Ordinary Time
These readings remind us of the need for humility, humanity, acknowledging how vulnerable we are to the inhuman.
Many are going to obsess on the terror events of the past weekend for days; and many are going to want to avoid all mention of them. Many are hoping for a crushing response that is ultimately decisive, and many are hopeful that the conflict creates some new peaceful paradigm. Many are going to scapegoat someone or something they already can’t abide, and many are going to identify such scapegoating as exacerbating already deeply entrenched problems. All these reactions are human even if the events themselves were inhuman.
I found some comfort but also enormous irony in the Catholic readings of Sunday, October 8 – this year also known as the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time. The first was from Isaiah (יְשַׁעְיָהוּ) 5, about the vineyard of the Lord, who will make a wasteland of his metaphorical vineyard, and who knows why? The implication is that we should know why. “For the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the House of Israel, and the men of Judah the plant of his delight.” The passage is somber, mystical, terrifying in acknowledging consequences of human failings before the almighty.
The New Testament reading paired with this was from Matthew (Ματθαῖον) 21, late in the chapter, and a sharp retelling of the Isaiah 5 parable, with a decidedly Christian twist. It describes a metaphorical vineyard that also endures wasting, terror, killings. “Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.” The passage is chilling, vindictive, and turns the old passage upside-down, not only acknowledging the consequences of human failings but further suggesting irredeemable forfeiture and finality.
Catholics only experience these particular readings one Sunday in every three years. Yet there they were, read in hundreds of thousands of churches around the world, even as monstrous terror unfolded the same day, within mere miles of where both these passages were written centuries ago.
It does not seem wise to assign particular roles to particular tribes that fit the moment. We are as distinct from the original acolytes, as separate from those who first heard and read these words, as the two passages are as distinct, as separate from each other. It seems wiser to acknowledge their broader wisdom: that all tribes, then, now, and to come, are vulnerable to the kinds of terrifying wastings identified in these passages, and are vulnerable to inhuman actions, both as perpetrator of them and victim of them.