Don’t make me come down there!
Homily preached October 8, 2023
by Monsignor Michael Deering

With virtually every person having a cell phone these days, most every person is familiar with texting ... sending & receiving brief messages in text form w/ others.

Well the thought occurs to me … gee, what would it be like … if God ... texted us?

Wouldn’t that be sensational … to receive a text message from God?

I wonder what he’d say!   

Well 24 years ago, a series of highway billboards began to appear in Florida with simple text messages on them … text messages that appeared to come from God!

It turned out that an anonymous person funded them because ...

he wanted to remind people about ... the reality of God!

These “Messages from God” are still visible on some highways around the country.

Here are a few examples of the Billboard Text Messages I’ve seen along the road.

Listen and see how they might well have been sent … by God.

1. Tell the kids I love them. - God

2. Big Bang theory … you’ve got to be kidding! – God

3. All I know is … everything. – God

4. Let’s meet at my house Sunday before the game. – God

5. C’mon over and bring the kids. – God

6. We need to talk. – God

7. One nation under Me. – God

8. The Real Supreme Court meets up here! – God

9. My way is the highway. – God

10. Have you read my #1 best seller? There will be a test! – God

And my personal favorite,

• Don’t make me come down there. – God

I don’t know about you, but I can still hear my Mom saying those words to my brothers and me when we were roughhousing down in the basement. Mom would raise her voice and tell us to behave and add, “Don’t make me come down there.”  

This was her way of reprimanding us and …

as the Billboard indicated ... that’s the very same message

that God has been sending to all of us throughout Salvation History.

Why?     Why would God send us such a message?

Because from generation to generation, mankind has been notorious for misbehaving. And so through the Prophets, God has had to keep calling His people to behave ... to change their ways and follow His Law.

In our First Reading today, Isaiah gives a stern reprimand to the people in the form of a prophetic story. He tells of a landowner who created a vineyard.

Now it’s easy to see that He’s speaking about God as the Landowner.

And “The Vineyard of the Lord” he says, “was the House of Israel.”

So we see that God, as Landowner, established the Israelites as His Chosen People to take care of the Vineyard.

By God’s design, the Israelites, who were later called the Jews, were to be the Builders of the Kingdom of God on earth. But instead of following His commands,

they repeatedly fell away from serving the one true God and

in choosing to serve false gods they fell into sin and separation.

In God’s great love for His people He sent many servants … leaders and prophets … to call the people back to goodness but they refused to listen to them.

And sadly, when God “did come down there” by sending His Divine Son ...

to speak to them, they did exactly as Jesus predicted in His parable …

    “They seized Him, threw Him out of the vineyard, and killed Him.”

Think how sad that had to be for God the Father … to have His Chosen People

turn on him ... to the degree that they would kill his Only Son.

Listen to His lament in Isaiah when the Father asks:

“What more was there to do … that I had not done?

How many loving parents there are ... who grieve like this today!

How many parents wonder to themselves “Where did we go wrong?” when they see their sons in jail for committing crimes or their daughters strung out on drugs.

Where did we go wrong? What more was there to do … that we had not done?

All you can say is those parents are in solidarity w/ God Himself who sees

all of us, His Children, turning away from Him and falling into all kinds of sin.

And we can only hope ... that goodness will come out of all the setbacks we see.

That’s how it was with Jesus, who was rejected for sure, but He established Himself as the foundation upon which He would build a new family that would produce much fruit and merit to live with Him in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus predicts this event in our Gospel when He quotes 2 verses from Psalm 118. First, He says, “Did you never read in the Scriptures:

‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”

Here He’s saying that the Builders (the Jews) would reject the stone (Jesus) ...

who would eventually become the Cornerstone of His worldwide Church on earth,

the Holy Catholic Church.

Then Jesus goes on to predict that a people different from them would take over the building of God’s Kingdom on earth.    He says, “The Kingdom of God ....

will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”

And so it was ... that the Gentiles embraced Jesus as Savior and grew the Church,

while the Jews have yet to accept Him as the long awaited Messiah.

The result is that God’s vineyard now extends to every corner of the world.

But sadly, there are still many who do not listen to Him

and there are many others who work to oppose Him.

This world is not our vineyard; it is God’s vineyard.

We are just tenants of the vineyard.     And God, who is the Landowner ...

expects us to follow His Commandments and produce much good.

The question is, “Are we actively working to produce good fruit?”

In other words, if someone were to accuse you of being a Christian,

would there be enough evidence to convict you?

Would your words & actions show that you’re a Builder of God’s Kingdom on earth?

Yes, would your words & actions show that you love Jesus?

You know, those Jews who denied that Jesus was the Messiah, and those Romans who crucified Him some 2000 years ago … they never said that they loved Him.

But we say that we do!

Yes, we Christians say that we love Jesus … and yet we still deny Him and hurt the Body of Christ every time we sin … even though we say that we love Him.

For whatever reason, whether it’s out of ignorance, weakness or indifference,

we human beings continue to misbehave and fall into sin.

And God in His great love for us continues to call us back to goodness and to Him.

With loving patience ...through a long line of Prophets, God was effectively saying,

“come back ... do the good ... straighten up... behave”

“Don’t make me come down there!”

But God finally did come down, in the Person of His Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ.

We declare this each time we recite the Nicene Creed and say:

“For us men and for us men and for our salvation...  he came down from heaven.”

And the way that He reprimanded us … was to love us even more.

Jesus, innocent and without sin, gave Himself up to death to atone for our sins …

and He established Baptism as the way for us to come into His family …

and He sent His Holy Spirit to guide us in all wisdom and truth.

and He commissioned His Apostles to be Spiritual Guides to the people .

and He established His Church as the ark of safety to carry us thru the storms of life

Today The Holy Catholic Church is God’s vineyard on earth.

And it’s up to us to decide whether or not we’ll work in His vineyard.

We’d be wise to follow the advice of St. Paul, who pleads with us today ... to keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me.

We say we believe in God and yet we sometimes have a hard time

living like we really do believe in God.

We can do no better than to listen to the voice of God to guide us.

Today He speaks through the Church … through

the Bishops and Priests and Deacons He has called and sent to guide the faithful.

Which means we need to go to Church ... where we’ll

      hear the voice of God not directly from Heaven … but through His ministers.

But, you know, what if God really did start communicating with us ... by texting us?

What would His message be?            And would you take His words to heart?

Here’s a few more of those “God speaks” Billboard messages for you to consider:

1. What part of ‘Thou Shalt not’… don’t you understand? – God

2. That “Love your neighbor” thing … I meant it! – God

3. Will the road you’re on get you to my place? – God

4. You think Global Warming is hot! – God

5. Life is short – Eternity isn’t! - God

We Human Beings surely need reminders to stop our misbehaving.

How I wish these Billboards were displayed all over town ...

and on our phones!

Then, we could let these simple, sometimes humorous messages ...

percolate in our minds and remind us:

that God truly exists,

that God is “the Owner of the vineyard”

that we’re each going to stand in judgment one day

and have to make a full accounting of our labors in His vineyard.

We cannot afford to have our hands full of wild grapes!

Let’s take these messages to heart.

And realize that if ... God was to come down here ... and paint one final billboard,

I’m quite sure that He’d simply write:

The world doesn’t love you … I do! – God

Amen.