This week’s Second Reading contains a very early Christian hymn and quotes from the prophet Isaiah, which proclaims that “all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld should bend the knee” to God (Is. 45:23). But St Paul instead writes: “at the name of Jesus.”

Here, St Paul attributes eternal and divine kingship to Jesus. He explains that Jesus was divine from the beginning, but “did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave.”

Jesus had been claiming this authority since he began his ministry. In the gospel, which follows the cleansing of the money changers from the Temple, Jesus continues to challenge the chief priests over who is best placed to represent God in the world.

The Jewish leaders claimed to be the mouthpieces of God and models of the kind of life that God wanted from his people. But, as Jesus had been demonstrating since he arrived in Jerusalem, the chief priests had become corrupt, abusing their positions. By contrast, as we hear in the Second Reading, Jesus is about to display what the self-sacrificing love of God really looks like by “accepting death, death on a cross.”

Jesus’ parable – about the father who asks his two sons to work in his vineyard – is significant because it evokes an Old Testament image of Israel as a vineyard lovingly created by God that produces rotten fruit (Isaiah 5). Although Israel, particularly its religious leaders, have been chosen to be an instrument through which God blesses the whole world (see Genesis 12), they have not led lives that reflect who God is. They have signed up to God’s service but haven’t delivered.

But, as Jesus explains, those with clearly flawed lives are more likely to acknowledge their failings, turn away from how they were living, and be fruitful for God.

Rewarding the repentant heart was God’s plan from the start. As God says through the prophet Ezekiel in the First Reading, “When the sinner renounces sin to become law-abiding and honest, he deserves to live.”

In comparison to John the Baptist, whom Jesus described as “a pattern of true righteousness,” none of us look particularly good. Yet it was the tax collectors and sinners who were more likely to listen and be changed by Jesus than those who seemed blameless.

Let us allow Jesus to challenge us when we, like the second son in the parable, have said “Yes” but have then gone off and done otherwise. Let us hear and respond to God’s call and go out and work in the vineyard, as a member of Christ’s Body, which he gave up for love of the world.

Let us pray with the Psalm: “Lord, make me know your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Make me walk in your truth and teach me: for you are God, my saviour.”

Joseph Doyle

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