4th October 2026
Reflection with readings below
Again the teaching from the prophets – in this reading Isaiah – is that we are not aligning our will with God’s; that we are not shaping our lives and lifestyles to conform to God’s expectations – that we are sinners. But there is still the option of turning back to God, allowing God’s wisdom to shape how we live. It might involve accepting radical change, accepting pruning but also gaining from God’s nurturing guidance.
But note too that had the vine been responsive it would have had a flourishing life and would have produced beautiful sweet wine. God truly wants us and all creation to have good and flourishing lives. God’s ways are not random nor arbitrary; they are the means of a bountiful and eternal life.
In the letter to the Philippians, Paul declares that his confidence – his certainty that he is pursing the right way to live – comes not from following the Law (an inspired yet still human construct) nor from status, nor from race or class, nor from inherited traditions, but from following Jesus, from becoming more and more Christ-like. The Hebrew understanding of righteousness is to be in a right relationship with God and therefore with one’s fellow creatures. To be righteous is to reflect the face – the image – of God. To pursue righteousness is to become more Christ-like: in John’s gospel we hear Jesus saying that whatever the Father does, the Son does.
So we come to today’s gospel, again with a parable about a vineyard. But here it is not the vine that is the focus, but the tenants who tend the vine – the ones who are standing in for the owner, ie God. Do the designs and action of these tenants reflect the image of God? No, they are clearly self interested and motivated by the potential for their own gain. Whilst the gospel writers of the day clearly saw the Pharisees as the tenants, in the current day we might rather see the parable as addressed to us as humans in all our roles and guises where we have not tended the vineyard – ie the Earth and all its bounty – in a manner that reflects God’s ways. Like the vineyard tenants, we have sought to impose our own values on how we deal with what has been shared with us, and seek to maximise our own gain at the expense of others.
Can we yet refocus and discern what is important in how we conduct our lives? Can we seek out the corner stones that will allow us to rebuild a better way of life? Can we identify what are the key components of a thriving ecosystem, a thriving economy, and build on them, setting side our own arrogance and selfishness?
This does sound like – and in reality is – a huge change of direction. It will involve systemic change at the highest levels, requiring global cooperation, the de-prioritisation of the rich and wealthy, a genuine sharing of resources between all creaturely beings, replacing destructive economic models, and reforming and reasserting justice for all. But that is not to say that it is impossible, nor is it to say that we as individuals can’t do our bit.
We are each called to reflect the image of God – to be Christ-like in all that we do. This will involve us in re-examining our relationships with one another – with our human and non human neighbours. It will involve us in re-examining our lifestyles – what we buy, what we eat, how we travel, how we share our gifts and our financial resources. It will involve us in spending time with and rebuilding our relationships with the rest of creation. But we will not be doing this on our own: Christ will be there with us, giving us strength and guidance. And the goal will not be a diminished life nor a diminished world, but a life and a world of beauty and peace in which all flourish.
Isaiah 5:1-7
Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.
And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
and people of Judah,
judge between me
and my vineyard.
What more was there to do for my vineyard
that I have not done in it?
When I expected it to yield grapes,
why did it yield wild grapes?
And now I will tell you
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
I will make it a waste;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it.
For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are his pleasant planting;
he expected justice,
but saw bloodshed;
righteousness,
but heard a cry!
Psalm 80:7-14
7 Restore us, O God of hosts; *
show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.
8 You have brought a vine out of Egypt; *
you cast out the nations and planted it.
9 You prepared the ground for it; *
it took root and filled the land.
10 The mountains were covered by its shadow *
and the towering cedar trees by its boughs.
11 You stretched out its tendrils to the Sea *
and its branches to the River.
12 Why have you broken down its wall, *
so that all who pass by pluck off its grapes?
13 The wild boar of the forest has ravaged it, *
and the beasts of the field have grazed upon it.
14 Turn now, O God of hosts, look down from heaven;
behold and tend this vine; *
preserve what your right hand has planted.
Philippians 3:4b-14
If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
Matthew 21:33-46
Jesus said, “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:
‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?
Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realised that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.
