Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Is 5:1-7
Ps 80:9, 12, 13 14, 15 16, 19 20
Phil 4: 6-9
Mt 21: 33-43

John J. Lydon, O.S.A.
Trujillo, Peru

In early July, just before celebrating the day that we feels symbolizes us as a people, news came out about details concerning the will of the hotel billionaire Leona Helmsley. She left the great part of an estimated $ 8 billion (that is with a B) to her foundation. When she set up the foundation years earlier, she stated in its mission statement that it was to be concerned with two things. First was concern for the indigent, the poor. Secondly it was to be concerned with the welfare of dogs. A year after setting up that mission statement, she modified it to eliminate references to the indigent and poor; and so its only mission became the care of dogs. It is to that foundation, with that mission, that the bulk of her fortune now goes.
How do we react as a community guided by the values of faith when we hear these things? Is it just a bizarre action of a strange person, or is nothing wrong with it since it is hers to do with as she wishes, or is there a wider obligation at stake? The question is not addressed to the now deceased billionaire, but rather to ourselves. Of course we all love dogs, that is very American indeed. So that is not the issue. The question this raises is whether we love the poor, do we see in the poor and indigent the face of our neighbor, or even more, the face of God? Or are they, as with Mrs. Helmsley, left out or stricken from our list of concerns?
The readings of Holy Scripture today bring us face to face with the fundamental role of values in guiding our actions. First is the value of stewardship. The prophet Isaiah in the first reading is criticizing the people of Israel because they have forgotten that the land they have was a gift of God to be shared in justice with all. In Israel it had now become acceptable to forget that the land was gift and with the gift went the obligation of faithful stewardship. People in Israel felt they could do with it as they wished. They could accumulate more, irrespective of the harm done to others, and thus forget any social obligation or what we would call stewardship.
This isn’t a problem of long ago. Early in this year in the newspapers was an article about a convention in Las Vegas of the people behind the mortgage loan collapse. They were meeting in their annual convention and the themes of the talks were how to make money out of the collapsing home values. Here the very people responsible for causing the falling home prices and the collapse of mortgages were trying to make more money on the misery of the masses. It is the idea that there is no stewardship, and that idea is more and more accepted as OK. In this vision greed is far from being a capital sin. It’s a life that uses as its guiding principle Outback Steak House’s famous motto: “No Rules. Everything is Just Right.” And so, as Isaiah in today’s reading speaks out and condemns those of his time whose greed has violated the basic covenant with God, those words still are addressed to us and challenge us to live by a set of values based on our faith in God.

In the gospel Jesus uses that same example of the vineyard in a parable to say that God has sent a new messenger, his Son, to change the way the unjust vineyard masters have acted. But again greed ruled over justice and proper stewardship and the Son is not listened to, he is silenced, and so the destruction that Isaiah also predicted comes again.
St. Paul in the second reading offers the way out of this cycle. He tells us simply to do what is just, noble, truthful and holy and we will have “our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” And this is our daily challenge. Much around us tells us that there is no moral compass, there is nothing wrong with bad stewardship or greed, there is no obligation to anyone but myself, and that belief can lead us easily down the path of striking the poor and outcasts from our lists of concerns or to glorify the maximization of profit as our only holy grail.
However, we join here this day of the Lord’s resurrection because we want to be different. We gather together in prayer, because we know that what we have either as a nation, a family, or as individuals, is a blessing to be shared and not something to be hoarded. We gather to pray together because we believe that we do have a tie to others and to a wider world. We want to leave here strengthen by God’s Word and the Lord’s Body and Blood so that we can be, each and every day, in the middle of a world that sends mixed signals, a clearer sign that being just, compassionate, noble and holy is the way to true peace, not just for our world, but as St. Paul tells us, for our own hearts as well.
Perhaps illuminated by the light of God’s truth, the trustees of the Helmsley foundation will decide that if an indigent or poor person adopts an unwanted dog, they will be able to be helped as well. That of course is probably far fetched. But the world is full of miracles, constant signs of what Jesus confirms in the gospel, that God’s truth, his Kingdom, will prevail.