Our frustrations, God's frustrations

The Frustration of God’s Plans. The readings this Sunday narrate various landowners’ frustration regarding their vineyards. In the First Reading, te vineyard, instead of bearing sweet grapes, yields wild grapes. The Psalm laments the destruction of the hedges of the vineyard, making the produce vulnerable to theft. In the Gospel, Jesus tells the story of tenants who kill the servants of the landowner sent to claim the produce, and who, plotting to grab the land from the rightful heir, eventually kill the son of the landowner.       

All these readings narrate various versions of a landowner’s frustrated plans in cultivating a vineyard that either does not produce the proper fruit or produces good fruit that is unprotected and thus susceptible to theft, that either yields fruit that tenants keep to themselves or yields an abundance that propels the tenants to conspire to murder the son of the landowner.       

 In these narratives, the vineyard owner is the Lord and the vineyard the House of Israel. The hedges, referred to in the First Reading, that are broken, allude to the vulnerability of Israel during their Babylonian captivity. And in the Gospel, the servants who are killed by the tenants are the prophets of Israel whom God sends but are rejected by Israel and martyred. Finally, the son who is murdered is Jesus who prophesies his rejection by his own people and his ultimate death.  In these narratives, God’s plans are thwarted.  In these stories God ends up frustrated and devastated by the intransigence and violence of His children.

Our Frustrations, God’s Frustration. We, too, are frustrated by the many things and events beyond our control. We are frustrated by our senators as we exasperatingly watch them accuse one another of corruption, of allegedly doubling items in the national budget. We are frustrated by the collapse of the Lehman Brothers and the Wall Street crisis due to the greed and mismanagement of CEOs and the imminent fallout on the global economy which will inevitably affect millions of small people. We are frustrated by the contamination of milk products with melamine due to unscrupulous agricultural producers in mainland China who “doctor” the protein content of the dairy products. We are frustrated, exasperated and angry. And we feel helpless because all these big players and institutions are beyond our control. Hence, as we ventilate our frustrations and fears to one another, we sense a deepening and gnawing vulnerability and hopelessness due to the loss of our capacity to determine our lives, to direct our future, and even ensure the safety of our children.

However, our frustrations are not ours alone. Our passions are shared by our God of compassion. In the First Reading Isaiah movingly narrates the frustration of the Lord whose vineyard, symbolic of Israel, does not bear edible grapes but rather wild grapes, a metaphor for infidelity to Yahweh: “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done?” Isaiah goes on to say that the Lord, the vineyard owner, “looked … for justice” but instead beheld “bloodshed” and heard “the outcry” of the oppressed and exploited.

The Gospel parable reveals to us that our God does not merely share our frustrations and pains, but involves Himself in our mess. He not only sent emissaries to speak on His behalf. He sent His only Son to our turbulent world. He became one of us and immersed Himself in the chaos of our lives in order to teach us to walk in God’s justice and mercy. But God’s involvement in our world has cost God much. It cost God the life of His only Son. Jesus’ unjust crucifixion must have caused God His deepest pain and sorrow. Again and again, God’s good intentions for humanity have seemingly been frustrated.

From Frustration to the Fulfillment of God’s Plans. In the end, God’s salvific plans for us can only be momentarily derailed by human sin, but cannot ultimately be thwarted. The story of Jesus does not end on the cross. His rejection by his own religious leaders and crucifixion by the Romans derailed God’s plans, but did not irrevocably frustrate God’s salvific plans for humanity. Resurrection! God vindicated Jesus, His message and His way of life by raising Him from the dead. God reversed the sins of humanity and the ills of history. Jesus’ resurrection reveals to us a primordial and eternal truth about God in relation to all creation: Grace, without abolishing evil and suffering, will always find a way to bring about life amidst death, hope amidst despair. While the gift of human freedom has capacitated us to frustrate God’s will, we are ultimately powerless against Grace that, while ever respecting human freedom, will seek ways to circumvent the evil consequences of the misuse of such freedom.

In the end, God’s salvific will can only be temporarily frustrated, but ultimately Grace will find a way to bring God’s plans to fulfillment. However, “in the end” does not only refer to the victory of Grace in the afterlife or in the eschaton. Grace triumphs in history. Grace proves victorious in our lives today. While God’s plans may be frustrated by human sin, paradoxically, through human freedom or despite human freedom God will find ways to bring forth life amidst the ashes of our lives and hope amidst the ruins of human history.

Fr. Manoling Francisco is a prolific composer of liturgical music and serves on the faculty of the Loyola School of Theology. For feedback on this column, e-mail tinigloyola @yahoo.com