A Sobering Reminder

Today’s gospel is a sobering reminder of current events. We’ve been given so many gifts and God has surrounded them with a hedge of grace, provided all that we will need to strengthen these gifts, and built a tower of protection around our inheritance for us to simply enjoy because He loves us so much. Things like pride, greed, envy, and gluttony creep in through the atmosphere and suddenly our gifts and the grace and the favor and the protection don’t seem to be enough to sustain us so we seek more more more, rather than using what we have to make more. Then we tend to get all territorial with our spoils and don’t welcome others into our fortress without paying a price, and we start hoarding our goods because we are afraid of losing them, and we start comparing our own gifts with the gifts of others, and once jealousy enters the scene, the killing begins. We kill each other with words, and gossip, and revenge, and unforgiveness, and selfishness, and greed, and the list goes on. Guess what, we kill ourselves with the very same things. Zero of these things are inside the hedge of grace, or found in the tools God gives us to harvest our gifts, or in the tower built around us. These things infiltrate our vineyard through tiny whispers of doubt and temptation that sneak in through our weak and vulnerable cracks. The good news is that God is also whispering sweet nothings to us at the same time reminding us of who we are and whose we are, telling us we are His favorite, singing us love songs, and giving us encouragement to use what He has so generously given us. His gifts are always good, always beautiful, and always abundant. We have the choice to listen to both voices and/or to ignore one and only listen to the other. I used to tend to listen to a little bit of both and eventually I started to lean in toward one over the other because that’s the way a divided heart works. Slowly, but surely, the subtle lies spread the infection of comparison, shame, weakness, and conflict and I felt like one of the tenants in the vineyard of today’s gospel fighting to save my own by lashing out at others. Raise your hand if this resonates with you. 

I had to make a change and only listen to the one voice that planted the vineyard in the first place. His voice gives life, peace, patience, love, beauty, joy, comfort, and blessing. Discerning His voice over the other voice took a lot of time sitting in the silence and willing His voice louder over any other voice. Eventually, I learned its cadence, its melody, its nature, and its peace, and I only wanted that voice. Jesus uses the image of a vineyard because its fruit is wine and wine is associated with joy, which is the most accurate expression of God’s presence of our life. God planted a vineyard for us to make wine; wine to soften our hearts to His goodness, wine to celebrate His unconditional love and mercy, wine to toast our Good Good Father with endless praise, wine to share with others as a gift of hospitality, wine to drink from the cup of salvation. The enemy tries with all his subtle ways to sober us into a place of fear, anxiety, lack, and hate. We have the hedge of grace around us, the wine press of favor, and the tower of protection to produce a great harvest of joy. Let’s be good stewards of these precious gifts and let’s have some wine! It is well with my soul. 

Reading 1 GN 37:3-4, 12-13A, 17B-28A

Israel loved Joseph best of all his sons,
for he was the child of his old age;
and he had made him a long tunic.
When his brothers saw that their father loved him best of all his sons,
they hated him so much that they would not even greet him.

One day, when his brothers had gone
to pasture their father's flocks at Shechem,
Israel said to Joseph, 
"Your brothers, you know, are tending our flocks at Shechem.
Get ready; I will send you to them."

So Joseph went after his brothers and caught up with them in Dothan.
They noticed him from a distance,
and before he came up to them, they plotted to kill him.
They said to one another: "Here comes that master dreamer!
Come on, let us kill him and throw him into one of the cisterns here;
we could say that a wild beast devoured him.
We shall then see what comes of his dreams."

When Reuben heard this,
he tried to save him from their hands, saying,
"We must not take his life.
Instead of shedding blood," he continued,
"just throw him into that cistern there in the desert;
but do not kill him outright."
His purpose was to rescue him from their hands
and return him to his father. 
So when Joseph came up to them,
they stripped him of the long tunic he had on;
then they took him and threw him into the cistern,
which was empty and dry.

They then sat down to their meal.
Looking up, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead,
their camels laden with gum, balm and resin
to be taken down to Egypt.
Judah said to his brothers:
"What is to be gained by killing our brother and concealing his blood? 
Rather, let us sell him to these Ishmaelites,
instead of doing away with him ourselves.
After all, he is our brother, our own flesh."
His brothers agreed.
They sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver.

Responsorial Psalm PS 105:16-17, 18-19, 20-21

R. (5a) Remember the marvels the Lord has done.
When the LORD called down a famine on the land
and ruined the crop that sustained them,
He sent a man before them,
Joseph, sold as a slave.
R. Remember the marvels the Lord has done.
They had weighed him down with fetters,
and he was bound with chains,
Till his prediction came to pass
and the word of the LORD proved him true.
R. Remember the marvels the Lord has done.
The king sent and released him,
the ruler of the peoples set him free.
He made him lord of his house
and ruler of all his possessions.
R. Remember the marvels the Lord has done.

Verse Before The Gospel JN 3:16

God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son;
so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life.

Gospel MT 21:33-43, 45-46

Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: 
"Hear another parable.
There was a landowner who planted a vineyard,
put a hedge around it,
dug a wine press in it, and built a tower.
Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey.
When vintage time drew near,
he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce.
But the tenants seized the servants and one they beat,
another they killed, and a third they stoned.
Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones,
but they treated them in the same way.
Finally, he sent his son to them,
thinking, 'They will respect my son.'
But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another,
'This is the heir.
Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.'
They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.
What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?"
They answered him,
AHe will put those wretched men to a wretched death
and lease his vineyard to other tenants
who will give him the produce at the proper times."
Jesus said to them, ADid you never read in the Scriptures:

The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
by the Lord has this been done,
and it is wonderful in our eyes?

Therefore, I say to you,
the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you
and given to a people that will produce its fruit."
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables,
they knew that he was speaking about them.
And although they were attempting to arrest him,
they feared the crowds, for they regarded him as a prophet.