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One of the shocking and wrong-headed philosophical ideas of modernity is that “God is dead.”

What started with Friedrich Nietzche slowly evolved into an attitude wherein religion was assumed to be a useless hinderance of the past. Once society had moved beyond God, we would be free to do as we please. It hasn’t worked out well.

At first glance, the tenant farmers in this Sunday’s Gospel seem to have this same dubious idea for land acquisition. Hearing it, we reasonably wonder: How is their plan supposed to work?

Consider: The landowner sends messenger after messenger to exact tribute from those delegated to farm his land. It’s a reasonable request. After all, the tenant farmers had no doubt entered just such an agreement — to farm the land and make a living off it in exchange for a share of the produce.

Then comes the snag: The tenants produce beatings and murder instead of fruit. Why? Perhaps they think they can outlive the landowner and be free of him and thus keep the land and its produce for themselves. It’s likely that the tenants would have interpreted the presence of the heir, and not the landowner himself, as a sign of weakness and possibly even of the landowner’s demise. This might explain their attitude when the landowner’s son shows up at the vineyard. By removing the heir, they would lay claim to the vineyard by some sort of “squatter’s rights.” After all, “possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

Their plan is a bit of a stretch, but this interpretation makes sense as the best rationalization of the madness: “The landlord is dead, and if we kill the heir, the land passes to those left sitting on it. Us.” It’s devious, crazy and legally problematic, but people do scheme that way. If we’re honest, we can act this way from time to time, especially when it comes to our culture.

Of course, Jesus intends this parable as a broadside criticism of the chief priests and elders. For generations, they worked the people of Israel like tenant farmers work a vineyard. Appointed and delegated by God, they had withheld the fruits of the faith of the people (mercy and justice and a living faith) while slowly building up their own personal kingdoms and preferring empty ritual sacrifices. God sent the prophets to convince them to change, and generation after generation of priests and elders had put those same prophets to an untimely end. Now they find themselves face to face with the heir — Jesus the Son of God. The rest, as they say, is (salvation) history.

Yet this Gospel presents a challenge to each of us as well. We are in the same situation both culturally and personally.

Culturally, we have spent the last few decades trying to cultivate a social vineyard apart from God, the landowner and his blessing. For instance, we often speak of “my rights” without a corresponding understanding of the human person, or by whom those rights are given and to whom they are directed as obligations. Freedom becomes reduced to license, and a society of virtue and human flourishing reduces to a politics of power, control and efficiency. Our culture has tried to evict God and declare squatter’s rights, which is just as dubious an effort as that of our Gospel’s tenants. Obviously, this is madness. Our entire existence is a gift from God, and cut off from him, it withers.

More personally, God desires our faith and our love lived in friendship, prayer and works of mercy. He sends messengers and even his son to draw us into that relationship. All too often, we are skilled at shooting God’s messengers rather than accepting the summons to conversion. For instance: We too can drift through Mass “checked out,” being physically but not mentally present. While that’s better than nothing, it’s a far cry from praying the Mass. Or we can ignore the million messengers and prophets God might send us to change our ways in one respect or another.

Our Gospel invites us to a different spiritual posture: This week, perhaps we can ask for the grace to see where God is sending us prophets in our own lives, and to welcome them with open eyes and open arms, even if they are unusual or rub us the wrong way. We can also ask for the grace to spend some time in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament outside of Mass, training our heart to accept the heir when he makes himself present and bearing the fruit of faith. There we’ll find God still very much alive and pouring out grace like sunshine and fresh rains on the vineyard of our lives.