27th Sunday Year A - Homily 2

Homily 2 – 2008 

The chief priests and the aristocratic families, the elders of the people, who felt themselves undermined and challenged by Jesus, were, obviously, hardly familiar with the mind and heart of God, despite their role and responsibility as leaders.  They were unable, or unwilling, to see the God-like-ness of Jesus.  Their concern was, rather, to maintain the status quo, and what it provided them: prestige, wealth and security.  It was their fascination with these that disposed them to be prepared even to murder – as today’s Gospel parable put it so graphically: they seized him and threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 

Paul was a different kind of leader.  He was totally focussed on God, whom he recognised in Jesus.  He had come to the insight that God, in Jesus, was not about security but vulnerability; that life is not about getting, but giving, even to being prepared, like Jesus, to live under the repeated threat of being lynched.

Much of the media this week has been focussing on the meltdown in the US financial markets – in turn fed by the insatiable desire to get, to get more, bigger, better.  That drive, fuelled by what looks very much like simple greed, has failed to produce happiness; and has led to panic.  The amount needed to rescue it (and that probably will be found) would be enough to remove the poverty and hunger that bedevils our global world: Seven hundred thousand million dollars.  There is never enough money to feed the world’s poor ... but little trouble finding it to support possibly corrupt corporations.  Those who have so much can’t stop themselves wanting more.  They truly believe it’s where an ever more elusive happiness lies.  They are like people hypnotised, hopelessly addicted.

It is interesting that here in our parish, over the next few weeks especially, we are all reflecting on giving, not on getting – on giving to our community.  Like Paul… prepared to seek ways to give our time, our talent and our treasure to strengthen our community, and to deepen its impact on ourselves, our families and our wider community.  We shall be seeking to bring about, as best we are able, the Kingdom of God.

We are inevitably children of our culture.  We can’t avoid it.  We feel the power of the pressure to get, to get more, bigger, better.  But we are also, like Paul, captivated by the person of Jesus and by his vision for a better world.  In our hearts we know that Jesus’ way is the only way … and we are here, gathered at Mass this morning, to help and encourage ourselves and each other to keep on choosing his way of self-giving – not reluctantly, but hope-filled, joy-filled – trusting, as Paul assured the faithful community of disciples in Philippi in today’s Second Reading – that the peace of God which is much greater than we can understand will guard our hearts and our thoughts together in Christ Jesus.