Whose likeness and likeness is this?

Isaiah 45:1, 4-6 ‘I have grasped the right hand of Cyrus to subdue nations before him.’

1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b ‘Remembering your faith, love and hope.’

Matthew 22:15-21 ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’

‘Whose likeness and inscription is this?

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The fundamental Christian assumption of what it means to be human is that:

God created man in his own image,

    in the image of God he created him;

    male and female he created them. (Genesis 1.27)

This is what we can call Christian anthropology: we are made in the image and likeness of God.

Each human being is always made in God’s image, even if most of the time we fail to bear his likeness, through our own sins.

From this we derive the inviolable dignity of the human person and the call to inhabit and become the persons God made us to be.

And the way we are restored in the true image and likeness of God is through life in Jesus Christ.

It is with the foundation of that belief, about who we are made to be and that we are redeemed, that we hear today’s gospel reading.

Jesus’s scheming, nit-picking critics, want to catch him out and try it using the perennially touchy subject of taxation and money.

Only a lawful authority can enforce taxation, otherwise it is racketeering or demanding money with menaces.

So, should good Jews pay taxes to the Romans?

Say ‘no, they shouldn’t’ and Jesus is in trouble with the Romans; say ‘yes, they should’ and Jesus is denounced as a collaborator with the pagan occupier.  

Jesus both answers and frames the question in a much deeper reality.

In his answer he sets an important principle for how Christians navigate being earthly citizens and citizens of heaven at the same time, picked up in St Paul’s teaching on honouring the emperor and always knowing a higher authority, from whom their power is derived.

Human power is always derivative: as Jesus says to Caesar’s representative, Pontius Pilate, at his trial:

You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above (John 19.11)

Even Cyrus, a pagan emperor who did not know the God of Israel, is called God's anointed instrument in today's first reading.

Political rulers often imagine themselves to be masters of history, but Scripture reminds us that God remains Lord of history.

So, give to earthly powers what is theirs on earth; give to God what is his eternally.

And Jesus takes us deeper by asking ‘whose likeness and inscription is this?

It’s not just about the coin, it is about who we are as human beings, made in the image and likeness of God.

The word ‘likeness’ is a translation of the Greek word eikon (εἰκὼν).

We know that word as a rich word that speaks of the likeness, the image, that points beyond the surface to the reality.

The word ‘inscription’ is a translation of the Greek word epigraphē (ἐπιγραφή), from where we get the word ‘epigraph’, meaning some words that sum up the subject and that are written down in an enduring way.

‘Whose likeness and inscription is this?

Jesus is asking to whom you belong: whose image do you bear, what is inscribed on your heart?

What is inscribed on our hearts? Is it the pursuit of status? Anxiety about wealth? Political loyalties? Resentments we refuse to surrender? Or is it Christ?

Beneath all these questions lies the deeper one: who is your maker?

Is it God or is it you?

We are all tempted to imagine that we are self-made people, authors of our own story, accountable only to ourselves.

As was once said of a vain, self-satisfied person, "he is a self-made man, and worships his creator".

That’s nothing new, but it is certainly the spirit of the age.

This is what Bishop Robert Barron describes as the ‘ego drama’, when we place ourselves at the heart of things, the production in which I am the writer, the director and the star.

The ego drama never features God.

That is the ‘theodrama’, living in a world where God is author, director and centre.

The ‘theodrama’ is far more real than our own petty preoccupations and schemes, because in the drama of God we recover the marred image, and inhabit the true likeness of our Creator, to whom we owe life and allegiance.

Made in the image and likeness of God, human beings are image bearers.

The Blessed Virgin had the joy of being the bearer of Christ ‘the image of the invisible God’.

Inscribed in her heart is the willing and active ‘yes’ to God’s purposes and God’s will.

St Paul’s words to us all apply first and foremost to her:

And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. (2 Corinthians 3.3)

‘Whose likeness and inscription is this?

The saints are the image bearers par excellence, because God’s image and likeness is seen most transparently in them, his word is most clearly inscribed in their lives.

We are all God’s saints, with a lower case ‘s’, restored in God’s image by baptism and called to be Saints, with an upper case ‘S’.

We will be counted truly amongst the Saints when we bear God’s image and likeness, when goodness, beauty and truth shine out of us, when God’s commandments are inscribed on our hearts and when we render unto Him all worship, praise and adoration.

Then we will have risen above the petty schemes, manipulations and machinations of the rulers of this world and will know ‘that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.’ (Romans 8.21).

 

Blessed are those who are invited

Isaiah 25:6-10a ‘The Lord will make a feast, and he will wipe away tears from all faces.’

Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20 ‘I can do all things through him who strengthens me.’

Matthew 22:1-14 ‘Invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.’

 

You have prepared a table before me

in the sight of my foes.

My head you have anointed with oil;

my cup is overflowing.

 

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‘You have spread a table before me’ says the psalmist.

A veil is lifted says Isaiah, a banquet prepared.

The gospel invites us to a wedding feast.

Today’s reading are rich and deep indeed.

And they all lead to the unveiling of Jesus Christ in the Mass.

In the Mass the veil of heaven is pulled back as the Lord spreads a table before us anticipating the banquet of heaven and, as we eat and drink here and now, we receive Christ’s true, full and real presence into our lives.

We dwell in Him and he in us: we become one flesh with Him.

It is the vision of a banquet that Isaiah paints for us, pointing us to the mystical banquet of the Lamb, beautifully revealed in the vision of the Revelation to John.

Isaiah’s vision speaks of ‘the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations.’

This covering, this veil, is, in effect, a funeral pall, the large cloth that is spread over a coffin.

Palls are traditionally dark and heavy, and they are appropriate because they speak of the grief of death and the pain of loss.

But, Isaiah says, this pall will be lifted because death itself will be consumed.

The other time we think of a veil being lifted is at a wedding.

The bride is presented to the groom and her veil lifted.

Now she can be seen by the bridegroom, and she can clearly see him.

The lifting of that veil means that bridegroom and bride can see each other clearly, face to face: the beatific vision.

The Scriptures have an overarching sweep of nuptial imagery, in other words it’s put in terms of a courtship and marriage, the coming together of bridegroom and bride.

Everything sweeps from the Fall, when a pall of separation between God and man descends.

Repeatedly lack of human faithfulness thwarts the chance of union with God.

Of course, man glimpses God on and off, but even Moses cannot bear to see God unveiled; sight of Him would be too overwhelming.

The prophets call for faithfulness so that daughter Israel can be the bride, but, as shown in the prophet Hosea, Israel is unfaithful.

The parable narrates all this as the invited guests don’t show up, and other guests kill those bringing the invitation.

But the story doesn’t end there.

John the Baptist, who describes himself as ‘the friend of the bridegroom’ (John 3.29), proclaims that the Lamb of God, the Bridegroom, is coming, indeed is now here:

‘Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. (John 1.29)

Behold him, see him: he is unveiled.

Throughout the Gospels unveilings happen and Christ’s glory is made manifest: at the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan; in the proclamation of the Kingdom; the Transfiguration of the Lord; the Institution of the Eucharist; and, very obviously in relation to today’s readings, his glory is revealed at the wedding feast at Cana.

It’s no accident that Christ’s presence and first miracle takes place at a wedding banquet, a sign of the coming of the Bridegroom.

So the King invites guests to the royal wedding.

The guest list of Isaiah’s vision and the guest list of the parable, is all people, all nations, literally, all faces.

These are faces unveiled in the presence of Jesus Christ.

The culmination of the scriptures is a book whose Greek name, the Apocalypse, literally means ‘unveiling’ or ‘revealing’: it’s the book we also know as Revelation.

And what is being unveiled is a marriage:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth… And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. (Revelation 21.1-2)

And in Revelation who is present at the marriage banquet of the Lamb? It is people, ‘from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb’. (Revelation 7.9).

The Lamb is unveiled, and Revelation echoes Isaiah:

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. (Revelation 21.4)

What Isaiah prophesies and Revelation reveals is that the veil of death is lifted by the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus cries out from the Cross, ‘it is finished’, rendered in Latin, consummatum est, ‘it is consummated’ (a marriage image if ever there was one.)

When all is consummated the veil in the Temple is torn in two, and then at the Resurrection the folded grave clothes unveil Christ’s resurrected body.

The invitation of the Mass is to come to the marriage banquet of the Lamb:

You are invited to the banquet of God’s love; you are the honoured guest, you, we, the Church, are the bride.

It is a wedding feast, Christ the Bridegroom united to his Bride, the Church, as one flesh.

That is why it is beautiful when religious sisters wear a veil: it should remind us all of the Church’s call to be the Bride of Christ!

But yet, there is one nagging puzzle from the parable.

There is one guest at the wedding who is thrown out of the banquet because he is not wearing a wedding garment.

Why?

It raises the question of worthiness and humility.

The wedding garment was given to guests to wear; it wasn’t that the man just didn’t have one.

He chose not to wear it.

Again, Revelation gives the answer, which the Church Fathers loved:

Let us rejoice and exult
    and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
    and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
    with fine linen, bright and pure” -

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. (Revelation 19.7-8)

We have come to a royal wedding, the marriage banquet of the Son of God, we need to dress appropriately.

So, as his Bride, let us clothe ourselves in faithfulness to Christ, keeping the way of his commandments and honouring him in all that we think and speak and do, doing everything to the greater glory of God.

And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” (Revelation 19.9a)

The Song of the Vineyard

Isaiah 5:1-7 ‘The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel.’

Philippians 4:6-9 ‘Practise these things, and the God of peace will be with you.’

Matthew 21:33-43 ‘He will let out the vineyard to other tenants.’

 

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Today is the last of three Sundays of which the Gospel reading concerns a vineyard.

Two Sundays ago it was the parable of the labourers being hired to work in the vineyard, last Sunday it was the two sons asked by their father to work in the vineyard and this week it is the parable of the wicked tenants.

All speak of men and women called to the vineyard of God’s love and life.

To get the most from this parable we need to go to our first reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah.

We’ve noted that the vineyard signifies Israel, God’s first called people, it signifies the Church, and it signifies the human soul.

But something else Jesus’ first hearers would have been very well aware of is that the vineyard also signified the bride.

Take for example The Song of Songs, in which the vineyard is the setting for the wooing of the bride:

let us go out early to the vineyards
    and see whether the vines have budded,
whether the grape blossoms have opened
    and the pomegranates are in bloom.
There I will give you my love. (Song of Songs 7.12)

This is about a love affair of the bridegroom seeking his bride; and that, St Paul reminds us in Ephesians, is the mystery of Christ and his Church, and we’ll see more of that Matthew’s gospel in the coming weeks.

The Church is the Bride of Christ; Christ the bridegroom.

He seeks out and woos his Bride in the vineyard.

The vineyard, then, should be flourishing, a place of love, love that generates new life and abundance.

So, Isaiah’s song starts well:

Let me sing for my beloved

my love song concerning his vineyard:

This vineyard has rich soil, is planted with the very best grapes.

The vineyard is fertile, arid stones are cleared away, everything is full of promise and of hope.

A wine vat is placed at its heart ready for the sweet juice to flow and become a foretaste of the kingdom of God.

With everything in place the bridegroom looked for it to yield grapes.

There’s a great big ‘but’ hovering there.

… but it yielded wild grapes.

The promise is unfulfilled: instead of the rich fruit it should produce there is only inedible, sour grapes, nothing will flow from them, except perhaps vinegar.

Isaiah is telling the people of Israel and men of Judah something about themselves.

They are the bride who is unfaithful, they disappoint the trust and hope the bridegroom places in them: the lavish care and love given is rendered infertile, barren and fruitless.

Hearing Jesus’ parable of the tenants of the vineyard echoes and amplifies the prophetic message of Isaiah.

In the parable the master of a house plants a vineyard, just as in Isaiah.

And just as the bridegroom in Isaiah, the master puts a fence around it, puts in a tower and digs a wine press in it.

And he entrusts it to others to care for.

In Isaiah it is Israel and Judah; in the parable it is tenants.

Now the parable is told first to the chief priests and elders of the people.

Jesus clearly identifies them as the tenants, and at the end of the parable, if you read on, the evangelist is quite clear about that: the chief priests and elders of the people ‘perceived that Jesus was speaking about them’ (Matthew 21.45).

So Jesus identifies the chief priests and elders of the people as the tenants who beat the servants of the master and killed others: are these not the prophets who were killed, like Zechariah, son of Jehoiada the priest (2 Chronicles 24:20-21), Uriah (Jeremiah 26:20-23), Isaiah and Jeremiah, John the Baptist, all killed for telling Israel to be faithful as a bride to the bridegroom and lover of their soul?

And the connection is explicit, for us who are marked with the sign of the cross in baptism, the son and heir comes to the vineyard to bring it back to the master, for the heir is as good as the master in Hebrew thought.

That son is Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, indeed God himself, the bridegroom.

On hearing this parable, the chief priests and elders of the people wanted to arrest Jesus, but now was not their moment, that was to come, when, as Jesus quotes from the psalm:

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. (Psalm 118:22)

 

He is rejected by the builders of Israel and yet becomes the cornerstone and foundation of the Church.

He is the heir to the vineyard, who is beaten and killed.

He is the bridegroom who is rejected by his bride.

So he declares:

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.’

So the Kingdom is entrusted to other servants, the Church.

Make no mistake, God remains faithful to his ancient people the Jews, for whom we pray on Good Friday each year, that they may be faithful to the Covenant; and, at the same time, the Church becomes his Bride, in the marriage banquet of the Lamb consummated on the Cross.

The death of the Son is not the last word.

Now the cornerstone he becomes the New Temple, the meeting point of heaven and earth, the place of encounter with the Living God.

What does this all mean for us today?

First, we are not entitled to hear the parable and identify the Jewish people as the ones who killed the Son.

Humanity killed Jesus Christ.

On Good Friday it is we, the Church, who are convicted by the words of the Reproaches, as the Lord says to us:

O my people what have I done to thee? Or how have I offended you?’

And one of the verses says:

What more ought I to have done for thee, that I have not done?

I planted thee, indeed, my most beautiful vineyard:

and thou hast become exceeding bitter to me:

for in my thirst thou gavest me vinegar to drink:

and with a spear thou hast pierced the side of thy Saviour.

This speaks to all the times when we reject Christ the Bridegroom, when we are unfaithful as Christians and as a Church.

This parable is a call not to project onto others but to be faithful, fruitful tenants of the Father’s vineyard.

Christ is given vinegar to drink on the Cross: that is the produce of the corrupted vineyard.

Yet as the Passiontide hymn puts it:

Abel’s blood for vengeance

Pleaded to the skies;

But the blood of Jesus

For our pardon cries.

We are given Christ’s own blood to drink, the abundant wine of the Kingdom, our participation and grafting into the Vine of Life, Jesus himself.

The wine of Cana, at Our Lady’s prompting, raised spirits and manifested Christ’s glory, but it was just wine.

The wine of the Last Supper infused the veins of the disciples and gave life because it is not just wine, it is Christ’s own blood shed of the life of the world.

We tenants of the vineyard today receive his lifeblood, his very presence, his promise.

May we be found faithful.