Our readings this week may seem harsh. God is going to tear down his vineyard, the house of Israel, because of the way the people have behaved. In the gospel Jesus is again going after the “the chief priests and the elders of the people”, the leaders both religious and secular. Last week he told them that tax collectors and prostitutes would get into heaven before them. This week he goes further and implies they won’t get in at all.
So this may be a warning to bishops and other leaders, but what does it mean for us? We know that we shouldn’t go around beating people up, we only need the Ten Commandments to tell us that. But we also know that when a society, or a country is devastated, whether by natural disaster or war, it not only the leaders who suffer. In fact they may get out, but many people who we would think are blameless do suffer.
Is this what God wants? Are we back to the God who punishes if we don’t do what he wants?
We should look also at the other readings. Both Paul’s letter and especially to the psalm. The psalmist steps back from the immediacy of Isaiah’s prophecy and gives us the long view. The people of Israel learned through hard experience that their failures and rebirths were a continuous cycle. However bad things seemed God had not in fact abandoned them. Isaiah acknowledges this when he notes “the people of Judah are his cherished plant”. Despite the bloodshed and the outcry, the chaos, he hasn’t stopped loving them. Jesus’s attacks against the chief priests and elders are a call to conversion, not a condemnation. If they are condemned it is something they do to themselves. Paul tells the Philippians, and us, to have no anxiety at all! – despite the chaos we see around.
But we still might wonder, what does this really connect for us. It seems to be above our pay grade! We just keep our heads down and try to do the right thing.
While that is worthy and necessary, there is more however to Jesus’s call than just to keep our own noses clean. Isaiah isn’t prophesying to any particular individuals, he’s talking to the people as a whole. Jesus in his parable isn’t calling out a few bad apples, he’s talking about all the tenants.
We talked last week about individual responsibility, but we also have a social responsibility. We are part of our society and whether we like it all we can’t stand aside from it. So we are caught up in the larger changes that shape our community, our politics, our world. Sometimes we may have a little influence with a few people around us. But regardless of how that all plays out we must hold on the the fact that God loves us, that “the God of peace will be with us”, that peace which “will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus”. We can pray with the psalmist “Once again, O LORD of hosts, look down from heaven, and see; take care of this vine, and protect what your right hand has planted”.