Year A

Jan 15 2025

Bearing Fruit: Not Just for Vineyards

God’s relationship with people is at the heart of both the first reading and the Gospel, but there is a difference. In Isaiah, destruction comes to the vineyard; in the Gospel, it comes to those entrusted with the care of the vineyard.

Isaiah’s song highlights the people’s failure—the house of Israel and the people of Judah—to bear fruit, to provide the Lord who has lovingly tended this vineyard with anything more than wild grapes, that is, bloodshed and violence against each other. Because of this, the owner will turn his back on them, no longer giving care but letting it be trampled underfoot, no longer pruning or hoeing, but allowing thorns and briers to take over. This song is demanding conversion. In Jesus’ parable, the focus is on those entrusted with the care of the vineyard. Jesus addresses the chief priests and the elders in Jerusalem, not only criticizing their failure to care for the people adequately, but also their rejection of those God sent to call them to conversion. The parable calls all religious leaders to remember that authority is for service.

Bearing fruit in our lives, being true and honorable, just and pure, lovely and gracious is the fruit God desires from all, as Paul reminds the Philippians. God’s people, but especially their leaders, have a responsibility to bear fruit. No one is let off the hook. God expects a return for love so lavishly given.

Consider/Discuss

Have you ever tended a plant or grown a garden? What did this experience teach you?
What fruitfulness God is asking of you?
Is there anything that prevents you from making a return to God for all that has been given to you?

Responding to the Word

St. Paul calls us to set aside anxiety and to make known to God any requests we have for more fruitful lives. In prayer we will find that “the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Jan 15 2025

Scripture Study for

The first reading tells a story about a vineyard. The vine dresser diligently performed each step of the process to produce grapes. However, not only was there no abundant harvest, but wild, useless grapes sprang forth. This unnatural yield was not due to poor cultivation. Rather, the vineyard itself had failed. It becomes clear that the prophet is really talking about the Israelites. Judgment is now passed on the vineyard (the people). God invested so much in the future of this people, and they scorned the attention of the vineyard owner. What began as a poem about friendship and devotion ends as a message of doom.

The tenderness with which Paul regards the Philippians is evident here. They are anxious and Paul offers them encouragement and direction. Rather than be anxious, they are admonished to turn to God in prayer. Paul is not advising some kind of magical exercise that will right every wrong, but an openness to God that itself can help people bear trying circumstances. They will then know the peace that only God can give, the peace that surpasses all understanding. He then exhorts them to live lives patterned after Christ. Christian thinking and behavior will open the believer to the kind of peace that only God can give.

Jesus too tells a story about a vineyard. When he is finished, he turns to the leaders and asks them to provide a legal ruling on the situation. They must have known that the parable was highlighting their own resistance to God’s directives, and they also would have known that whatever judgment they might suggest would fall on their heads as well. The sentence they passed was quite harsh, but it was actually no harsher than the conduct of the tenants. Just as the vineyard is taken from the wicked tenants and given to others, so the kingdom of God will be taken from the leaders and given to people who will produce fruits.

Jan 15 2025

Doing “Yes”

In The Secret Life of Bees, August, an older black woman, is talking about “the problem with people” to Lily, a younger white woman who has run away from an abusive father. Lily has said that people don’t really know what matters. But August says the deeper problem is that people do know what matters, but don’t choose it.

God tells Ezekiel that virtue’s proof is in choosing to do the right thing. What you choose to do matters. So be careful not to go off the right path at the end of your days. On the other hand, you might be off the right path for years, but end up hopping back on at the very end, and you will have life. It doesn’t sound very fair; nevertheless, it’s where you are when the end comes that counts. And you don’t know when the end will come.

Jesus confronts the religious leaders with a parable. A father asks his two sons to do some work in the vineyard. One talks a good game but never makes it into the field; the other refuses outright, but then goes and does what his father asked. In telling this parable, Jesus compares these leaders unfavorably to the tax collectors and prostitutes. The elders must have been shocked.

“Have in you that same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus,” writes Paul to his beloved Philippians. The attitude he urged on them was giving oneself for the sake of others—even unto death. In this way, we not only speak but also do “Yes.” Choose to live Christ.

Consider/Discuss

Can you think of a time when you said yes to someone’s request but did not carry it out?
Do you think of Jesus as one who emptied himself, even of life, trusting his Father to fill him?
How is God calling you to empty yourself at this time, doing “nothing out of selfishness, but regarding others as more important than yourselves”?

Responding to the Word

In the Our Father we pray that God will not lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil. We pray that we will be obedient to the Father’s will to the point of death so that we will be raised into eternal life and join in the song of exaltation, confessing Jesus Christ as Lord.

Jan 15 2025

Scripture Study for

The issue in the first reading is the matter of retribution, the manner in which God rewards righteous living and punishes wicked behavior. Two situations are described. In the first one, a righteous person sins; in the second, a sinner repents. God metes out punishment in the first situation and grants a reward in the second. Actually, having chosen another path, the once righteous person now suffers the consequences of that choice. In like manner, the sinner who turns away from wickedness and chooses the path of righteousness and justice will live united with God, the source of life. Is this injustice on God’s part?

The reading from Philippians is one of Christianity’s most exalted hymns of praise of Christ. Paul offered this magnificent vision of Christ’s self-emptying to challenge the Philippians’ own attitudes of mind and heart. Not only did Christ relinquish his Godlike state, he emptied himself of it. Without losing his Godlike being, he took on the likeness of human beings, not merely resembling a human being, but actually becoming one. As a result, his exaltation is as glorious as his humiliation was debasing. Every knee shall do him homage and every tongue shall proclaim his sovereignty. The entire created universe is brought under his lordship.

The sons in the Gospel story represent two ways of responding to a father’s command. The first son refuses to obey, a serious breach of protocol in a patriarchal kinship structure. However, the headstrong son repents and eventually does what his father charged him to do. The second son does not show such disrespect to his father by refusing to go as he was directed, but neither does he obey him. Jesus turns to his adversaries and asks them for an interpretation of the law: Which one did the father’s will? Without knowing it, they condemned themselves with their answer, for they prided themselves on their righteousness and piety, yet they refused to accept him.

Jan 15 2025

God as Giver: Generous or Unjust?

If you ever felt you have not gotten what you deserve for all that you have done, or that others have been given more than they deserve for the little that they have done, this Gospel is not going to please you. It is hard not to line up with the grumblers, complaining that those who worked all day should not be given the same as the eleventh-hour crowd. Where’s the justice in this?

Isaiah sets the stage for hearing the Gospel when he calls us to seek and call on God for what we need, especially mercy and forgiveness. But the prophet recognizes that God’s response to this request may baffle us, especially when such overabundant mercy is shown to others.

Jesus is not telling a tale about being fair, or offering a lesson on just wages. He is teaching that God’s rule is marked by generosity, especially to the last and least, the overlooked, the undervalued, the unwanted, those judged as not very capable. This master calls all to do what they can do. For some the work will last longer than for others. But all will be rewarded.

So, be generous as God is generous. We see an example of this in Paul’s willingness to stay working with the early communities. While the Philippians were easy to love, he also ministered to the cantankerous Corinthians and the “stupid” Galatians (Paul’s own words) who were turning away from the gospel he preached to them. Paul heard the call to act differently with these different groups of people.

Consider/Discuss

When are you being asked to be generous rather than “just”? • Is there another way of thinking about justice than how we usually think of it, that is, as getting what we deserve?
Have you known God’s splendid generosity, going beyond anything you have “deserved”?

Responding to the Word

We pray that we might be able to enter into God’s compassion toward those who come later and do less. We pray that we might be able to mirror the generosity of God during the coming week if an opportunity arises.