27A23.     Isaiah 5:1-7.   Isaiah paints a verbal allegory of God’s Chosen People who betrayed God’s trust in them by rejecting the wisdom and will of God to put their faith in human ways that were foreign to God.  God abandons his people to the destruction that came to them by their abandonment of the Lord.

Matthew 21:33-43.   Jesus relates a parable “to the chief priests and the elders of the people” that portrayed them as tenants of God’s vineyard who were expected to produce fruit for God.  When God sent his servants, the prophets, to the Hebrew authorities, “one they beat, another they killed, and a third they stoned.  Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones, but they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them.”  Here Jesus was speaking of himself that they would kill him.  As in the Isaiah reading, Israel was unfaithful to the Lord.  So Jesus said to the chief priest and elders that “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruits,” which is holiness by being faithful to the Lord.  In rejecting God’s will by putting Jesus to death, authority over God’s People no longer belonged to the Jewish authorities but rather to the church that Jesus was establishing through his Apostles and their followers.

Philippians 4:6-9.   “Brothers and sisters: Have no anxiety at all, but in everything,” “make your requests know to God,” so that you live totally dependent upon his presence and life in you.  “Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Jesus Christ.”