by Rev. Deacon Lawrence A. St. Onge

In the reading from the Book of Genesis today we heard how the sons of Israel hated their brother, Joseph, because he was their father’s favorite son, whom he loved best of all. We see that the brothers displayed the sin of jealousy of their brother, Joseph. In fact they were so jealous of him that they plotted to kill him and hide their malicious act with a concocted story they would tell their father, and thereby conceal their guilt.

Ruben, one of the brothers, objected to killing his brother. Yet, he did not voice his objection to his other brothers because of fear, and instead tried to convince them to throw Joseph into a well instead of killing him. Although Ruben exhibited some good intentions in not wanting to kill his brother, Joseph, he still fell short of the mark on two points. First, his in-action in not telling his brothers what they intended to do was wrong was itself, sinful, because failure to correct a wrong can be just as sinful as the wrong itself. And secondly, Ruben still took part in evil action against his brother, Joseph, by his being party to throwing him in the well and then selling him as a slave for twenty pieces of silver.

The actions of the brothers in this scripture story, motivated by jealousy, brings to mind the earlier story in Genesis of the brothers, Cain and Abel, sons of Adam and Eve, and how Cain killed Abel out of jealousy for him because he was beloved by God. Thus, jealousy was one of the original sins in human history.

We again see the sin of jealousy in today’s gospel passage. The tenant farmers are jealous of the land owner’s son, because he is his heir, and so they kill the son in order to acquire his inheritance.

In this gospel Jesus is giving us a foreshadowing of his own death at the hands of the Chief Priests and the Elders of the people. They were jealous of his prominence among the people and how much influence he exerted among them, because they saw his achievements as taking away from them and their positions of power, authority and influence. Jesus is the cornerstone that the builders rejected. He is the one sent by God, the Father, to rescue his people from slavery to sin; he that was rejected by them and put to death. He too, was sold, as was Joseph in the 1^st reading, for twenty pieces of silver.