Take down those walls

Twenty Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Before we take a look at the parable of the vineyard in the first reading and our Lord’s version in gospel, we are going to take a little detour into the literary world. Some of you may be familiar with Oscar Wilde’s parable of the Selfish Giant who had this exceptionally beautiful garden. While the Giant was away visiting a Cornish ogre for seven long years, the local children slipped in and played among the peach trees and the soft green grass. The birds sang, the flowers bloomed, and the children sang with delight. Then the Giant returned and the was incensed by what he saw. He roared in rage and drove these little intruders out. He built a high wall around the garden to secure his property. The garden was his, and his alone.

The children were not the only ones whom the wall kept out. From that moment, Spring forgot the Giant’s garden. The trees refused to blossom. The birds would not sing. Snow, Frost, North Wind and Hail made themselves at home. The Giant sat at his window and wondered why the Spring was so late in coming. He did not understand that it was his own selfishness that had locked the seasons out. Only when he finally tore down the wall, helped a little child into a tree, and opened the garden once more did Spring return—and with it, something far greater.

Wilde’s fairy tale is more than a children’s story. It is a mirror held up to the human heart, and it prepares us perfectly for the parable our Lord tells today.

A landowner plants a vineyard. Unlike the selfish giant, this landowner is generous beyond any measure. He digs a winepress, builds a tower, and leases it to tenants. Notice that it is not the tenants but the landlord who did all the hard work. He does not begrudge them the credit which is obviously due to him and him alone. When the time of harvest comes, he sends his servants to collect the produce. The tenants beat one, kill another, stone a third. He sends more servants. Same treatment. The patience of the landowner is staggering. Finally, he sends his son, thinking, “They will respect my son.” But the tenants, who clearly recognises that this last emissary is the landlord’s own heir and not any ordinary servant, and despite this knowledge, proceed intentionally to commit murder, a crime which no court would exonerate.

What were the crimes of these tenants beyond the final most egregious act of murder? They were not just simply selfishly guarding their property like Wilde’s eponymous giant. They had in fact taken the landlord’s generosity for granted and abused his hospitality and patience: The tenants did not simply refuse to pay the rent. They decided that the vineyard belonged to them. They looked at the fruit and said, “This is mine.” They looked at the son and said, “If we remove him, everything is ours.” Their selfishness was not mere greed; it was a declaration of independence from the one who had planted, protected and provided for the vineyard in the first place. They had committed the first sin of Adam and Eve who envied God and wanted to be like him which is the reason why they believed the lie of the serpent and ate the forbidden fruit. In that tale too, God had planted the Garden of Eden and handed it to our first parents without expecting any payment and they too abuse His hospitality and graciousness by wishing to usurp His power and authority. The greatest act of betrayal.

Isaiah sings the same song centuries earlier. The Lord planted a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He cleared the stones, built a watchtower, hewed out a winepress. He expected grapes—justice and righteousness—but it yielded only wild grapes, sour grapes: bloodshed and the cry of the oppressed. So the hedge is removed, the wall broken down, and the vineyard is trampled. The problem was never the soil or the climate. The problem was the heart that refused to acknowledge the Owner.

We are those tenants. We are that Giant. How easily we build walls around the gifts God has given us—our time, our talents, our relationships, our parish, even our faith—and put up the notice-board: Trespassers will be prosecuted. We treat the vineyard of the world or our little corner of it or our parish or ministry or BEC as private property. We resent the Owner’s claim. We grow envious when others seem to receive more of His attention or favour. And slowly, almost without noticing, we exclude God from the very garden He planted.

The tragedy of the Selfish Giant is not merely that the children were locked out. It is that Spring itself was locked out. The Giant’s selfishness created a permanent winter in the very place that was meant to be a paradise. So too with us. When we exclude God—when we reject others, when we silence the inconvenient word of Scripture, when we push the Son out of the centre of our lives—our hearts grow cold. The fruit of the Spirit withers. Justice becomes injustice. Love becomes self-interest. Peace becomes anxiety.

And yet the parable does not end in pure destruction. Our Lord says the vineyard will be given to other tenants who will produce its fruit. There is always the possibility of a new beginning. The wall can still come down. Ironically, it is the stone that is rejected which will become the corner stone, the foundation of a new beginning for us. If we are ready to welcome Christ into our hearts, like how the selfish Giant welcomed the little child into his garden, we will see the garden of our hearts bloom once again and the cold winter of sin, selfishness, ambition and envy will be cast out. St Paul, writing to the Philippians, shows us the way out of that winter. Prayer opens the gate. Gratitude dismantles the wall. Focusing on what is true and good invites the Spring back in.

The Christian imagery in Oscar Wilde’s parable is not just subtle. It becomes obvious at the pivotal point of the story. The little child whom the Giant lifted into the tree bore the marks of nails in his hands and feet. Seeing these wounds, the Giant flies into a rage threatening to destroy whoever did this to a little child. But what were these wounds? Or rather whose were they. “These are the wounds of Love,” the child said. It becomes clear to the Christian, this child is Christ. And it is He who invites the Giant into His own garden—Paradise – at the end of the story. That too, we pray, will be the ending of our story. If we recognise the One who was wounded for our sake and open the gardens of our hearts to Him, we will have a share of rich treasures of the Heavenly Garden which He has prepared for us for eternity.

Brothers and sisters, the wall does not have to stay up. The notice-board, with the warning “Do Not Trespass!,” can be taken down. The garden can bloom again. All it takes is the decision to stop being the Selfish Giant— and to let the Owner back in. Our possessions, our talents, our families, and all the opportunities we have received ultimately do not belong to us. They belong to the Divine Landlord, the Divine Gardener, who lovingly and gratuitously shares them with us. Let us render to Him what belongs to Him and we will witness a hundredfold harvest of blessings in our lives.