27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Preached at the Church of the Assumption in Bellingham, WA
Recording
https://moorejesus.podbean.com/e/faithfulness-or-destruction/
Transcript
Thank you to an Assumption parishioner for her work in editing this transcript.
When I was a seminarian, Archbishop Sartain would regularly use the phrase, “Gentlemen, your opinion has no power to save anybody.” I hold to that phrase a lot; I try very hard not to preach on my opinion. But this is my only English Mass this weekend, so we are just going to see what happens. It’s not, strictly speaking, an opinion. I would say I is a speculation based on my reading of the Old Testament and my interpretation of it. However, if you don’t like this homily, this is the one that you are allowed to reject. It’s okay.
If you read the Old Testament, I think a very accurate way to summarize it is: when Israel is faithful to God, it is blessed; when Israel walks away from God, it falls to destruction. We see that over and over and over again. They are freed from Egypt, but then they not only have the golden calf, but they reject the Lord’s invitation to the Promised Land. So, they have to wander for 40 years. They come into the Promised Land, and they find victory as long as they are faithful. However, in the era of the judges, they keep falling to the Philistines, because they keep ignoring the covenant of God under David and Solomon. People are very faithful, and yet the future kings of Israel lose their faith in God, and so they are constantly threatened by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians—to the point of the Assyrian destruction of the northern kingdom and the Babylonian exile of the southern kingdom. It is a cycle that the Old Testament is very careful to point out. When Israel is faithful to God, they are blessed; when they are not, they fall to destruction.
That is what this first reading is about. The Lord has prepared Israel, the vineyard. He has built a wall so that wandering wildlife won’t feed on the grapes. He has cultivated the soil, removed the rocks, planted good grapes and watered them. He has waited for them to produce good fruit. This is the Lord blessing and saving Israel, inviting them to covenant faithfulness. And then Isaiah goes on—they produce bad fruit, wild grapes, grapes that aren’t good for anything. You certainly can’t make wine out of them. What more could the Lord have done to foster this vineyard in the land of Israel? Yet all they do is produce wild grapes. And so, in Isaiah the Lord says, What else can I do except start over? The soil doesn’t need anything. This wall is not doing anything because there is nothing to protect. I shouldn’t plant it. And so, He just wipes the thing off the face of the map. He tears down the wall and starts over.
Jesus rephrases this parable when He starts the gospel. He says, Hear another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. He’s basically quoting Isaiah, and the Pharisees He is talking to would have known that. But what He says is a little less abstract; He is a lot more concrete. Isaiah is like, the wild grapes are sort of the infidelity of Israel. Jesus is saying: You have been unfaithful; you killed the prophets; and you are going to kill the Son. He makes it more concrete. You specifically are unfaithful. Don’t reject the Word of God.
Okay, here is the speculation. I think that the cycle that the Lord shows with Israel continues to be true throughout human history. The more faithful a people or a nation is to the Lord, the more they are blessed. And the more they walk away from the Lord, the more they face destruction.
I absolutely believe this is true of our country. Our country has spent its history in general, being very blessed, and I attribute that to the many religious movements that have undergirded us to date. We don’t really like to talk about Virginia and Georgia and New York, which all started as colonies looking to make money. Our national narrative is about Massachusetts and Maryland and Pennsylvania, because these were home to religious pilgrims—people who went to the other end of the Earth (in their mind) just to live out their faith. We like to tell the narrative that our country was built on the faith of pilgrims. And then, to our great credit, we have had multiple movements in country, what historians refer to as Great Awakenings, where we have revitalized the faith. This is what sets us apart from Europe. Europe never had those great awakenings, so we have managed to maintain a Christian faith that is far more profound than what has remained in Europe to date. I again speculate—you can reject this if you want to, it is not in the Catechism—but I fully believe that our success to date has been because we have been able to maintain a national culture of faith.
Now ask yourself, do you think that our country is currently being blessed, or do you think we are being led to destruction? I try to treat both political parties equally from my homilies. But what’s on everybody’s mind this week is that we no longer have a functional legislature, right? The Republicans have become ungovernable, and they can’t elect a speaker of the House. Now, I don’t think that is specific to their party. There is plenty I can criticize on the left as well, but it is an example of the sort of chaos and destruction we should expect the further our country walks away from faith. The more we reject faith, the more we will be led to chaos and destruction. I am not surprised that our government is no longer able to function, because our political parties rely more and more on an attitude that is no longer rooted in any kind of faith values. Now you can approach this in two ways. You can say that it is the will of the Lord, that His finger is the one that creates the destruction. That is certainly the perspective of the Old Testament. The Lord himself is the agent of the destruction. That’s fine. You can believe that, but I’m less on that page. I am more on the page that if you follow the will of the Lord, the blessings come because you are living the pattern of a blessed life.
So, what are the values of faith I’m talking about? Well, we put the Cross at the front of our Church for a reason. The primary values of faith are the ones I talked about last week: humility and obedience. How much do we show humility today? How many decisions are made by any of our government leaders—federal, state, local—that are based on self-sacrifice, on doing what is good for the broader group rather than what is good for my political party or what is good for my re-election. When was the last time you saw the virtues that John F. Kennedy wrote about in his incredible book, Profiles in Courage? If you have never read that book, pick it up. Read it. It’s worth it. It is inspiring. It shows us what we should want in our leaders. When was the last time we saw that sort of humility or self-sacrifice? Those values lead to a functional society. The lack of those values causes destruction in society.
Now, lest we want to blame politicians for all of our ills, remember that we are a democracy. We elect these people. It is our values that they represent. Our lack of faith is what causes a general lack of faith, which is what causes destruction. If we continue to produce bad fruit, why shouldn’t the Lord tear down our wall? Why shouldn’t He choose another nation in the world to receive the blessings that we have received in the course of our history? We have to return to faith. This is the message of the prophets, and this is the message of Jesus in the Gospel. This is exactly what Isaiah was saying to his contemporaries. And so, if we as Christians are going to act as prophets in the pattern of Isaiah, this is what we have to preach: If we do not return to faith in this country, we will face destruction. We have received the blessings of the Lord. What have we done with those blessings? We have kicked the faith out of our public spaces, said that faith no longer has anything to say about how we run things. What should we expect, except that the vineyard will be destroyed. Faith is our foundation. It brings blessings to our life individually, but it also brings blessings to society. We have to help people see that following the way of God is what will get us out of this mess, out of these constant crises, one after the other. We have to help them see that there is a better way to live than self-interest, than looking after my tribe at the expense of the greater society. Jesus is the answer to everything that plagues us. Rejecting Jesus is not going to get us anywhere good.
I am aware that I am preaching to people of faith. You are the ones who are still here Sunday after Sunday, and it’s beautiful and I thank you for it. I ask of you two things. First, continue to live your faith publicly. Your witness is the foundation on which this country is still limping along. Second, pray. Pray for your compatriots. Pray for your leaders. Pray for your country. We need to be a vineyard that produces good fruit, the fruit of faith, and your prayers are what is going to make the difference.
Fr. Moore 
So very true!!God bless you !!