Sour grapes, or sweet fruit?
Today’s readings make it clear that God has expectations of His people – and throughout history those have not always been met. Sometimes they have been missed by a mile. That’s true of the People of Israel up to and including Jesus’ time, and of his Church through to modern times – with the sexual abuse scandal being perhaps the most obvious recent failure.
It’s also clear that both Isaiah and Jesus are speaking about the responsibility of a group, the whole community, corporate responsibility as we might call it these days. But this then raises the issue of how does corporate responsibility relate to individual responsibility – if everyone is responsible then is no-one responsible? Or since Jesus is talking specifically to “the chief priests and the elders of the people” is it just them (and equivalently the cardinals and the bishops, and maybe the priests) that need to worry about this?
That seems to me unlikely. Yes surely those other people, the ones “in charge”, should be worrying, but we are also part of the people of God, the tenants of the vineyard – so what is our responsibility? Even if we just hold back and don’t actually throw stones or grab hold of the owner’s son, are we doing anything to stop the injustice?
Let’s be clear what “fruit” the Father is expecting. Paul gave us a wonderful and unambiguous description of that: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control”. That fruit seems to be in short supply at present. But if that is not what the communities we belong to are producing then God will call us to account. We might argue that we don’t have any control over what others do, all we can do is look after our own bit of vine, as it were, and others have to look after themselves. It’s certainly true that we can’t control others and yes we must ensure we individually are producing good fruit as best we can. But we do have influence on other people, we do communicate our views to others, we do have power, however little or great in our communities. Are we contributing to an increase of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? Or are some sour grapes creeping in?
Are we living the life that Paul describes: “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, think about these things”. Then the vineyard will be as it should be – “Then the God of peace will be with you”.