Parables are timeless tools Jesus used to get his message across. Full of violence, the remarkable instructive parable in this gospel is timely. Alas, violence colors the world we live in. Nations, peoples, individuals, even kids, routinely hurt, maim, and kill. In this graphic manner, Jesus cautions that the kingdom of God will be taken away from those who have no respect for the Son of God and given to those who will produce “fruit.”
Historically, our world has often been divided between “us” and “them.” In the parable, we had the tenants and the servants. Now “us and them” could be described as blacks and whites, Muslims and Jews, gays and straights, the haves and have-nots, to name but a few. One doesn’t have to go far to find division. Even within our minds, we have a tug of war going on. Our “tenants” are our beliefs, habits, and attitudes that dupe us into rejecting the call of the servants, our modern day prophets, who urge us to respect the Son of God and his message to love God and one another. The tenants’ final act of defiance in killing the son alludes to our personal rejection of Christ, which happens whenever we choose not to respect life from conception to natural death.
When we are influenced more by the secularism of our culture than the teachings of our Church, we choose not to see certain acts that others or we commit as being immoral or wrong. Instead, we rationalize that certain sinful acts and values are harmless, when in fact, they are not.
Every sin causes harm and hurt. History is full of examples where we have chosen not to respect life. Genocidal slaughter based on ethnic or religious differences have devastated many societies and nations, including ours. But the destruction doesn’t end there. We must not ignore the cold-blooded killings of gang wars, terminally ill patients committing suicide with the help of doctors, prisoners who have been tortured or executed, fetuses destroyed by abortion or infanticide, or addictive behaviors like pornography that undermine the dignity of the human person.
Our culture considers these values acceptable. Many who find them offensive and immoral choose to remain silent on the matter or feel that “the choice is a person’s right.” There is a certain banality about evil. Evil often takes the form of simple conformity to what everyone is doing, and to what our leaders say is right. Such silent assent doesn’t make the evil disappear as one German ruefully observed decades ago, “In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
The immorality, the violence and the legitimized killings are so commonplace that they may seem beyond our control. So, we reason, as did many Germans during the reign of Adolf Hitler, we have neither the power nor the responsibility to change things. Yet Edmund Burke, an English philosopher, once noted that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.
Pope Benedict XVI observed the divisive nature of culture when he visited our country. “The subtle influence of secularism can color the way people allow their faith to influence their behavior. Is it consistent to profess our beliefs in church on Sunday, and then during the week to promote business practices or medical procedures contrary to those beliefs? Is it consistent for practicing Catholics to ignore or exploit the poor and the marginalized, to promote sexual behavior contrary to Catholic moral teaching, or to adopt positions that contradict the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death?”
The obvious answer is no if we want to bring about the kingdom of God in our midst. Saint Pope John Paul II cautioned, “For many people the difference between good and evil is determined by the opinion of the majority…” He added, “The choice in favor of life is not a private option but a basic demand of a just and moral society.” To respect life, there must be a reawakening in our hearts to really know and live the gospel of Jesus Christ. Such an intimate understanding emerges through daily prayer, study and attentive reflection of the Gospel.
One of the functions of religion is to make us pay attention to the ultimate issues, the deeper questions, to keep us from being complacent, sometimes to shake us out of our comfortable habits and perspectives, just as Jesus often did with parables.
Like the tenants in today’s parable, we seek to eliminate and destroy that which threatens our economic and physical security, our sense of personal safety, our self-centered, narrow view of the world with which we have grown comfortable. Jesus Christ, our Messiah, comes with a new, transforming vision for our “vineyard,” a vision of love rather than greed, of peace rather than hostility, of forgiveness rather than vengeance.
Jesus told us, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” Any contractor knows that a building without a cornerstone will eventually collapse. Raising his son from the dead, God offers us Jesus as the cornerstone of our faith. If this is what we profess, then he must supplant the false beliefs, habits, and attitudes, which the wicked “tenants” of our secular culture promote. When we know Jesus and his message, his voice stands out from the rest of the world. May we have the courage and wisdom to dare to “look into the eyes” of Christ, welcoming him into our vineyard, aware that he calls us to a demanding change of heart, determined to bear “fruits” of love by what we say and do.