Christ the King Epiphany/ Wilbraham, MA 

Matthew 21:33-46 

Rev. Dcn. Michael Hamilton 

October 4, 2026

Please pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts are pleasing and acceptable to God. Amen.   (pbs) 

Today, October 4th, 2026, marks the 800th anniversary of Saint Francis of Assisi's death. Francis has been a hero of mine for most of my spiritual awakening, and as a young man, I spent 3 years in formation training to become a Franciscan Brother. I have a deep respect for Franciscan Spirituality, which is a path you can use to live out your own prayer life and to make sense of your place in the world. This approach to prayer, practice, and life seeks to follow the example of Francis and Clare by living with simplicity, humility, and joy. The tradition blends prayer and service as the two cornerstones of living a faithful life, and it is one that makes sense to me. Franciscan Spirituality believes that God is intimately linked to creation, and the proof of this close connection with humanity is seen in Jesus’ birth, His Passion, and His presence in the Eucharist. Another foundational tenet of Franciscan Spirituality is the belief that there is a universal relationship between humans, animals, and nature as we all share the sacred creation God has provided. Much of Francis’ life has been romanticized and turned into easy to digest morsels like pablem for a baby, making it easy to consume. This is evident in that most people recognize Francis as the poster child of bird baths and the place of rest for wild birds, when in reality, he was a revolutionary. The popular hymn/song, The Prayer of St Francis / “Make me a channel of Your peace” is often believed to have been written by Francis (sorry, it was not), but it is a decent attempt at listing some qualities of sacrificial love and action that Francis would encourage. One piece that was written by Francis shortly before his death is, The Canticle of Creation, often referred to as ‘Brother Sun, Sister Moon’, and I commend it to you if you would like to see how connected he felt to being in relationship with all of creation and life. 

One quote of Francis that I try to emulate in my life is, “to preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.” Francis would wholeheartedly agree that actions speak louder than words.

The actions of the vineyard tenants spoke loudly in today’s Gospel when they ignored what was due to the landowner and instead of paying what was owed, they killed the two separate groups of slaves and dragged the landowner’s son out of the vineyard and killed him too. Jesus asked the religious leaders of the Temple what they thought the landowner would do, and they pronounced that the tenants should meet a painful death. In passing this judgment, the religious leaders identified themselves as the landowner losing their investment and the tenants cheating them personally. They did not think of themselves as the misguided tenants who were not living into the established covenants with God or having killed the prophets during their history. Jesus knew that He was baiting the leaders, and they didn’t realize it until it was too late. Over the long course of history, prophets were sent to call people back into a proper relationship with God and, like the grapes in the vineyard, the people were called to give to God what was owed to Him. Time and time again, the people and religious authorities had silenced or killed those who were sent to deliver a message that the people did not want to hear, or a debt they did not want to pay. When Jesus asked the Temple leaders how they thought the landowner should react to the thieving and murderous tenants, they replied that the tenants should meet a painful death. But what they did not realize was that they were just a few days away from dragging Jesus outside of the city limits to kill Him; the Son who had come to collect what was due to the landowner.

Over the years, the sins of the temple priests in Jerusalem varied between different biblical periods, and they spanned the gamut of corruption, disrespect for sacrifices, perverting God's law, and violent greed. 

The prophets had been sent. Malachi condemned the priests for showing contempt for God’s altar by offering polluted, blind, lame, or sick animal sacrifices. 

Jeremiah was stoned to death by his own people for challenging them on their idolatry and infidelity. Isaiah was sawn in two for rebuking the religious leadership for profaning the sanctuary and turning the temple into a place of injustice and a "den of robbers". 

Ezekiel confronted an Israeli leader during the Babylonian exile and was killed for it. Ezekiel blamed the leaders for doing violence to the law, profaning holy things, and failing to distinguish between the holy and the common.

Some hardline “Christians” will point to this Gospel passage as the replacement in God’s ‘chosen people’ status, transitioning from the Jewish people to the Christians since they purport the vineyard was taken away from the original, sinful, ungrateful tenants and granted to the new, improved, and more generous tenants. I hope we all see how dangerous a belief this is, as the perfect/ better stewards of the vineyard have not been found as we all fall far short of being the ideal tenants of creation, and we too live very loosely into the covenant that we have with God. Which covenant? We could list the most basic covenant that we are responsible for and note how often we fall short or play loosely with the agreement of “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, mind and strength. And your neighbor as yourself.” That is the agreement that we have with God in the form of a covenant. Similar to all of the tenants that came before us, our landlord has always been willing to allow us to turn and to return, again and again, in an attempt for us to be better gardeners/ better companions/ better ministry partners in life. Learning how we can generously share what we have, joyfully give back what is owed without trying to cheat the owner, to work cooperatively with other tenants, and to respect and protect the nature and animals that surround us is the work that we have in front of us today. 

We have been engaged in Celebrating Creation these past weeks. We have looked at our use and dependence on water in a great presentation by Ken Wagner last weekend. We have acknowledged the amount of food grown in the garden and donated to the Survival Center. We are grateful for the attention paid to the pollinator garden in supporting nature's insects and the crawling life that we are dependent upon for our own survival. We have blessed the baptismal waters that covered us as we became sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever. All these actions support good stewardship of the vineyard we have been given, and still there is more for us to engage in. For St Francis, he heard the voice of Jesus as he was praying in front of a large crucifix say, “Francis, rebuild my church which you see, has fallen into ruin.” That was the initial engagement of Francis in how he loved and worshiped God, and I think we are invited into that same work. We see broken communities, families, political systems, educational systems, economic disparity, and human suffering. All signs of a broken “church”. We are not responsible for taking care of all of it; after all, this is a community vineyard and not our own property. But anything that I can do in my small area will be added to the richness of the entire vineyard. I hope to see you out by the vines, as we are all in this together. Happy gardening.