Homily for Monday, 1 June 2015‒ Memorial of St. Justin Martyr

Monday of the 9th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Tobit 1:3, 2:1a-8; Psalm 112:1b-2, 3b-4, 5-6; Mark 12:1-12

This Mass was offered in memory of my maternal grandmother, Simone Salt. May she rest in peace.

Why do good people suffer? This question does not have an easy answer, even for us as people of faith.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Justin, a martyr of Rome almost two hundred years before the Roman Empire tolerated Christianity and then made it its official religion. St. Justin’s goal in his teaching and beautiful writings was to convince people of other faiths (Jews and pagans alike) of the truth of the Christian faith; that Christ is the Son of God by pointing to the way Christians lived. His way of teaching by conversation is called the “moral apology” or defense of the moral rightness of Christian faith. St. Justin, a good and faithful man, a saint, suffered greatly for his gentle way of teaching and was eventually killed for his faith.

Our opening prayer of today’s Mass speaks of “the folly of the Cross” that “wondrously taught St. Justin the Martyr the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ.” Why do good people like St. Justin suffer? Why are there more martyrs within the last century than in all previous centuries of Christian history combined?

Might we point to questions like these and wonder at the folly of when good people suffer? These questions have no easy answers. Our readings today speak to this same question. We are introduced to Tobit, who has been exiled to Nineveh, in our first reading today. Tobit searches for one of his own people who has been murdered, so that he can give him a dignified burial.

Would we not think that Tobit’s profound act of mercy would be praised? But instead Tobit is mocked both by the Ninevites and by his own people of Israel. To contact the dead physically would bring Tobit ritual impurity. Worse yet, his own life is endangered because he dares to bury a person who has been murdered. Why do good people like Tobit suffer?

Jesus’ parable of the tenants in our Gospel reading is the ultimate example of a good person experiencing suffering. After sending several servants into a vineyard and seeing them mistreated by the vineyard’s tenants, the vineyard owner sends in his own son. Instead of respecting the vineyard owner’s son as hoped, they plot to kill him and seize the inheritance!

We know that, in Jesus’ parable, God is the vineyard owner. Jesus is the innocent Son who is killed. Why does the innocent Son, Jesus, suffer? The Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth once said that the only way to make sense of suffering by innocent people is that Christ suffered and died for us. And yet why do some experience extreme poverty? Why are so many in our world threatened and killed for their faith? Why natural disasters that claim many lives? Why do young children experience terrible illnesses, and their families who care for them suffer also? Why did my grandmother, Simone, for whom we pray in this Mass, suffer for years in near-silence with dementia?

We have no easy answers. But God’s promise is that, by uniting ourselves to the “folly of” Christ’s Cross, our suffering is made temporary. We gain “surpassing knowledge” of Christ’s suffering for us. And we who share in Christ’s suffering will also have a share in his resurrection.

Homily for Sunday, 5 October 2014

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80:9, 12, 13-14, 15-16, 19-20; Philippians 4:6-9; Matthew 21:33-43

Here we are, back in the vineyard again. Have we not heard this story before? All is designed by the vineyard owner to bear abundant fruit, but somehow everything goes wrong; the vineyard produces no fruit, or the tenants act violently toward servants sent to tend the vineyard.

I like to think of today’s readings and those of the two Sundays before this as a kind of Biblical wine tour. Who here has been to a vineyard or on a wine tour, and so perhaps can relate? Over these three Sundays, we have heard from Matthew’s Gospel three vineyard parables: First, the owner who hires the late arrivals at the same daily wage as those who arrived at the beginning of the work day. Second, we hear of two sons, one who says he will not work in his father’s vineyard but later goes and the other who agrees to work in the vineyard but then does not go.

Today Matthew takes us to our third stop on our vineyard tour. Imagine our delight at how the owner of this vineyard has done everything necessary to ensure a fruitful harvest. The “landowner” has “planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it,” to protect it from the weather, “dug a wine press in it” to collect and process the grapes at harvest time, “and built a tower” for security.

Despite the vineyard owner’s care for his vines and for those who work for him, when he goes “on a journey” everything goes wrong. The tenants to whom the vineyard owner has rented the vineyard beat and kill the servants sent to work in the vineyard. They even kill the landlord’s own son, so deep is the wickedness of these tenants.

Jesus’ vineyard parable is like the other vineyard story we hear today from the prophet Isaiah: The vineyard owner in Isaiah’s prophetic love song, God, has done everything to ensure a fruitful harvest, but somehow the vineyard, an image of God’s beloved people Israel, yields only “wild grapes.” But the vineyard in Matthew’s Gospel, unlike the vineyard in Isaiah, has borne fruit. In Jesus’ parable the harvesters; the tenants act violently and unjustly and so fail to make the most of the bountiful harvest of the vineyard. They fail to return to the vineyard owner what is his due from the harvest. In fact, the tenants kill the landowner’s own son!

We know who or what represents whom in Jesus’ parable: As in Isaiah, the landlord, who has done everything to ensure a fruitful harvest in his vineyard, is God. The vineyard is the kingdom of God whose bountiful yield is ready for harvest. The tenants are the religious leaders of Jesus’ time who oppose the coming to full fruition of the kingdom of God. (Let us avoid an anti-Jewish interpretation of this parable; after all today’s parable was originally the teaching of a Jew, Jesus, directed at Jews, the “chief priests and elders.”) The “servants” beaten, killed, and stoned by the tenants are the prophets who had prepared the way for God’s own Son; the son whom the tenants kill in the parable, Jesus himself.

But do we really know who or what represents whom in this parable of the wicked tenants? This parable would be tragic enough if we were mere tourists; if we were simply passers-by on our vineyard tour through Matthew’s Gospel. But we are not mere tourists. We are directly involved in this vineyard parable as it takes place in our own time. Are we the prophetic servants of the Lord of the vineyard, unafraid to speak the truth; to speak for justice and against all forms of violence in our homes, in our communities, and in our world; to speak and act to build God’s kingdom; to reap the harvest of God’s vineyard even at the risk of unpopularity, even hostility against the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Or are we sometimes the tenants who have held back the bounty of the harvest; have held back the kingdom of God from fruition out of weakness; out of selfishness; out of sin? In our consciences we know our answers to these questions. We know where we stand before God.

When I say that we are not merely tourists; that we are directly involved in this vineyard parable of our own time, I do not wish to discourage us. On the one hand, we cannot deny the presence of sin in our world. Sin affects us all, both as individuals and as a society. We need look no farther than our news on television and on paper: Violence in our streets and even in many homes (I speak not only of domestic violence perpetrated by some professional sports figures, although this has received a lot of media attention lately); family and marital discord… A week ago, I celebrated Mass with the people of the House of Mercy. Sadly, poverty, homelessness, abandonment of people with mental and physical disabilities, and racial inequalities continue, even in our city. The power of sin; the example of the wicked tenants in the vineyard is ever-present in our world.

On the other hand (this is why I invite us not to be discouraged), despite this ever-present sin in our world, God perseveres with us; does not give up on us. We are, imperfectly but nevertheless, the people to whom God has entrusted the vineyard “to produce its fruit.” Sinners though we are, God has turned even the tragedy of our sin into victory; into the very source of our redemption. The Cross of Christ, the Son who entered the vineyard only to be killed by the wicked tenants, is our salvation.

We are not mere tourists; we are directly involved in the death of Christ for our sin. But at the same time we are not mere tourists; we are also directly involved in our redemption; our salvation; the building up of God’s kingdom here on earth. God’s response to our sin is perseverance; strength; more mercy; more grace. God’s response is to encourage us to persevere with one another; to love one another; to treat one another with God’s own mercy and grace.

God is the vineyard owner who has done; who will do everything to ensure a fruitful harvest. God continues to give us, in St. Paul’s words to the Philippians in our second reading, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious”; whatever nourishment the vineyard needs to bear maximum fruit.

Here we are, back in the vineyard again, only not as mere tourists now but as the new tenants entrusted by God to “produce” the vineyard’s “fruit.” To ensure the vineyard remains fruitful, we will require God-like perseverance. We will need God-like strength not to give up on others or ourselves in the face of our weakness; our sin. We will need the support of one another as Church. We will need and we have God’s mercy; God’s grace; everything to ensure a fruitful harvest in this vineyard; this kingdom of God we have been entrusted to tend; to nourish; to grow.