Our Hidden Sins

October 8, 2023

Parable after parable, teaching after teaching, Jesus is increasingly stressing the idea that makes the Jews, especially the religious authorities, more and more angry with him - namely that God is going to take away their tag of being the chosen people and in their place choose new people who will tend his vineyard, i.e., do his will. And so, the Gospel reading ends with:  the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.

 

As I have reflected before, Jesus has gone through a growth.  He started off by believing that his message was only for the Jews, as they were the chosen ones.  Then he gradually realizes that faith can be found outside the Jewish community, and so he starts opening up to the possibility of working miracles and sending his disciples to teach others too.  But now he comes to the third stage where he is increasingly beginning to believe that the Jews, at least those who follow the Jewish religion as promoted by the religious authorities of his day, are actually going to be left out of the kingdom of heaven.  And today’s parable is basically summarizing a history of the Jews who killed or rejected many of the prophets, and now were rejecting Jesus.

 

But why was Jesus beginning to believe this?  And what is its relevance to us today? As I have said before, as Jesus grew in his mission, he increasingly saw in Israel a religion that had been debased from a loving relationship with God, to a set of rules and regulations that had been ostensibly set up by God the Judge and which everyone had to follow minutely.  And so, we have numerous examples of this in the Gospels.  For example, when some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to him and asked him why his disciples broke the ‘important’ tradition of the elders that enjoined the washing of hands before eating, Jesus answers, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death’. But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus, you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’”  (Mathew 15:1-19) A modern analogy of this teaching of Jesus could be perhaps like this:  Imagine a person who joins a religious congregation or seminary and suddenly finds out that his/her family is facing extremely serious problems (economic, social, physical, whatever) - something that the person who has joined could really alleviate.  And the person who has joined thinks to himself:  ‘That is really not my problem. I have vowed my life to God, and I must be faithful to the vocation that God has called me to.’ And so the person refuses to renounce his/her life in the seminary/convent, even though there seems to be no other way to help the family.  I am certainly not saying that everyone behaves in this manner, but if a person did, would what Jesus said to the Pharisees also apply to such a person: “But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it.”

 

Therefore, it would seem that NOT doing something that one is called to do, is as much of a sin as anything else. In fact, in the first reading too, Yahweh complains that his vineyards give wild grapes, - which indicates that that the tenants did not do what needed to be done to cultivate the vineyard, and so only weeds/wild grapes grew there.  

 

All of this leads me to the concern that we seem to forget that sins of OMISSION are as serious as sins of COMMISSION, even though every time we participate in a Mass, when we pray the I CONFESS, we ask for pardon for what we have done and what we have failed to do.

Pope Francis in one of his homilies spoke of these sins of Omission when he quotes Saint Albert Hurtado who said: “It is good not to do evil, but it is evil not to do good”.  But the kinds of sins of omission that Francis points us to would be the kind that we would hardly think of as ‘sins’. So Francis continues:

“We sin by omission, that is, against mission (‘mission’ refers to what we are called to do), whenever, rather than spreading joy, we think of ourselves as victims, or think that no one loves us or understands us. We sin against mission when we yield to resignation: ‘I can’t do this: I’m not up to it’. How can that be? God has given you talents, yet you think yourself so poor that you cannot enrich a single person? We sin against mission when we complain and keep saying that everything is going from bad to worse, in the world and in the Church (and make no attempt to do anything about it). We sin against mission when we become slaves to the fears that immobilize us, when we let ourselves be paralyzed by thinking that ‘things will never change’. We sin against mission when we live life as a burden and not as a gift, when we put ourselves and our concerns at the centre, and not our brothers and sisters who are waiting to be loved.”  (Words in italics in the above quote from Pope Francis have been added by me for the sake of greater clarity)

That ought to make us pause to think of the wide variety of types of sins of omission that we may be guilty of.  

 

It seems to me, that our greatest sins  are our sins of Omission, and not so much, those of Commission.  Sins of Commission are easily avoided.  I can avoid killing others, I can avoid being adulterous, I can avoid stealing.  But sins of Omission are all pervasive.  There is so much more we could do, so much that we avoid doing, - which, if we had done, could have contributed to moving our world a little closer to the kingdom of heaven.  

 

And if we are to be judged by our sins of Omission, then perhaps we, as Christians, and as a Church, ought to be concerned that the words of the first reading  could apply equally to us who consider ourselves the new vineyard of the Lord: “And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard.  ……. I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.”    In response to such a warning, if we perhaps tend to take comfort in the promise of Jesus that the gates of Hell would never prevail against his Church (Mathew 16:18), we may need to remember that Jesus was not talking about the institution of the Church (there was no such institution in his mind, as he continued to be a Jew and so did the disciples), but about the community of his true disciples, the ‘people of God’ as Vatican 2 calls the Church - and those true disciples can be found anywhere, not necessarily in the institutional Church.

 

Institutions do have value - as they have the ability to keep the message going beyond the lives of individuals. And so they are necessary. But institutions also tend to kill prophets, even as it kills heretics, because it is often difficult to make out the difference between these.  Today’s parable clearly accuses the Jewish institution, of killing the prophets, and finally the Son, whom God sent to them. And so when it fails to recognise its prophets, at such times, as in the time of Jesus, the institution becomes a stumbling block to its members.  

This means, as I have reflected before, that each of us, therefore, is called to see our religious institutions not as straitjackets but as springboards. (see reflection/blog on “The Church: A Straitjacket or A Springboard?  June 18, 2023). And if we must ensure such an openness to new ideas, while retaining a faithfulness to the spirit of our tradition, we must really learn to listen to the alternative and (perhaps) disturbing voices that challenge us, for we must be careful not to kill the prophets sent to us, - whatever gender, whatever sexual orientation, whatever caste or creed or nation, or race, they belong to.  That, of course, puts a big burden on us, but that is what it means to be an adult Christian, an adult disciple of Jesus.   

And if we want a criterion to help us evaluate who is a true prophet, then we could perhaps look at the criterion that Jesus offers us: ‘Beware of false prophets…You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?  In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.” (Mathew 7:15-18) So, I would suggest that one way to judge the genuineness of those who could be prophetic voices, is to look at their lives, not solely at what they say/teach. Do their lives evidence the genuine and painful effort to live out the ultimate Jesus commandment to love one’s neighbour,  - not just love of their own “group’, whether that group is their own family or friends or their own gender, or nationality, or caste, or race, or religion, or whatever.  And if their lives show true love of neighbour, yes, even love of their enemies, then perhaps we should listen to what they are saying, even if what they are saying upsets our current religious understandings - for a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Such people truly might be prophets for our time.

First Reading: Isaiah 5: 1-7

Let me sing for my beloved, my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.  He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard.   What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?  When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?

And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard.  I will remove its hedge,  and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel,  and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed;  righteousness, but heard a cry!

 

Second Reading: Philippians 4: 6-9

Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

 

Gospel: Matthew 21: 33-43

“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce.  But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.  Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way.  Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’  But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’  So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.  Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.