27th Sunday Year A

See Commentary on Matthew 21: 33-43 in Matthew 21:33-46


Homily 1 - 2005 

Jesus’ listeners probably would have had little trouble emotionally identifying with the characters in today’s story.  The landless peasant farmers of Galilee - most of them forced off their lands over recent decades by their wealthy and oppressive absentee landlords - would have instinctively sided with the tenants of the story.  The Jerusalem upper-class, the chief priests and aristocracy - mainly absentee landlords themselves forever dealing with disruptive tenants - would have emotionally related to the story’s landowner.  But parables don’t illustrate: they tease; they start us wondering.

As Matthew used the story, his Christian community would immediately have identified the tenant farmers with the bulk of the Jewish nation, both peasants and landlords, who they believed had rarely listened to the prophets over the centuries and who only fifty or sixty years earlier had crucified Jesus.  The violent destruction of Jerusalem, the temple, and most of the chief priests and aristocrats, by the Roman armies in AD 70  - just a generation before Matthew wrote his gospel - would have justified their conclusion.  The God of the land of Israel had destroyed them.

Yet the Jewish leaders at the time of Jesus would have thought that it was precisely their concern for their nation and its proud tradition that led them to dispose of Jesus, however regrettably.  By far the overwhelming number of the Jewish contemporaries of Matthew’s Christian community would have been quite certain of the justness of their hostile attitude to Christians.  They saw them as traitors to orthodox Judaism, and to God, precisely at a time when unity was crucial if they were not to be absorbed into the paganism of the Roman culture that everywhere swamped them.

Isn’t it fascinating how easy it is to see the mistakes, the injustice, the sin of others?  family conflicts, Mark Latham, Kate Moss, you name it!  Unfortunately the same dynamic is at work in international relations: Muslim terrorists are dismayed at the immorality and godlessness of the Western world, its plans for world domination and the watering down of Islam.  Western leaders see the Islamic fundamentalists as radically evil, blindly heartless, and determined to impose the ways of Islam on the whole world.

We might ask: Whose side is God on? How does Jesus see all this?  I think that Jesus takes for granted the sin on all sides.  His response to the universal, all-pervading sin of the world (including mine and yours) is not to say that it is not there or that it’s all on one side – the other side! He sees us all up to our necks in it ... and he still loves us all – without distinction!  He calls everyone to conversion.  

He insists that the only way we can radically change the world is by radically changing ourselves.  That is where we start.  The next move is to love our opponents, our enemies, the ones out to get us.  And here is where 99 out of 100 get off the tram!  It seems ridiculous!  It seems so obvious that it is not us who need to change.  The others are always so obviously wrong.  It is they who must change.  And the tragic story of mindless judgment and violence repeats itself century after century after century.  So often our fixation on the sin of the others blinds us to our own sin.  We just don’t see it, or if we do, it somehow doesn’t count.  But mostly we simply don’t see it.

So how are we to repent of what we honestly can’t see?  We need to learn to see better.  We need to sharpen our self-knowledge.  And that takes openness, stillness and time.  Not that we want to drown in a sea of guilt or depression.  But sin is ultimately unfreedom, and destructive of genuine peace.  Whatever goes on in the world – the world out there or the world behind our own front door - God wants to help us, to empower us, to free us from our unfreedoms, our unhappiness, our lack of peace.

There will be no peace in our world until there is peace  in our own hearts.  We might add: When there is peace in our own hearts, we can still breathe, smile and live life richly, in the midst of a world that has not yet chosen the path to peace.  Not without risk; not without suffering.  Daniel Berrigan, a peace activist and poet, referred to the situation as:  The breathing space in the iron cage!  Jesus knew joy, he knew peace - not without suffering - in a world hell-bent on destroying him, and on destroying itself.  As we follow the way of Jesus, we can know the same. 


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.


Homily 3 -2017

Jesus was in Jerusalem. The time was shortly before his arrest and crucifixion. He was engaging, as the Gospel said, with the chief priests and the elders of the people, that is, with the nation’s political and religious power-brokers and decision makers. What was their problem? Why did these professional religious leaders kill Jesus? Why did they, as the parable colourfully inferred, seize him, throw him out of the vineyard and kill him? What was their problem? What was their problem with Jesus?

It was not that they were knowingly and deliberately bad men. They were no worse than any group of politicians or national leaders; or, perhaps, in a democracy like ours, no worse than any group of voters. Why do Australians treat asylum seekers the way we do?

What did Jesus see as people’s problems? What was new, different, for example, about the content of his Sermon on the Mount? Why did Jesus insist, Be merciful, as your heavenly Father is merciful? Why did he say, What I want is mercy, not sacrifice? Was not sacrifice what their long history and tradition had taught them to appreciate?

Jesus certainly invited people to a change of heart – but a change from what to what? Paul, in his epistles, wrestled with a similar question. Both tried to encourage people to grow, to move on from a law-based morality to a relationship-based morality – to look more deeply, to bring love, respect, sensitivity to each other, to everyone, into the forefront of their concerns. They asked people, not just to act in a certain way, but to be a certain way. Law can be helpful, but it can also be rigid, awkward, at times inadequate to address the complexities and conflicting values so often involved in human inter-relationships.

Listen to what Paul had to say in today’s epistle. He did not say, learn your catechism, get all the answers, know all the commandments. What he did say was, Fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, etc.. Fill your minds with… Think about them; reflect on them; become sensitive to the values that make life worth living, learn to appreciate them, integrate them. Think about everything that can be thought virtuous. And when you come to think about that, you can come to see that virtue is the basis for law, but without law’s rigidity, without law’s blindness, without its coldness and aloneness, and, sometimes I wonder, even vindictiveness?

I think a lot about the sexual abuse tragedy, and why we Church professionals handled it so disastrously. We certainly categorised it as sin. We knew the law. But we seemed to be blind to, to ignore, the whole relational context of such human behaviour – and precisely its effect on the victims, its effect on the perpetrators. We knew the law, but we were short on virtue; instinctively short on love. We wanted the Church to keep looking perfect; so we kept it “in house”. We were fixated on perfection. So-called perfection can be sterile. Love gives life.

Paul could say, Keep on doing all the things that you learnt from me … and have heard or seen that I do. How comfortable would you feel saying that out loud? Jesus said well before Paul, Follow me! Same thing.

But I am not perfect. Paul was not perfect, either. Indeed. That is the point. None of us is. The challenge is to learn to live as fully as we can in a world where no one is perfect. That means constantly learning, growing – inevitably making mistakes. It means forgiving. It means learning to be genuinely repentant. It means continuing to explore, and to reach out towards, what is truly of value. It means having our antennae up for whatever is good, and encouraging it, wherever we see it.

Might some of these considerations be especially relevant to how the Commonwealth approaches the question whether to legalise same-sex marriage?


Homily 4 - 2020

What strikes me from today’s Gospel passage is Jesus’ comment, “… the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who will produce fruit”. Jesus was speaking to the “chief priests and the elders of the people”. It was a striking comment. The temple worship and the priesthood had been a determining part of the Jewish tradition and even self-understanding for almost a thousand years. It had been set up by God. For the relatively brief period of the Babylonian exile, there was no temple. But the priesthood continued, even if the priests were unable to conduct public worship. After the exile, many Jews returned to their homeland. A new temple was built and the priests resumed their accustomed priestly roles.

Over the centuries, many of the prophets were highly critical of priests and kings. They accused them of being more interested in power and wealth, while neglecting their primary task of motivating the people to centre their lives on God, to care lovingly for each other, and to be a force for good to the surrounding world.

By the time Matthew was writing his Gospel, the restored Jerusalem temple had been utterly destroyed by the Roman Empire. The priesthood had lost its purpose and disappeared. Jesus’ comment proved prophetic. But Judaism as a religion did not disappear, even if its organisation became radically altered. Without a priesthood, religious worship was preserved largely in the homes of the ordinary people, and teaching and organisation retracted to the synagogues under the care of Pharisees at first, and later of rabbis. None of these were priests. Since priesthood has utterly disappeared, Judaism is essentially a family based religion — and still continues after two thousand years.

I often wonder what is happening in our Church. We have become used to our familiar structures of leadership, and the ways we worship — that slowly but constantly took new shapes as cultures changed over the centuries. We have taken their current shapes for granted. Yet events over the last few decades seem to be moving us inexorably in the direction of changes we have not planned. Might God’s Spirit be slowly guiding us towards greater simplicity, a less or even non-clerical Church, a re-empowered, responsible and energetic laity? Are we beginning to set free at last the largely unrecognised and untapped potential of women? Who knows?


 

Homily 5 -2023

You might have noticed listed in the weekend’s Parish Bulletin the Pope’s Prayer Intention for this month of October? He asked us to join him in praying for “… the Church, that she may adopt listening and dialogue as a lifestyle at every level, and allow herself to be guided by the Holy Spirit towards the peripheries of the world.” Pope Francis sees the Church as much more inclusive than the Western World with its interests and concerns which so much of the media that we are exposed to seem to assume.

Last week, the first week of October, was a busy week in Rome. It was prefaced with the Consistory for a new group of Cardinals from the four points of the compass. And then, on the Feast of St Francis last week, the Pope released his anticipated document on the Environment, Laudate Deum, his urgent follow-up to his earlier Encyclical, Laudato Si, on the same subject. Also on that same day, the Feast of St Francis, the long-awaited and prepared-for World Synod of Bishops to examine and practise what he called “Synodology” began and will continue over the rest of the month.

Regular Synods of Bishops began after the Second Vatican Council to ensure the proper and on-going development of Tradition following on the insights that arose at the Council. This one is the eleventh since the Council finished nearly sixty years ago, and hopes to continue that same Tradition. It will be unique, not only in the issues it will consider, but how they were determined, and how they will be dealt with.

The agenda is the fruit of many smaller gatherings of bishops, priests and lay people that have been gathering all over the world during the past couple of years to listen carefully to each other and equally carefully to share their concerns and insights, deliberately and explicitly seeking all the time to listen for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Here in Australia, we were fortunate to have had our Plenary Council a couple of years ago. It was a very fruitful opportunity for all Catholics, firstly, and then our representatives, to hesitantly put the process into practice as we and they met to discuss the issues that seemed important to us in the Australian Church at this time and within the wider context of our world; and to have these concerns sent to Rome to be included in the agenda of the Synod.

The input of lay people in the lead-up process and in the membership of the Synod is a quite special fruit of the ever-developing vital Tradition of the Church from the earliest times.

The Pope is particularly insistent that all round the world we ordinary [but always precious] members of the Church pray that the participants listen for and become ever more adept to discern the leading of God’s Holy Spirit. Some of you may consider coming occasionally to week-day Mass over the next three weeks to pray.

The Pope’s new document on the Climate Crisis has been triggered by a number of factors that have become obvious over the past seven years since he addressed the original Encyclical, Laudato Si. Drawing on the research of the by-far greater number of scientists, and stimulated and motivated by the increasingly frequent and destructive observation, [and even experience by the mostly poor], of almost unbelievable climate extremes and their consequences, he calls everyone, and particularly national leaders, out of their state of climate-denial to determined, realistic and adequate cooperation in the urgent, but different, steps that everyone needs take.

Let me quote just one paragraph as written by Francis: I feel obliged to make these clarifications, which may appear obvious, because of certain dismissive and scarcely reasonable opinions that I encounter, even within the Catholic Church. Yet we can no longer doubt…[#14].

Nearly three hundred years ago, Jonathan Swift wrote: There are none so blind as those who will not see…