Welcome to Finding God in Our Hearts. The following production, Pastoral Reflections with Monsignor Don Fisher, is a weekly program of deep spiritual insight on Scripture, revealing the indwelling presence of God. We appreciate your listenership and if you find this program valuable, please subscribe and share with your friends. Share this program is funded with kind donations by listeners just like you make your donation@pastoralreflectionsinstitute.com we’re celebrating the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The Opening Prayer Almighty ever living God, who in the abundance of your kindness surpasses the merits and the desires of those who entreat you, pour out your mercy upon us to pardon what conscience dreads and to give what prayer does not dare to ask through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit God forever and ever. Amen.
A Reading from the Old Testament from the book of Isaiah, 5th chapter 1 let me now sing of my friend My friend’s song Concerning His Vineyard My friend had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He spaded it, cleared it of stones, and planted the choicest vines within it. He built a watchtower, and hewed out a winepress. They looked for the crop of grapes, but what it yielded was wild grapes. Now inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah judged between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do from my vineyard that I had not done?
Why, when I looked for the crop of grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes? Now I will let you know what I mean to do with my vineyard. Take away its hedge, give it to grazing, break through its walls, let it be trampled. Yes, I will make it a ruin. It shall not be pruned or hoed, but overgrown with thorns and briers. I will command the clouds not to send rain upon it.
The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and and the people of Judah are his cherished plant. He looked for judgment, but see bloodshed for justice. But hark the outcry the word of the lord. The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel. A vine from Egypt you transplanted you drove away the nations and planted, put forth its foliage to the sea, its shoots as far as the river. The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel.
Why have you broken down its walls? So that every passerby plucks its fruit. The boar from the forest lays its waste, and the beasts of the field feed upon it. The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel. 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, the Son of man, whom you yourself made strong.
The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel. Then we will no more withdraw from you. Give us new life, and we will call upon your name. O Lord, God of hosts, restore us. If your face shine upon us, then we shall be saved. The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel.
A reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians four, six, nine brothers and sisters, have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your request known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you. The word of the Lord I’ve chosen you from the world, says the Lord, to go and bear fruit that will remain.
Alleluia The Gospel for this Sunday is taken from St. Matthew 21st, chapter 33rd to the 43rd verse. Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people, hear another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey. When vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce.
But the tenants seized the servants, and one they beat, another they killed, and a third they stoned again. He sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones, but they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, thinking they will respect my son. When the tenants saw the son, they said to one another, this is the heir. Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance. They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.
What will the owner of the vineyard do to these tenants when he comes? They answered him, he will put those wretched men to a wretched death, and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times. Jesus said to them, did you never read the Scriptures? The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone by the Lord. This has been done and is wonderful in our eyes. Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.
The Gospel of the Lord Take a few moments as we listen to the music to ponder the wisdom and the truth found in these readings. SA Salvation history is fascinating. The more I study it, the more I. I work with the words and the images and the stories, it becomes clearer and clearer to what I’m looking at. It’s a story, a love story about a God who created human beings at a time in their existence where they had a very, very difficult time of even understanding the basic things that God wants them to know. The very beginning was, in a way, not a disaster, but certainly something that didn’t go very well.
He created this beautiful garden and said, here, all you have to do is tend this beautiful place and just do as I ask you to do and don’t do certain things. And of course, they went ahead and did the very thing they were told not to do, and there was division. You look at those early years of the story of human nature, it was clear that over and over again, God would say about them that they were not what he wanted them to be, even to the point of destroying all of them at one point and saving Noah and making it a covenant with people. Okay, you guys are not who I wish you were, but I won’t destroy you again. I’ll work with you. So imagine the Old Testament is the story of God trying to establish a relationship with his people and the aggressor, in a sense, the one who is creating.
The need for this connection is coming not from human beings, but from God. God is in love with human beings. He loved them the minute he created them. He saw them beautiful. He saw them as reflections of himself. And he wanted a relationship with them so that they would love him freely and he would love them and they would live in this wonderful thing called the kingdom of God.
But the stories in scripture have this rhythm to them. It’s God doing things for people. And then they respond and thank God, and they do what God, God asks. And then that lasts a little bit. And then they turn away from God. And then God says, stop doing that.
They won’t do it. So he punishes them. And then the punishment lasts for a long time, and then he comes back to them. And it goes over and over. God giving in to the needs of people, longing to help them to become who they need to be in order to be in this relationship with God. But the primary mover is God.
God is a lover, and he’s pursuing you. He pursued these people. He wants a relationship. And he knows that in order for that relationship to happen, we have to understand some things about who we are and why we’re here. So we have two beautiful images from the Old Testament about this kingdom of God, the work that God is wanting us to be engaged in. And the two are the vineyard images.
And they’re beautiful because if you look at this as a kind of allegory, parable, whatever, but it’s a story about human beings and their relationship with God. And God created human beings, gave them this life on this planet. And basically that is an image of a person setting up a vineyard. The vines are planted and then everything is set, and then it’s time for grapes to come. And in the first story, it seems that there’s something wrong with the vines because the vines that are planted do not produce grapes that are usable. They only produce wild grapes.
So it’s an image, I believe, of what God is saying about the people at the time that they could not understand fully their nature, that God wanted to work closely with them. And so he had done all kinds of things for them. Think of this as the period of time when he took them through the desert, he gave them the law, he did all these things for them, but they still themselves were hard hearted and were not able to produce what God wanted, which was a kind of way of life that reflected who God is. And so it’s a kind of indictment to the Old Testament times. So constantly we see that there’s a failure on the part of the very being of humanity that wasn’t ready to understand what it meant to produce something called the kingdom of God. Grapes.
What an interesting image. Why grapes? Grapes have always been around in, in ancient history. It’s a. It’s a vine that was very much a part of it. And you realize what you’re seeing in the grape image in this vineyard story is something that comes about clearly in the New Testament.
I especially think it’s interesting to think about the wedding in the Feast of Cana. The first miracle that Jesus performed was producing wine for a wedding. And then you look at the Old Testament and God says things to human beings like, I want to marry you, I want a union with you, want to commune with you. And so this idea of grape as a symbol of the fruit of the work that God wants us to be engaged in with him makes a lot of sense. It’s about an intoxicating, wonderful image of a wine that then is used later in the New Testament as the blood of Christ. And it’s about forgiveness, which is about being capable of being a source of unmerited Love for the people around us.
That’s what God wanted people to have. Always has wanted people to have that. So we look in the Old Testament image, we see definitely that there is a problem with human nature. And then in the New Testament, it’s different. It’s shift a little bit on who’s responsible. At the beginning, it seems like it’s the problem with the vines.
But in the second case, it’s the problem with the tenants, the ones that leased this beautiful vineyard that is producing wonderful grapes. But those who run it are not sharing the grapes with the owner. And so what it is, it’s an image of the Pharisees and the scribes, an indictment from Jesus that they have this gift of trying to explain to people how much the God who created them loves them. And they were not allowing that to happen. Very system that they created was robbing them of who God was. It’s a frightening thought about anybody that preaches the gospel.
I mean, it’s. It’s. It’s amazing how we, as those who talk about it, can be responsible for it becoming something it was never intended to be. It’s not intended to be a burden. It’s not intended to be something. It takes away your dignity and your value or forces you to answer certain issues with their answers.
No, the relationship we have with God is this incredible kingdom that’s an interior kingdom of peace that resonates out from us to the people around us. It’s an amazing love story when you feel truly, absolutely, totally loved by God, not for what you’ve accomplished, not for what you have done, but simply because he made you in such a way. In his eyes, you are beautiful. You are a reflection of Him. And when he knows that you are a reflection from him, he wants you to live your life in this world as he longed to live it for us. In other words, his longing is to always teach us to be loving and forgiving and caring human beings.
It’s been that way from the very beginning. But it had to go through these stages of evolution and development and change. But there’s one thing I want you to take from these images is what Paul is saying about this world that we live in. Yes, we have to be transformed in order to produce this wonderful, abundant thing called the kingdom. And we have to have teachers that teach it in order that we can enter into it more fully. And then he gives you the most interesting image that he’s talking about his ministry.
And he’s not shy at all about saying he’s a good minister. But listen to what he’s saying when he’s talking to his brothers and sisters, he says, look, here’s what I want you to do. Do what you’ve learned from me and received from me and heard and seen in me. Be like me, he’s saying. And when he’s saying that, he’s saying, look, this kingdom is a kingdom where the person who is in it has found a way of experiencing God’s love so amazing and so unconditional and so abundant that he, a person who just persecuted Christians, killed them because they were following this false prophet, Jesus, he’s loved so intensely. He’s just simply saying, look, if you can realize what it means to be loved like this, then you’re going to be wanting to live a loving life like this.
And it’s a life that is true and honorable and just and pure. Pure and lovely and gracious and excellent. I mean, that’s who we are, not who we have to force ourselves to be. It’s where we are meant to be. But it’s also the result of being loved unconditionally loved. And I don’t know why, but religion has a way of wanting to hold back, wanting to say, well, no, you really got to earn it.
You’ve got to do this, you got to do that. You got to make this happen first. And God, God isn’t interested. And God is very disappointed in you. And all that is just so much unnecessary motivation because its motivation is fear. And fear is not a motivation that will ever bring you to the kingdom.
Fear just creates more fear, shame, more shame, anger, more anger. And there’s nothing in the kingdom that resonates with that. But the kingdom is about a goal. It has a goal. It needs to be fruitful. Religion has to be by its very nature something that creates, something that comes from us.
It’s abundant, full, rich, intoxicating, freeing, life giving. It’s what we’re here for, to receive in order to become. Amen. Satisfaction. Father, you promise us a kingdom of peace, a kingdom of knowing how important we are and how blessed we are with your presence flowing through us. Keep us from focusing on our faults and more on who you are and how your love transforms everything.
And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen. I’m really excited about inviting you to my fall reflection lecture. It’s entitled the Eye of the Heart. The date is October 14th. The place is the Fort Worth Botanic Garden lecture hall. There is no charge for the event, but due to limited seating, it’s important that you register on our website pastoralreflectionsinstitute.com the music in our program was composed and produced by Ryan Harner for this show.
Pastoral Reflections with Monsignor Don Fisher is funded with kind donations by listeners just like you. You can make a one time or recurring tax deductible donation on our website pastoralreflectionsinstitute.com we thank you for your listenership and your continued support. Without it, this program would not be possible. Pastoral Reflections with Monsignor Don Fisher is a production of the Pastoral Reflections Institute, a NonProfit in Dallas, Texas dedicated to enriching your spiritual journey. Executive Producer Monsignor Don Fisher produced by Kyle Cross and recorded in Pastoral Reflections Institute Studios. Copyright 2020.
