Restoring the
Vineyard
Introduction
An O. T. love
story…
The first reading today is really a love story. A farmer
spares no effort to construct a marvelous vineyard for himself. He buys a
fertile piece of land on a hillside. (If you’ve ever traveled through
…gone sour
But it’s a love story that turns sour. When it’s time for harvesting, he finds only small bitter wild grapes instead of big sweet juicy ones. Terribly disappointed and broken hearted he cries out, “People of Jerusalem and Judah, judge between me and my vineyard: Is there anything I failed to do for her? Then why has she produced only sour wild grapes for me?”
Deeply angered over his unrequited love, he decides to
break up the love affair. To his once beloved vineyard he says, “Let me tell
you what I am going to do to you now. I’m going to tear down the hedge I built to
protect you. I’m going to expose you now to every wandering animal looking for
food, and they will trample you under foot. I’m no longer going to carefully prune
you, but I will let you become overgrown and fall under your own weight, and
then the thorns and thistles will take over and finish you off. And I’m going
to pray to high heaven that the clouds don’t rain upon you” (Is 5: 5-6). The
parable is about a love story gone sour. It’s about the people of
In the responsorial psalm that people, struck with compunction, cry out saying, “Lord of hosts, look down from heaven at us; come and save us your people. Come and save the grapevine your right hand has planted. …O Lord of hosts, restore us, your vineyard. Let your face like the warm sun shine upon us vines and we shall grow strong again and produce a rich harvest of sweet grapes for you” (Ps 80, vs. 14,15,17).
A N.T. love
story…
As the Old Testament is a love story between God and his people so also the New Testament is a love story between Christ and his people, between Christ and his church.
To the question what is the church, the old catechism used
to answer: It is a monarchical (pope) hierarchical (bishops) society united by
the profession of the same faith, by participation in the seven sacraments and
by obedience to the bishops, especially the Bishop of Rome.” How in the world
can you fall in love with a monarchical hierarchical society! As a professor of
theology, I taught that answer for many years as full gospel truth without ever
batting an eyelash, right up to the very eve of Vatican II,
In the most important document of the council (Lumen Gentium), the church, after two thousand years of existence, finally asked herself, “Who in the world am I?” It’s not an idle question because who you are indicates what you should be doing in the modern world. Vatican II decided to distance itself for a moment from the old catechism answer (the “monarchical hierarchical” answer) as not being very imaginative or inspirational, and especially as not being very scriptural. It chose, instead, to line up a number of scriptural images for the church.
The church is a sheepfold and Jesus is the door to that
sheepfold (Jn 10:1-10). Or the church is an edifice, a building, a house. Paul
writes, “You are God’s building and God has placed Jesus Christ as its
foundation…” (I Cor 3: 9, 11). Or the church is the bride of Christ. Again Paul
writes, “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave his life
for her” (Eph
Finally the Council lists today’s image of vineyard. It cites both our first reading from Isaiah (5:
1-7) and the gospel from Matthew (
…gone sour
But just as the
vineyard of old (the people of
In the 13th century, when the church had
reached marvelous heights of splendor in philosophy, theology, art and
architecture, the vineyard of the Lord started to fall into ruin simply because
splendor corrupts. One day in the 23rd year of his life in 1205, St.
Francis of
In the 16th century, Luther nailed his complaint
against the church to the doors of the Wittenberg Cathedral and fired the first
shot of the Protestant Revolution. In response the church summoned the Council
of Trent (1545-1563) to restore the Lord’s vineyard fallen into ruin.
Four centuries later, the cardinals elected Pope John
XXIII in late 1958. That wise and loving man saw the Lord’s vineyard and house again
overgrown with thorns and thistles. In January of 1959 John announced his
intention to summon the church to Vatican II (1962-19650) to restore the
vineyard of the Lord.
Believe it or not, in
such an incredibly short time since Vatican II, the Lord’s vineyard and house is
again in need of restoration. That shouldn’t surprise us; restoration is an
eternal process. House owners know well that a house is always in need of
restoration. Once you stop restoring
your house, it starts to fall into ruin. Vatican II is not the end of
restoration; it’s just the beginning. That’s an exciting idea. The greatest
disservice done to the people of God in times past was to tell them that the
true church never changes. The true church always changes because it’s always
alive. What never changes is dead.
A momentous act of restoration
A momentous act of
restoration of the Lord’s vineyard and house took place a week ago yesterday.
In a dramatic gesture of reconciliation, Pope Benedict met with a former
colleague of his. With time that colleague had become his arch-enemy. He is the
Swiss German Catholic theologian Father Hans Küng. The
meeting took place in the Pope’s summer residence at Castel Gondolfo, a few
miles south of
It was a reunion of old
friends who had taught together at the famous Catholic University of Tübingen in
But with time they parted
company, and Küng eventually became Ratizinger’s
arch-enemy and nemesis. In 1979, he was stripped of the right to teach Catholic
theology by Pope John Paul II because he challenged Roman Catholic teaching
about papal infallibility. It was known that Ratizinger as a member of the
German Bishops’ conference played an important role in that revocation. From
that time on Küng was a staunch critic of
Ratgzinger’s doctrinal positions and his methods of policing the church.
The animosity between the
two grew to a high pitch. When another German Catholic theologian at odds with Ratizinger,
a man by the name of Johann Baptist Metz, celebrated his 70th
birthday in 1997 with a symposium, Archbishop Ratzinger was on the program. As
it turned out, the two men actually spoke rather fondly of one another. That infuriated Küng
and he bitterly remarked, “It is astonishing and a deep scandal that
With such an arch enemy,
Pope Benedict graciously met a week ago last Saturday,
During a four-hour
session that stretched over dinner, the two men essentially agreed to disagree
on doctrinal matters. Back home in
Conclusion
His promise to listen
That indeed was a
momentous act of restoration of the Lord’s vineyard overgrown with theological thorns
and thistles. That, indeed, was a momentous act of restoration of the Lord’s
house, whose bricks and stones are held together not by theology but by the
bond of charity (Eph 4:3).
That encounter bodes
well. It gives us heart. In his inauguration homily Benedict promised us saying,
“My program of governance will be to listen….” He’s keeping his promise. If Benedict has so much spiritual power within
himself as to be able to listen to a man who is his arch-enemy, and who tells
him, the pope, he’s not as infallible as he thinks he is, then Benedict has the
spiritual power also to listen to you and me (who are his friends) and who want
to help him in restoring the vineyard of the Lord.