The Mystical Winepress

Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

If you are a wine connoisseur, a drive through the wine producing regions of France like Burgundy and Bordeaux would not only be a sight to behold but also provide many happy wine tasting opportunities. The road trip, however, could also prove to be a painful reality-check. Not all luscious vineyards translate into rich delicious vintage. Behind the veneer of tasty looking grapes hanging like a cornucopia from their vines could be a season of sour grapes.

The prophet Isaiah introduces the first reading as a love song sung for the sake of his friend (in some translations called “the beloved”), concerning his friend’s vineyard. Yet any romantic expectations on the hearers’ part are soon dashed as the love story the prophet sings swiftly turns sour, literally. The prophet describes how his friend had laboured hard to prepare the land for a good harvest: “He dug the soil, cleared it of stones and planted choice vines in it. In the middle he built a tower, he dug a press there too. He expected it to yield grapes, He dug the soil, cleared it of stones but sour grapes were all that it gave.” What a tragic disappointment! The voice of the friend shifts into the voice of the prophet, and finally takes on the voice of God. “The inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah” are called to judge between the vineyard and Him. The theme shifts from a rustic agricultural setting with romantic undertones to a legal court case. The honeymoon is over, the divorce has begun!

We can immediately detect the pain and frustration in God’s rhetorical question: “What could I have done for my vineyard that I have not done? I expected it to yield grapes. Why did it yield sour grapes instead?” The crop of sour grapes is not of His doing because God has done all that is necessary to produce a healthy crop. The sentence pronounced upon the vineyard swiftly follows. Its hedge and wall of protection will be destroyed and it shall be rendered a wasteland bearing thorns and thistles, parched for lack of rain. In the destruction of the vineyard the painful themes of the Fall in Eden are recalled: thorns and thistles will grow where once a well-watered and beautiful garden lay.

If the hearers of Isaiah’s parable were in any doubt, its point is made explicit in the conclusion: “the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the House of Israel, and the men of Judah that chosen plant.” The indictment is summed up with a deft poetic twist: “He expected justice, but found bloodshed, integrity, but only a cry of distress.”

Apply the parable of the vineyard to the nation of Israel. God gave His people every advantage and opportunity to repent. They were His chosen nation. They were His beloved Bride and He was Israel’s Bridegroom. Countless times they turned away to serve and follow other gods. With all the work God had put into His vineyard—the people of Israel—He should have been able to expect them to yield a harvest of righteousness. Instead of clusters of sweet grapes, the nation could only produce sour grapes. Time after time, in His love, God called them back. The people couldn’t do it. They kept messing up the plan. Much of the first reading is a warning and being a warning, it is also meant for us too.

Let us now consider our Lord’s updated version in the gospel. Read alongside the first reading, it is very clear that the Lord Jesus intends His hearers to hear His parable against the background of Isaiah’s parable. While clearly standing in line with Isaiah, our Lord offers a new and surprising twist. Once again, it is the fate of the vineyard of Israel that is in question. However, here it is not principally the vineyard itself or the vine of Israel that is judged, but the wicked tenant farmers to whom the vineyard had been entrusted. It is not that the vineyard is failing to produce sweet grapes, but that it is being controlled by tenants who deny the vineyard owner its harvest and treat his emissaries violently. They finally even kill the owner’s son to rob him of his inheritance. These wicked tenants are the sour grapes in Jesus’ story.

The effect of Jesus’ reframing of the prophetic narrative is to shift the emphasis: it is no longer the vineyard itself that is the focus of the divine judgment, but the wicked tenants, who are refusing to give the vineyard owner its produce. The judgment that will befall the vineyard will not be the destruction of the vineyard itself, but the dispossession of the wicked tenants.

In a further twist upon the tale, our Lord introduces the character of the beloved son. He ultimately becomes the victim of violence. The language used by the wicked tenants when they plot the murder of the rightful heir directly recalls the language of Joseph’s brothers when they sold him into Egypt (Genesis 37:20): “This is the heir. Come on, let us kill him and take over his inheritance.” Joseph, sent by his father to inspect the work of his brothers, was violently rejected yet went on to rule over the entire land of Egypt. So the rejection of the beloved Son in Jesus’ parable is the prelude to a radical turning of the tables: as in the case of Joseph, this story of a beloved son who becomes a victim ends dramatically—with the resurrection. Jesus “was the stone rejected by the builders that became the keystone.”

Now try to picture yourself as that vineyard. Look at the way God has carefully prepared things in your life up to this point. He planted faith in your heart at baptism. He nursed and cultivated and pruned your life of faith. The soil of His Word and Sacraments are there. He provides ongoing nutrition and water through opportunities to use the means of Grace. He speaks His law to wound and convict hearts, and pours out the Gospel to soothe and heal.

And what does He find? Let us hope and pray that He does not find sour grapes. Have we been sour grapes? Despite the surpassing goodness shown by our Beloved God in every area of life, do we still complain that His blessings haven’t been sufficient? Instead of clusters of sweet grapes of gratitude, have we only produced sour grapes of resentment and a bloated sense of entitlement? Instead of clusters of sweet grapes of His people living in peace and harmony with others, has He found the sour grapes of envy and strife and jealousy just like the wicked tenants? Instead of clusters of sweet grapes of forgiveness and kindness displayed among His people, does He only see the sour grapes of impatience and lack of forgiveness?

But the image of the vineyard does not only allude to us. It also points in the first place to Christ, the Bridegroom, the Mystic Winepress and Sacred Vintage. One of the most popular motifs in religious art in the Middle Ages was the depiction of our Lord as the mystic wine press. In most of these images, our Lord Jesus is being pressed down by a cross-like contraption in the shape of a wine press. Blood flows from Christ's wounds into the basin below to form the wine. Christ Himself has become the grapes by which through His passion and death produces the Wine. His sacrifice on the cross has produced the sweetest vintage that promises Eternal Life to those who have the privilege of drinking it. It is a powerful Eucharistic image. Instead of wine produced through the fermentation of grapes, our Lord offers us His own Body and Blood in the Eucharist. At every Eucharist, we encounter Jesus the true Vine, the fertile vineyard that produces the richest and sweetest crop. With the Psalmist, let us tell Him: “we shall never forsake you again; give us life that we may call upon your name.”