“This is God’s Church Not Our Church” - 27th Sunday OT (A)- 10.8.23

“This is God’s Church Not Our Church”

By: Fr. David Schmidt

St. Mark the Evangelist Parish- Butler/Cranberry, PA

Mass Readings- https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/100823.cfm

So in the readings today we have the image of a vineyard. And in the first reading from the OT from the prophet Isaiah where the Lord is condemning the Jewish rulers at the time for their wickedness, and as punishment, the Lord will allow His vineyard, which is the house of Israel, to be destroyed.

Then in the Gospel, in order to make His point to the Pharisees, Jesus uses the same imagery and symbolism to warn and condemn the priests and the Pharisees.

The basic symbolism of the parable is the owner and master of the vineyard is God. The vineyard in the OT was the people of Israel. The servants were those sent to obtain the produce, and they are the prophets. The wicked tenants who kill the servants are the chief priests and elders in Jerusalem. The son who is sent and killed is of course Christ Himself. The wild grapes from the first reading, which are too bitter to make wine with, are unrighteous and wicked deeds. Grapes are the fruits of righteousness that the owner of the vineyard desires for them to produce.

God puts the tenants to death and then leases the vineyard to new tenants.

The owner and master of this new vineyard is of course God. The vineyard is now, instead of the people of Israel, it is the Kingdom of God or the Church. The new tenants are not the Pharisees, but the Apostles. The Lord is showing us that the new tenants of the new vineyard of the Church is going to be the Apostles, and that it’s an apostolic Church. The rejected stone that becomes the cornerstone is Christ Himself who was rejected by the Pharisees and the people of Israel, and cast out of the vineyard, is now the cornerstone of the new vineyard which is the Church os Jesus Christ.

There are many things that we can pull from these readings, but what’s one takeaway that we can pull from them?

The takeaway is that this is God’s Church and not our Church. It is His vineyard, not ours. In some sense of course it is our Church, but in the end it’s God’s Church, and we are His tenants. We are the ones who have been entrusted with His Church, or the vineyard. So, we must do His will, and not our own will. We can’t just belong to the vineyard, but we must be good tenants as well.

We become good tenants by submitting ourselves to the truth of what God desires for His Church by allowing the Church to mold and shape us vs. us trying to mold and the shape the Church into how we want it to look.

Today, we live in a very opinionated age. We all have opinions on everything, including: how our company should operate, what our country should do, and what the Church should look like and what it should do.

Opinions are great. As they can add to the discussion on how to bring about the best outcome for whatever topic we are talking about.

However, specifically, in regard to opinions on the Church, the issue that develops is that instead of submitting to the Truth of what is, we try to mold and shape the Church to what we want it to look like. But this is not how it works. In the end it’s God’s Church, and we must submit to God’s desires for what He wants for His Church.

We’ve all made comments such as, “I think the Church should teach this or do this.” Or “I think the Church needs to catch up with modern times and adjust its teachings and the way it does things.”

Again, there are all good discussions to be had, but the issue is that a common reaction for a lot of people when we come across a teaching we don’t like, or we don’t like how the Church operates, is too basically say, “I’m going to do what I want because I think the Church is wrong.” or “I’m going to believe what I want because I don’t think the Church is right on that topic.”

We can let pride get in the way, and we begin to try to mold and shape the Church into how we want it to look and follow it only on our own terms.

I think what has happened is that we don’t realize how much we are formed by the thinking of the world. Even good and faithful Catholics can allow the ways and mindset of the world to creep into the way we view the world and the Church.

This is why we need to be careful with what we are filling our minds with, and what we are letting form us. It is so easy in today’s age with our phones, streaming services, etc. to allow the world to form our thoughts and opinions and be completely unaware of it.

It’s great if we go to Mass every Sunday, but if during the week we spend most of our time listening to the news, watching secular shows and movies, and listening to music with inappropriate lyrics, then what do we think is going to happen overtime to the way we view the world and the Catholic faith? Subtlety without realizing it, we’ll adopt the mindset of the world under the appearance of being Catholic, and we begin to slowly develop the mindset of the world on issues such as morality, sexuality, ethics, family life, religion, and so much more.

Slowly but surely, we turn into the wicked tenant from the Gospel without even realizing it.

We become the wicked tenant in the sense that we begin to reject the teachings of the servants who come teaching the truth on these various issues. We then try to take control of the vineyard, aka the Church, and shape it around our own opinions and viewpoints. Then, next thing we know, we are trying to get rid of these servants and their teachings because it doesn’t fit with what we want the Church to look like. We will then begin to reject the owner of the vineyard, aka God the Father, without realizing it, and we will begin to lead others to reject Him as well through our opinions and viewpoints that don’t fall in line with the Master’s plan.

What happens is that we begin to produce wild and bitter grapes aka deeds of unrighteousness when we think we are producing good grapes aka deeds of righteousness.

So, the question we need to ask ourselves is, “How do we form our minds?” We do this by doing what the 2nd reading says by thinking about things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, gracious, and worthy of praise.

We do this by immersing ourselves in Scripture, the Catechism, and the teachings of the Church. We do this through prayer, and really learning the voice of the Lord by learning to discern between what the Lord is actually saying vs. what is actually myself and my own opinions.

This doesn’t mean we need to completely separate ourselves from the world, and not listen to any secular music, or shows, movies, etc. As we need to be in the world and learn to pull out the true, the good, and the beautiful from these things. However, we need to be very careful that we aren’t spending too much time on these things. We need to examine how much time we spend on these things versus things that help form our hearts and minds in the truth and things that are of God.

We need to be careful even with different Catholic podcasts, speakers, shows, music, etc. As there are some that are great and are very good and faithful to the Truth. But there are others that allow their own opinions of things to get in the way, and then they begin forming many other people according to their view of what they think the Church should be versus what it actually is.

To end, the questions that we need to ask ourselves, and the things we need to reflect on are:

What am I allowing to form my opinions and view of the world and the Church?

How much time and I spending watching or listening or reading secular news, books, social media, TV shows, movies, podcasts, or music? Versus the time I am spending in prayer, reading Scripture, the Catechism, reading spiritual books, good novels, listening to music that leads me to praise God, listening to podcasts/talks that help me learn more about the truth of our faith?

What we fill our minds with, will form the opinions and viewpoints that we make on the world and the Church.

My hope is that each one of us including myself, examines our lives and how we spend our time, so that we form our hearts and minds in conformity with the truth of Christ instead of the world.

It is a call for each of us to take on the humble disposition of recognizing that in the end this is God’s Church and not our Church. And yes, it’s good to have opinions, but in the end we need to submit to what God’s Church teaches, and conform our opinions in alliance with the truth, so that we can produce the fruit that He desires for each of us to produce, and not be found like the wicked tenants who produced wild grapes, and were removed from the vineyard. May He purify our hearts and minds this day so as to remove anything that is not of Him and fill us with the truth of His Love so that we may produce the good fruit He desires from us.