Whose Vineyard Is This? Stop Living Like You Own It

There was a landowner who planted a vineyard,
put a hedge around it, dug a wine press,
and built a tower.

As many of you know, I just returned last weekend
from a two week pilgrimage to Spain with parishioners.
We walked in the footsteps of St. Ignatius,
St. Teresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross.
We started out following St. John of the Cross
in Segovia and Sevilla,
beautiful cities, stunning,
where John was buried, Segovia.

Then we traveled to the ancient city of Avila,
where St. Teresa was born and lived all her life,
the beautiful walled city,
a stunning sight to be seen.
Then we followed our way to Loyola,
where Ignatius, as a wounded soldier, returned to his home,
and there he had his conversion,
and then we followed on to his other places
of continued conversion at Montserrat and Manresa.
All those sights were incredibly sacred and wonderful,
and each of them was really stunning.

We followed along with each of the saints,
but in a sense, the most memorable part of all for me
was that in every place we celebrated the Eucharist,
and that is what drew us together along with the saints,
because each of the saints, joined us at the table of the Lord,
which we do here each and every Sunday.
That is what united us to you as we pilgrimed.
Sometimes we had other accompanying saints,
the patrons of that city,
or in one place, Our Lady of the Pillar in Saragoza,
a beautiful site, the most ancient Marian shrine in the world.
But each of them brought together this sense of unity
among the saints who have walked before us.

Today, we remember a different saint,
Saint Francis of Assisi.
We put out his statue and have him here before us,
and we have been celebrating the Season of Creation,
as we do every year.
We celebrate to recognize
Saint Francis' commitment to creation
and a call for us to care for creation.

But this year is special.
Last night would have been the 800-year anniversary
of Saint Francis' death.
That is celebrated on the 3rd of October,
and what they celebrate is his passage.

Just to recap the story of Saint Francis,
he was the son of a wealthy clothes merchant,
but he had a conversion,
and he presented himself to the bishop
and gave everything away, literally, even his clothes.
So he was standing naked before the bishop,
disowning his father's wealth and saying,
"I want to serve the Lord. I want to rebuild the church."
He committed his life to loving everyone.

In particular, he had a relationship with creation.
When he lay down to die 800 years ago,
he insisted that he be laid naked on the earth,
and he welcomed with joy Sister Death,
because he saw everything as a brother and sister.
He looked at the sun and saw it as his brother,
the moon as his sister,
and Mother Earth as his sister,
the leper as a brother,
the poor as a brother in need.
In fact, he traveled to see the sultan.
In the middle of a war,
he was welcomed by the Sultan as a brother in God
and broke across international lines,
and forged peace.

This month, for the first time in 800 years,
relics of St. Francis and St. Clare will come
to San Francisco, the city that bears his name.
It comes with the same message of unity and peace,
to have a care for creation and for one another.
What is extraordinary is it comes at a time
when we so desperately need that message here.
So 800 years later, his relics are still preaching
the same message of unity and peace.

Because here in Silicon Valley we are divided.
We may not always seem that divided,
but we are bombarded with divisive messages.
In addition, we have the extreme wealthy
and the extreme poor right here among us,
right here in our valley,
billionaires and paupers.
In the messages we get from the world, we are divided.
We have wars still waging,
and the same people are affected by those wars all the time.
The poor are the ones who get displaced,
and those who have nothing now have even less.

But more recently, we have been bombarded
by the message of artificial intelligence.
It seems to me that I am going from one place to the next,
trying to calm the fears of the world.
One day we wake up and the headline is,
"We are not doing enough to stay ahead."
Then the next day we wake up:
"We are doing too much. We are going to destroy all humanity."
Even the Pope was asked to weigh in
about the existential threat to humanity.
But he calmly said on the plane on the way home,
"Am I in panic mode? No. I sleep at night."

But we have to take the message seriously.
You see, in all of this,
something has been lost in the message for humanity.
That is why Pope Leo's encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas,
is so important,
to reframe the whole conversation around artificial intelligence
and all technological advances around this:
what does it mean for humans to flourish?
We have stopped asking that question.
We have put something else at the center, and not God.
That is problematic for us.

We hear, in the second reading today, from Paul.
Paul was in prison,
and his beloved community of Philippi
is divided, fractured, because they are following different people.
They have this division among them.
Here, 2,000 years ago, the same problem exists.
Paul writes to them with a somewhat broken heart,
telling them to remain focused on Christ,
that Christ is what is going to unify them.
He calls them to the virtues that he tries to live:
to be harmonious,
to be united in charity to one another,
to care for one another.
St. Francis sounds like St. Paul.

But the message goes deeper in the other readings.
All the other three readings,
the first reading, the responsorial psalm, and the gospel,
all talk about a vineyard.
Let us listen to the story as it is been told to us today
in the gospel, that a landowner had planted a vineyard.
Then he put a hedgerow around it,
dug a wine press and built a tower,
and then left it to the tenants.
Now look, let us see what has happened.

He does everything.
All he is asking the tenants to do
is to tend what he has already given them,
to produce fruit.
And they do.
Now in the first reading, they do not,
and he tears it all down.
But in the gospel, Jesus says they do produce fruit,
but they forget whose fruit it is.
They think it is all theirs.
The rebellion of the people, again, no reference to the owner.

We are called to remember
who the real owner is of this vineyard
that we have here on earth.
It is not us.
We are just tenants.
Whatever we gather on our journey through life,
is just that, temporary.
We get so consumed with accumulating stuff,
whether it be titles or money or goods,
we get consumed by it.

Let me tell you, I have been at many a funeral.
I have been at many a deathbed.
There are no bags packed.
There is nothing for that journey.
We do not take anything with us.
There is no trailer behind a hearse.
We cannot take anything with us.
Whatever we have, whatever we have loved,
whatever we have done in this life
is what we leave behind.
That is the fruit of our labor.
It is how well we have loved.
Not well we have lived.

The challenge is, in our world,
we get caught up with the messages
that the world is telling us.
We live in this world.
We cannot get out of this world.
We have to filter those messages
through the gospel message.

So here is my challenge to you and to myself,
because it is just as much a challenge to me:
when we hear that message of division this week,
to do this or do that,
to go more or go less,
or whatever the message is,
whether you are at this party or that party,
or whether it is this thing or that thing,
just ask, whose vineyard is this?
Remind yourself whose vineyard this is.

Then ask yourself,
What is the one gift that God has given us
that we have not yet shared?
What is the one thing that we can still share
with somebody else?
Maybe that is simply calling an old friend
we have broken up with for some reason.
Or reaching out to a family member or a friend
who is somehow fractured with us.
Or maybe it is reaching out to a person
who is deeply in need.
Some form of charity.
Or maybe, as St. Francis inspires us,
it is to do something for creation,
to care for something, maybe some plot in your backyard,
or to somehow turn your gift into fruit.
Because you see, the Lord wants us to produce fruit.

In a few minutes, that is exactly what we are going to do.
We are going to remind ourselves at this table
that what the Lord has given us, the bread and the wine,
we are going to offer back to the Lord.
The symbol, alongside the gifts of money
that we bring forward,
is to offer that back to the Lord.
Then the Lord does what he always does.
He takes what we give him, the bread and the wine,
and he gives us back his very self,
his body and blood.
Then he asks us to be that body in the world.
To be that living body.

In just a couple of minutes,
we are going to welcome three children into the church.
Each of them, in a sense, is dying to sin,
and then being raised again in the waters of baptism
to new life.
We promise to be witnesses to this.
Not just by seeing it, but with our lives.
They are going to look to us,
not just their parents and godparents,
for what it means to be a living witness to Christ.
Let us not let them down.
They need real witnesses.
Ones who are willing to stand up to power and money and title.
Ones who are willing to say the hard thing
and to do the right thing.

So today, let us hear the words again from Scripture,
and remember whose vineyard we are tending.
It is not ours.

The landlord planted a vineyard,
put a hedgerow around it, dug a wine press,
and built a tower,
then gave it to his tenants.