27th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
Picture: cc Ian Sane
My dear friends, do you know what we call a situation where someone hands me some money for safekeeping, or for some other purpose, but I keep the money for myself instead? I put it into my own personal bank account, for example. Or keep it for my own use. We call this a breach of trust. Treating property, entrusted to me by someone else, as though it were my own. Failing to use it for the purpose for which it was given to me.
And what do we usually do when a situation like that is discovered? How do we repair the damage? As you know some people may sue to recover what’s lost. And, if a crime has been committed, the culprit may also be charged in court. And sent to jail, or made to pay a fine, or both. These are some of the ways that the law offers to repair the damage caused by a breach of trust. But what if the trust that is breached is a spiritual one? How does one repair a spiritual breach of trust? This, I believe, is the question that our Mass readings help us to ponder today.
The situation is perhaps clearest in the parable that Jesus tells in the gospel. Can you identify the breach of trust? The landowner leases his vineyard to certain tenants for a particular purpose. They are to care for the vineyard, and hand over its produce at harvest time. Instead, the tenants scheme to keep the produce for themselves. Even going so far as to kill the landowner’s son.
As you know, this parable is targetted at a specific group of people. Jesus tells it to the chief priests and the elders of the people. The religious leaders of his day. The implication is that, just as the tenants in the parable try to claim the produce of the vineyard for themselves, so too do the religious leaders use their authority over the people of God to line their own pockets. To inflate their own egos. To build up their own personal kingdoms. Using something that doesn’t belong to them, something that has been entrusted to them for a particular purpose, only to enrich themselves. This is clearly a breach of trust.
Now I have to confess that this parable makes me uncomfortable. For I too am a religious leader. I too have been entrusted with the care of God’s people. And, to be honest, it is far too easy, at least for me, to sometimes feel tempted to use that position for my own ends. To commit a breach of trust. Of course, I may not do anything illegal. But it still remains tempting to direct the results of my work towards my own interests rather than those of God. And, I’m not sure, but perhaps we don’t need to be religious leaders to be tempted in this way. Perhaps parents and teachers, employers and political leaders do too. All those of us who have been given some authority over others.
And, as if that isn’t enough, our Mass readings go even further. For in the first reading too we find a vineyard story involving a breach of trust. Except that here no mention is made of tenants. Instead, it is the vineyard itself that is entrusted with something. Its owner showers upon it painstaking care. Expends much effort and labour on the vineyard. And all for a particular purpose. So that it might yield good fruit. But the ungrateful vineyard bears wild, inedible fruit instead.
Like the gospel parable, the meaning of this story is clear. We’re told that the vineyard is the House of Israel and the men of Judah. The people whom God has specially chosen out of all the peoples of the earth. To whom God has entrusted many good gifts and blessings. All in the hope that they might become a light shining in the darkness. Bearing witness to justice and integrity. But the people live no differently from everyone else. They keep and use their blessings for themselves, instead of for God and for others. They ignore the poor. Perhaps even trample upon them. Add to their sufferings. The fruit that they bear in their lives are the sour grapes of bloodshed and a cry of distress.
But the breach of trust in the first reading actually goes beyond the people’s misuse of the material benefits and privileges showered upon them by God. For God has entrusted them with something even more valuable than all these things. Do you know what it is? Consider how the reading begins. Let me sing to my friend the song of his love for his vineyard. What we find in the first reading is not just an ordinary story, but a love song. Which implies that, far more precious than all their other material blessings, what God gives to the people is God’s very own love. God’s deep desire to live in a loving intimate relationship with them. A priceless gift entrusted to them for them to enjoy and also to share with others. But the people fail to appreciate this. They spurn God’s love. They breach God’s trust.
All of which might lead us to reflect upon our own lives. Whatever the struggles we may be going through now, can any of us honestly deny that we have been blessed in many material ways? If not in money, then in kind? Isn’t this beautiful earth on which we live, for example, itself one of God’s many good gifts, entrusted to our care? And can we deny that, like the people of Israel and Judah, we too have received God’s love? Isn’t this the reason we gather here every Sunday? To recall the depths of that love, in the breaking of Bread and the outpouring of Wine? Through which we experience the loving sacrifice of Christ?
And aren’t all these gifts and blessings entrusted to us for a particular purpose? Not just for us to enrich ourselves. Not just for us to ensure that we and our families get to heaven. But also so that we may live in such a way as to bear witness to justice and integrity in the world. To share God’s love with those who do not yet know it. And could it be that insofar as we fail to do this, we are actually breaching the trust that God places in us?
If all this is true, then what can we do to make things better? To bridge the gap opened up by our breach of trust? The second reading offers us sound advice for remaining close to Christ the keystone of our relationship with God. Whenever the worries and distractions of the world threaten to make us forget God’s love, to breach God’s trust, to focus only on our own concerns, the reading invites us to do three things. First, to ask God for what we need with prayer and thanksgiving. Second, to fill our minds with… everything that is good and pure… And, finally, to keep doing all the things that we have been taught. Thankful prayer. Watchful minds. Loving actions. This is how spiritual breaches of trust are mended and avoided.
My dear friends, truly God has entrusted us with so very much. Above all, the life of God’s own Son. Symbol of God’s undying love for us. What must we do to live up to this trust today?
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