Homily for the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Our Lord is very clever with His parables. Sometimes some of the details sound a bit different from what you would expect, but often it’s because the parable is put together to reflect the reality He wants to lead you to, rather than being just a nice little story.

For a bit of background, we have today’s first reading. The vineyard on a very fertile hill is symbolic of Israel. The very fertile hill makes us think of Jerusalem, where previously the Temple was situated up high, overlooking the city. God has done all He can – the vine has been given fertile soil, he’s cleared the ground of stones so the vine can grow well, and then He didn’t just plant any old variety of vine, but the very best. But when it came to the harvest, the grapes were wild ones, so they were probably rather small and sour. It’s a symbol of the house of Israel, after all God has done for it, refusing to bear appropriate fruits.

At the time of Christ, many of the observant Jews, and certainly the chief priests and elders of the people, would have been aware of this passage from Isaiah. So now Christ uses the idea of the vineyard to talk about salvation history: God plants the vine, and leaves it to the religious authorities to look after, but what happens? He sends the prophets to call them back to the straight and narrow, but they are treated like the tenants in the parable. Then God sends more prophets, and they do the same. Some of the prophets were, in fact, put to death, and St John the Baptist, the last and greatest of all the prophets, was beheaded because his message was not to the liking of the reigning royalty. Finally, the Father sends His beloved Son, and Christ predicts what they are going to do – they are going to have Him put to death outside the walls of Jerusalem. But it’s clever how He gets the chief priests and elders to predict their own ruin: “‘When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’ The said to him, ‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.’” They predict their own ruin. Watch out – God has seen what you are doing and are about to do, and you will have to face the consequences. Then, God will build something new, the Church, with Christ as its cornerstone. The One whom you rejected has turned out to be the most important of all. The architects and masons of Israel have tried to build without Christ, and as a result, everything for them will come tumbling down.

But the Church is founded on Christ. It means the Church has a secure foundation, despite some of the mess of later history.

King Henry VIII wanted to refashion the way the Church worked, with him as head. But there is only one Head of the Church, and that is Christ – the Pope is only Christ’s deputy. St Paul tells us in Colossians 1:18 that Christ “is the head of the body, the church”. At least when Elizabeth I created the Church of England version 2.0, she did not claim to be the head. But in today’s world, things are not as simple as just remaining a Catholic and leaving aside Henry’s version of the Church of England. The devil has adopted a more deceptive approach, where by sleight of hand the true Christ can be replaced by a false idol, and this is not in the obvious way of replacing God with wine, women and song or other entertainments, but where people re-fashion Christ in their own image and likeness. “I think He would think this way today”, or “I don’t feel He would consider this important”. On Friday we celebrate the feast of St John Henry Newman, and this way of thinking was a danger in his time too. As an Anglican, rather than looking to then modern-day opinions of what scripture meant, he decided to research into what those who lived closest to the time of Christ had to say, and as a result he helped lead the way towards a more Catholic form of Anglicanism. But even this has its limits – the writings of the early Christians need to be interpreted, just as the Bible needs to be interpreted, and ultimately he realised the need for the Pope and his teaching authority in order to have certainty in the storms of life. So he became a Catholic. He described it, “like coming into port after a rough sea” (Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Chapter V). This, then, changed his outlook. He wrote:

“People say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation is difficult to believe; I did not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. I had no difficulty in believing it, as soon as I believed that the Catholic Roman Church was the oracle of God, and that she had declared this doctrine to be part of the original revelation.” (Ibid.)

Going back to the Gospel, we know that Christ is God as well as man, that He could see the future and what would happen. He gave us the Church as the new Israel, with Him as Head and cornerstone. As St John Henry Newman discovered, being faithful to Christ and faithful to the Church are both interrelated, and we can’t completely have the one without the other.

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