Vineyard (unedited)

The Gospel today in the parable of the wicked tenants directly challenges the Jewish leaders thats why they were so angry. When we break down the Parable to different parts we can see why they were so angry. The landowner is God the Vineyard Israel the Wicked Tenants the people of Israel The servants the Prophets and the Son Jesus. Jesus was directly challenging the Jewish authorities in their treatment of the prophets those who were going to tell them God’s ways. By using the quote from Psalm 118 Jesus then turns this parable and focuses on himself. For Jesus is the corner stone rejected by the Jewish leaders the Builders But the keystone is the new people of God which includes the Gentles. 

It is also a story about good over coming evil. We know the end of the story. Jesus puts himself in the heart of salvation history of the story of the Old Testament prophets and shows that even he will be rejected and not listened too. 

Parables also say something to us. They are stories for us today about what it means to follow Jesus. We are the Keystone we are the people of God. With this comes great responsibility. If we are the people of God we have to think about what it means to be Church and what it means to follow Jesus. Although the Church has changed over the centuries the mission of the Church still remains the same and that is to proclaim the Kingdom of God. 

We can see that there have been many changes to the Church over the last  number of years the fall in priestly vocations the consolidation of resources and the merging of parishes. It can feel scary and sometimes we can feel that we can resit the change. We can complain and moan and in a way reject the change. We can lament for the past and wish that it was aways the same and ever shall be the same or we can look with hope towards the future remembering that it is for the mission of the Church that we are here and to proclaim christ. When thinking about this change I was thinking about the last big change that we had as a Church that directly had an impact on us and that was the new translation of the missal. It was if you remember at first quit hard to get our head around it. I know for myself and even today I still struggle with the tricky sentence structure but I suspect that for the most of us we do not even think about it now. Change can be a force of good it can refocus our minds on mission. In these ever changing times we need to re think what it means to be Church we all have a responsibility to do something about it. We are all part of the Church. We are all members of the Church by virtue of our Baptism but it does not stop there each of us must change often and we can only do this by getting to know the person of Jesus better.