us, not just to listen, but to do as well.

When we look at who Christ was speaking to, it wasn’t the ordinary people, but rather the chief priests and elders of the people. They should have been the ones who were more in tune with God. God is doing something new, working renewal, but they are having none of it. Elsewhere (Matthew 23:27-28), Christ speaks of those who pass themselves off as virtuous in people’s sight, but inside are like dead men’s tombs, white on the outside, but inside full of dead men’s bones and all sorts of corruption. They pass themselves off as virtuous, but inside are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. In other words, they claim to be good people, but actually don’t practice what they preach and instead give way to all sorts of sin, and justify it as well. You can imagine the chief priests and elders in today’s Gospel being angered by the comparison, where Christ says that the lowest of the low, the tax collectors and the prostitutes, are entering the kingdom of God ahead of them. But they are still so obstinate.

The tax collectors and prostitutes are like the son who initially said no to his father, but then had a change of heart and went to work in the vineyard. The chief priests and elders are like the second son, who pretends to obey the father, but has no intention of doing so.

It’s easy for us to take sides in all of this, but when we look into our own hearts, do we have areas of hypocrisy too? In reality, that is what sin is: denying God’s lordship over our hearts, and installing ourselves as master instead. We claim to be followers of God, but do we always do so? As human beings, we find some things easier than others, and so we can point to the things we do well, and quietly sneak away from the other areas that involve more effort, are not so interesting, or maybe where we have failed in the past. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and we shouldn’t expect to become perfect in a day either. The saints, as St John Vianney used to say, didn’t all begin well, but they all ended well. Learning to master ourselves takes time. It’s a bit like in the south of America where they have people trying to ride wild horses and try not to get thrown out of the saddle. We can be like a wild horse that doesn’t want to be tamed, and tries to throw off the one who is trying to get us to follow some discipline.

The chief priests and the elders haven’t been rejected. It’s being pointed out to them that they are on the wrong path; they are “living dangerously”, and Christ is doing His best to try and bring them back to the straight and narrow, and sometimes that might require a strong word or two. “Who are you to compare us with tax collectors and prostitutes” might have been their reaction. But they need shocking out of their complacency.

Today we celebrate Harvest Sunday. It’s a time to be thankful for the hard work that goes into producing the food that we eat, and also a time to think about the people and the processes involved. If we care for our neighbour, and therefore the world in which we live as neighbours, what needs to stay the same and what needs to change? As someone with no experience of farming it’s not for me to point out the magic solution, but it’s an important question to reflect on as consumers – what sort of practices are we supporting by the food we choose to buy and that which we don’t buy? Do we perhaps need to do a bit of research ourselves and educate ourselves about what is behind some of the different claims on the packaging about environmental standards and concern for workers?

Today God asks us to not just listen, but to do His will. If we are to love God and our neighbour, we have to first inform ourselves of what that actually means and work out what it might mean in certain contexts. And that might mean we also have to have a change of heart, and a change of direction. We don’t want to be people who say we will do God’s will, set off with good intentions, but actually end up doing the opposite without realising it.

Curious about exploring things further?  If you would like to ask further questions about the topics raised in these homilies (or maybe think it wasn’t explained too well!), please feel free to e-mail Fr Michael at stjoseph.thame@rcaob.org.uk