The first reading has been described as God’s love song. It is about his love for his chosen people. God is like a landowner who planted a vineyard and cared for it in every possible way with the best vines planted in it. Instead of it producing grapes it produced only wild grapes, a huge disappointment after all the work. God through Isaiah said he would let the vineyard be overgrown. What happened? There was a gradual takeover of Israel by foreign invaders, the Assyrians, who conquered from the north down to the south gradually over the course of more than a century and a half. Elsewhere in the Old Testament, for example in the prophet Hosea, God is described as a husband and Israel is his spouse, but God’s spouse deserted him and went after false gods (Hos 2). God planted the vineyard, his people, but they did not all respond to God as they ought. It is a sad story.
We also have a sad story about a vineyard in the Gospel, told by Jesus to the religious leaders. It’s obvious it was a message to them. God is the landowner who, just as in the love song in Isaiah, did everything he could for his vineyard, his chosen people. God, the landowner, sent servants, his prophets, to the tenants, his chosen people, but they killed them one after another. Then the landowner, God, sent his son and they also killed him. When Jesus asked his listeners what the landowner would do, they said he would take the vineyard from those tenants to give it to others who would produce fruit. That parable is what happened. The leaders killed Jesus, the landowner’s son. The Church at first was very Jewish due to Jewish people accepting Jesus as the Messiah but as time went on it was the Gentiles who flocked into the Church. So as Jesus said, the vineyard was given to others to produce fruit.
Jesus recited verses from a Psalm to the religious leaders: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. (Ps 118:22) That suited perfectly. Jesus was being rejected by the religious leaders, but in his resurrection, he would prove that he was the cornerstone. (Matthew’s Greek refers to the “head of the corner” so it is usually understood as a cornerstone rather than the keystone at the top of an arch) What is a cornerstone? When constructing a building at that time, a large stone was placed at the lowest point, and the foundation and walls were built up from that stone. Although Jesus was rejected by the religious leaders, his resurrection proved he was the cornerstone.
Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians explained how everything depends on Jesus’ resurrection. Paul wrote that if Jesus had not been raised from the dead, Paul’s own preaching was empty and their faith was empty (1 Cor 15:14) and if Jesus had not been raised up, then they had not been released from their sins (1 Cor 15:17). Yes, indeed everything depends on Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus and his resurrection is indeed the cornerstone of our faith.
Jesus is the cornerstone of our lives; our lives are founded on Jesus. Our union with Jesus began with our baptism and grew with all the sacraments we subsequently received. Because Jesus is the cornerstone of our lives, we come to Mass every Sunday because we do not have the Eucharist at home and meeting Jesus in the Eucharist is the best way to meet Jesus and the best food for our spiritual lives. Without Jesus in the Eucharist we would be almost spiritually starving even if we did not know.
Because Jesus is the cornerstone of our lives we pray to Jesus every day, spending time with Jesus and allowing Jesus to touch our lives. Because Jesus is the cornerstone of our lives, when we are making decisions we look at the various possibilities in the light of our faith in Jesus to allow our faith in Jesus to shed light on our decisions. Because Jesus said to love our neighbor as ourselves and to forgive, we respect others even when difficult because they too are loved by Jesus.
Many beautiful passages in the letters in the New Testament describe Jesus being the cornerstone of our lives. Paul wrote to the Philippians: “For me to live is Christ.” (Phil 1:21) He wrote to the Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me” (Gal 2:19-20). Referring to the new way of living after baptism (for adult converts), Paul wrote to the Colossians: For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:3).
I think we could say that the following words of Jesus during the Last Supper in John are Jesus’ own way of describing himself as our cornerstone:
Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).
Perhaps we could say that Luke sums that up in his statement in the Acts of the Apostles: “In him we live and move and have our being” (17:28).
Our existence and all we have is a love song from God. Some do not respond but we have made Jesus the cornerstone of our lives because in him we live and move and have our being.
© Fr. Tommy Lane 2026
This homily was delivered in a parish in Ireland.
More Homilies for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday Year A
God’s love for us: Jesus’ Sacred Heart 2020
Guarding the Deposit of Faith and producing fruit for the Kingdom
Second Reading Related: Following Jesus begins in your mind