MADLY IN LOVED

2 October 2005
27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

MADLY IN LOVED
Mt 21:33-43

There are three things we can say about the landowner in the parable today.

First, the landowner is a very patient man. He keeps on sending servants to his tenants over and over again. This he does despite the tenants’ persistent, even violent, refusal to welcome his emissaries. His decision to send them ambassadors is totally unaffected by their foul attitude. He deals with his tenants not on the basis of what his tenants actually deserve. He is free from whatever action they take against him. And precisely because he is truly free that he is very patient.

Second, the landowner is very optimistic fellow. Verse 37 of today’s parable says, “Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’” Despite seizing the emissaries, thrashing them, killing them and stoning them, the tenants still find a good regard from their landowner: “They will respect my son.” The landowner refuses to surrender his hope in his ungrateful tenants. Wicked though they are, the tenants cannot conquer their landowner’s hope. They may kill his emissaries but they cannot kill his hope. He believes they will respect his son. He believes in his tenants even when we ourselves cannot believe in any shade of goodness in them. He believes even when we think it is pure and simple naiveté on his part to hope in his tenants.

Third, the landowner is a very silly guy. How else can you describe a man who sends his own son to violent men? It is like feeding a hungry pack of dogs with the flesh of your own begotten. Is it not utterly foolish, if not careless, to risk the life of your own child? No human father will put his own son in danger as this landowner does. The landowner in the parable today must be out of his mind. He is a dangerous decision-maker in whose hands one might never want to be. He is a father no son may want to have.

The landowner is like God. The landowner is very patient, so is God with us. He always gives us the chance to repent from our wicked ways and return to His embrace. The landowner is a very optimistic fellow and so is God. He believes in us no matter if everybody thinks it is foolish for God to do so, and even if we ourselves do not and can no longer believe in our selves. The landowner is a very silly guy and, yes, so is God a mad lover. He does not stop at anything in loving us.

In Jn 3:16, we read, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life.” It is His tremendous love for us that makes Him very patient with us. It is His undying love for us that makes Him believe in us. It is unconditional love for us that makes Him crazy with us. He is lovingly patient with us. He is unbelievably hopeful in us. He is madly in loved with us.

Interestingly about the parable today, the son of the landowner does not speak. He does not complain about his father’s long patience with their tenants. He does not even protest when he himself is sent by the father in the end. He is silent over his father’s seeming madness. He is given no speaking lines in the parable. All he does is act upon the word of his father. His part in the story is to accomplish his father’s will; thus, he simply readily obeys and willingly goes to the vineyard where death waits for him.

Jesus is like that son of the landowner in the parable today. He obeys His Father without any question. As the Father is madly in loved with us, Jesus is madly in loved with the Father. And like His Father, Jesus is madly in loved with us.

Their love for us is stronger than death. Thus, death itself could hold Jesus forever. He rose from the dead. Jesus uttered seven last words from the cross, but the cross is not the last word on Jesus and His Father’s love for us. Love, tremendous love, is the first word on Jesus. Love, undying love, is the last word on Jesus. Love, unconditional love, is always the word on Jesus.

We look on Jesus whom we have pierced because He is the stone rejected by men that has become the cornerstone of our lives. Our lives are founded on the inexhaustible love of the Father. That love is Jesus. He is our cornerstone.

Let us keep our selves founded on Jesus. Build our lives on that love of God – once rejected but has become the cornerstone.

Do not fear! God loves you more than you know. He is madly in loved with you.