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‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Our gathering together outside today provides us with an appropriate setting to think about the “vineyard” which our Lord likens to the kingdom of heaven in today’s Gospel. So let’s imagine ourselves to be in the vineyard of the kingdom: this little vineyard of Grace Church, specifically. It’s even in the morning right now; we’re like the first batch of laborers whom the landowner has hired for the day’s work. God has brought us into his employment and provided us with the tasks we are to perform as his workers as well as with the grace -- the “wages” -- we need in order to perform them. And we can think of ourselves as the first batch of laborers because we are those who are already here; we are those who are already members of Grace Church. Of course, many of us have been working in this vineyard for decades. This Sunday is just another normal day after countless others in the past. But even still, we are the existing congregation of Grace Church. At this moment, “early in the morning” in the words of Jesus’ parable, we are so far the only workers that have been hired. Deacon Steve | The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost | “What the world needs now is compassion.”9/13/2020
Over the years, I have met and come to know so many wonderful parishioners at Grace Church.
When my wife, my son and I first came to Grace Episcopal Church in 1988, we were met and welcomed by two of most loving people I have ever known: Howard and Marge Decker. Those of you who knew these dear ones can vouch for this fact. Howard Decker was a living, breathing hug machine. Regardless, of who you were, even if you were a stranger, Howard would welcome you with a hug. Now, the motto of the Episcopal Church, written on our church sign says: “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You.” For Howard and Marge Decker, however, this was more than just our Church motto, it was a way of life, it was their way of life. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that the Church is not just another ordinary human institution; it is at least that, but it is also infinitely more than that. The Church is the Body of Christ and it is comprised of those who have been united to Christ and who have received the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Church participates in the divine life of God: everything we do as the Church -- every prayer we pray, every good work we perform -- is at the same time an act of Jesus working through us as the members of his Body. Our conduct as Christians therefore takes on a profound significance: because we have been bound together by the love of Christ, our interactions with each other cannot proceed as if we were dealing merely with random individuals. The unity of God’s love is now the standard for how we relate to each other; we are directly accountable to it. When Jesus tells the disciples in John’s Gospel that “I do not call you servants any longer...but I have called you friends,” it means that we are now each other’s friends as well. To be brought into friendship with God is to be brought into friendship with the rest of those who are his friends also. “You are my friends if you do what I command you,” Jesus says, and “I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” In other words, the friends of Jesus are those who love his friends: our relationship with Christ is intimately bound up in our relationship with each other; to be in this dual relationship with both God and each other is to be in the Church. But he turned and said to Peter, “...you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. If you started reading a novel where everything about the world of the story and the main characters made perfect sense from the very first chapter -- where everything was straightforward and neatly organized and nothing was mysterious or suggested that maybe things aren’t what they seem -- you’d probably get bored with it pretty quick. Good stories need a plot; they can’t just give the reader a nice description of “the way things are” and expect them to pay attention -- that’s what tourist pamphlets are for; helpful perhaps, but hardly a page-turner. So, however things start out at the beginning, a good story needs to have some kind of catch that eventually comes around. There needs to be some complexity that comes into the picture; some point where the characters are faced with a decisive moment where they have to risk losing the security of what is familiar in order to progress ahead into the plot. For both the characters and the reader alike, the risk of this moment is the energy of the plot; the characters and the reader have to be willing to suspend their certainty, their confidence that they already know all they need to know, so that they can open themselves to the possibility of the surprise, the plot twist, the revelation. Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Jesus Christ is himself a divine revelation. As the first chapter of St. John’s Gospel proclaims so beautifully, Jesus is “the true light” who through the Incarnation “was coming into the world.” And, as it continues, “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.” The mystery of the Incarnation is that while the Son of God comes to us in the flesh -- as a flesh and blood human being -- we do not identify Jesus as the Son of God based on his humanity alone. While the revelation is that of a human being, Jesus of Nazareth, we cannot comprehend that revelation simply by considering him as a human being. Who Jesus is is not something that’s available to human perception alone. |
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