27th Sunday in Ordinary Time - No Condemnation

 "Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first. And they did the same to them. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They 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.” Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: “‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.’  Matthew 21.33-43

Parables are stories that always have a twist in the tale, and I love a twist.

Here the twist comes when Jesus turns the tale over to the people with a question that is designed to rebuke them with their own words. They are the tenants who will meet the fate that is due to them and the God, the landlord, will find other tenants who can fulfil the task that was set them.

Parables should also raise questions for us. They should raise the challenge of God’s judgement and the need for repentance. These passages question the very basis of our existence as God’s people.

From the very beginning Jesus’ call was for everyone to start living differently, to repent. This was not just a challenge to people to give up their sinful ways and start living justly and faithfully. He never nagged the people he met; that wasn’t his tactic. Instead, whenever he stopped to meet people, he would inspire them with stories of what life could really be like; he showed them God’s way.

So it should be with us. The church has been particularly good at pointing out where people have gone wrong and putting them off. We have not delivered to God the harvest that is due to Him. Jesus way of showing people how to repent and lead the lives that God has planned for them was encouragement not condemnation.

Where do you see yourself? Are you actively disobeying God’s wishes while maintaining the veneer of respectability? Are you one of those who maintain a faithful life within the church but ignore what is going on around you? Or do you see yourself active within the church and world, encouraging others into God’s kingdom?

Many of us who think we live morally upright and faithful lives are deluding ourselves. It is not respectability that God wants of us; it is right and just living, inspire others with our words and by our example.

We will all need help and guidance and in that we have in Christ, the capstone, who is both the way by which we should live our lives and the strength and support in all we do.

God bless us as his will becomes our own.

And can it be that I should gain
an interest in the Saviour's blood?
Died he for me, who caused his pain?
For me, who him to death pursued?
Amazing love!  How can it be
that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in him, is mine!
Alive in him, my living Head,
and clothed in righteousness divine,
bold I approach the eternal throne,
and claim the crown, through Christ,            my own.

Charles Wesley (1707–1788)

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