18 Pentecost

 

September 27, 2026

 Matthew 21.23-32

 I think we’ve been there.

 I think we’ve all been where Jesus is in today’s Gospel.

 We’ve all encountered the “gatekeeper.”

 The person—or people—who think they’re in charge.

 Especially in the Church.

 Years ago, when I came back to the Church after years of being ‘religiously promiscuous” (as the recently deceased Annie Dillard once said,  I was trying to do all I needed to do to prepare me for ordained ministry.

 And in the midst of that preparation, I encountered one of those people in a person James definitely remembers.

 A few others who have been in the Episcopal Church in North Dakota a long time might remember her too.

 Her name was Emma.

 And she was the Gatekeeper extraordinaire.

 She ran the congregation in which I was a parishioner.

 And anyone who crossed her—and her carefully cultivated understanding and view of how the church SHOULD be run—were subject to her wrath.

 I got caught in it once.

 One time, during a Maundy Thursday service—during the actual service—poor Emma just lost it.

 I don’t know what happened.

 Maybe something in the liturgy wasn’t going the way she thought it should.

 Maybe one of the priests scolded her before the service (they often did).

 Whatever the case, during the service, she angrily snatched up the basin full of water that had been used to wash feet and started loudly throwing them on a cart to take them out of the chapel in which we had been gathered.

 Water sloshed all over the floor—and over a few people.

 Including me.

 And it was disruptive.

 And embarrassing.

 I was not ordained yet, but I went up to and gently tried to tell her to just keep it down a bit at this solemn liturgy.

 Well, that was the wrong thing to do!

 Emma turned on me with on me!

 With rage wild in her eyes, she loudly hissed at me, “Why don’t you just runt the Church then!” then stomped off, with the cart full of sloshing water. .

 Everyone heard it.

 And everyone was shocked.

 I was shocked.

 But you know me.

 Rather than just stand there and take I went off after her.

 She was by this point in the sacristy.

 I came in right behind her.

 I had, by this time, some training with these kind of things already and so I snapped my fingers and said firmly to her, “Snap out of it, Emma.”

 And just like that, like someone hypnotized by her rage an anger, she did just that.

 She snapped out of it.

 She stood there for a moment, breathing heavily.

 And then she broke down and started crying.

 And I felt terrible for her.

 And I empathized with her.

 She had worked so hard for so long to make sure things ran just perfectly.

 Her way.

 And no one noticed (or so she thought)

 And no one cared (or so she thought)

 And she knew it couldn’t go on like that and that at some point she was going to have to relinquish her control and care—those very things that gave her meaning and purpose….and control—and that thought scared her.

 Eventually she did give up all of these things after health failed and she just couldn’t do it anymore.

 And I was shocked at how easily she did gave it all up.

 One day she was doing it all.

 And then the next, no one was.

 And she just washed her hands of it.

 But before all of that, Emma and I became very close friends.

 And I was with her as she suffered with her final cancer.

 I held her hand at her death bed.

 I preached at her funeral.

 And I placed her ashes in the niche in that very same chapel in which she had a hard time on that Maundy Thursday several years before.

 And if she were here today—and sometimes I feel she is—I can tell you she would be laughing at how she reacted that Maundy Thursday service all those many years ago.

 Maybe what Emma was dealing with then is what the chief priests and elders were dealing with when they saw Jesus in our Gospel reading today. .

 Because their accusation of him sounds strangely familiar.

 “By what authority are you doing these things?” they ask.

 To be fair, it’s a good question, at least on the surface.

 Jesus has come into Jerusalem.

 He’s entered the Temple and disrupted its ordinary business.

 He is teaching the people.

 Who gave him the right?

 But Jesus knows they are asking something more than just that.

 They’ve already seen what he does.

 They’ve heard what he says.

 The question is whether they are willing to recognize God at work in someone who unsettles them.

 So what does Jesus do?

 Jesus tells them a story.

 A father asks two sons to work in his vineyard.

 The first says, “I will not.”

 Later, he changes his mind and just does the work.

 The second says, “I go, sir,” but never goes.

 I suspect most of us have been both of those sons at one time or another.

 We’ve all said yes with every good intention and then failed to follow through.

 We’ve all promised to be patient and then lost our patience.

 We’ve all spoken about loving our neighbors, and then found that our actual neighbor is a jerk and is just difficult to love.

 and perhaps we’ve also said no.

 No, I can’t forgive that person.

 No, I can’t change.

 No, I can’t take on one more thing.

 And then, somehow, grace finds us.

 And we change our minds.

 We get up and go out into the vineyard after all.

 That’s what I love about the first son.

 His “no” doesn’t have the last word.

 He’s allowed to turn around.

 He’s allowed to change his mind.

 Jesus tells the religious leaders that tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of them.

 I don’t think Jesus says this to humiliate them or to suggest that some people’s lives are worth more than others.

 He says it because the leaders have refused to see what is happening right in front of them.

 People they’d dismissed heard John the Baptist’s call and responded.

 They believed that their lives could actually change.

 The leaders saw this, Jesus says, and still wouldn’t change their minds.

 That’s the harder part of this Gospel.

 It’s possible to be so certain that we know where God is, and who belongs to God, that we miss God working in the people right beside us.

 The vineyard doesn’t belong to us.

 It is doesn’t belong to me, or to Deacon John, or to Bishop Shay, or to any of one of you.

 The vineyard belongs to God.

 We don’t get to decide who’s welcome to work here.

 And we don’t have to pretend that we have always answered perfectly.

 God asks us to come, just as we are, and to let our answer take shape in what we then do.

 So if we said yes, let that yes become our act of love.

 And if we said no, let’s just remember that first son.

 And remember,

 it’s never too late for any of us to change our mind.

 It’s never too late for any of us to just get up from where we thought we were set in our ways and just go.

 Amen.

17 Pentecost

 

September 20, 2026

Matthew 20.1-16

+ I love this story Jesus shares in my our Gospel reading for today.

 Actually, I don’t love it.

 But I get it.

 And it certainly resonates with me.

 Because I’ve been there.

 A lot.

 And I think that’s the point of the story.

 I think it’s suppose to resonate with us.

 More importantly, I think it’s supposed to bother us and get under our skin and irritate us.

 And challenge. . .us.

 I really do think Jesus intends just that in this parable..

 Because most of us understand immediately why the workers who had  been in the vineyard all day were angry.

 They worked since morning.

 They carried on in the heat of the day.

 They’re tired.

 They’re sweaty.

 They’re aching.

 And then, at the end of the day, they watch the landowner hand exactly the same wage to people who worked only an hour. 

Of course they grumble. 

I would!

You would too.

 Because somewhere very deep inside us is this conviction that life ought to be fair.

 If I work longer, I should receive more.

 If I behave better, I should be rewarded.

 If I have sacrificed more, followed the rules more carefully, showed up more consistently, then surely I ought to receive something extra.

 But then Jesus says this,

 “The kingdom of heaven is like this.”

 And suddenly everything gets turned (as always!) upside down.

 Because the kingdom of God does not operate according to our carefully constructed accounting system.

 Hate to break that news to you today. . ..

 The kingdom of God operates according to grace.

 And grace is almost never fair.

 Now, we should say, thank God.

 But I do so with gritted teeth

 ***Ok.***

 ***Yes.***

 ***I agree.***

 ***Thank God***

 But let’s take notice of something important about the workers who come late.

 When the landowner finds them standing around, he asks them,

“Why are you standing here idle all day?”

 And they answer,

 “Because no one has hired us.”

 It’s not because they’re lazy.

 It’s not because they didn’t want to work.

 It’s not because they were irresponsible.

 No one had chosen them.

 Maybe they were too old.

 Maybe they were too young.

 Maybe they were sick.

 Maybe they were disabled.

 Maybe they simply weren’t the kind of workers anyone wanted.

 Whatever the reason, they had spent the day waiting.

 Waiting for someone to see them.

 Waiting for someone to hear them!

 Waiting for someone to choose them.

 Waiting for someone to say,

 “There’s a place for you too.”

 And eventually someone does.

 The landowner comes back.

 Again and again.

 At nine.

 At noon.

 At three.

 And finally, almost absurdly, at five o’clock, when there’s hardly any working day left. 

Still he comes looking for them.

 Still he invites them.

 Still there is room in the vineyard.

 That is what the kingdom of God is like.

 God keeps coming back.

 God keeps looking.

 God keeps calling.

 God keeps making room.

 Even when everyone else has decided that it’s too late.

 We human beings are very good at deciding who exactly has arrived too late.

 Too late to change.

 Too late to belong.

 Too late to be forgiven.

 Too late to make something meaningful out of a life.

 Too late to become the person God created them to be.

 But God it seems doesn’t own a watch.

 God’s time is not our time!

 God simply keeps going out into the marketplace saying,

 “You too. Come into the vineyard.”

 And when evening comes, everyone receives the same amount.

 Everyone receives what they need to live.

 And this is where grace becomes difficult.

 Because most of us are perfectly happy with grace when it is given to us.

 We become considerably less enthusiastic when grace is given to someone we don’t think deserves it. 

That is the scandal at the heart of this parable.

 The landowner says to the complaining workers,

 “Are you envious because I’m generous?”

 That question reaches across two thousand years and lands directly in our laps.

 Are we angry because God is too generous?

 Are we offended because God refuses to love according to our categories?

 Or the Church’s categories?

 Because God loves the person who got everything wrong?

 Because God welcomes the person who showed up at the last minute?

 Because God forgives somebody we haven’t forgiven?

 Because God makes room at the table for someone we would rather keep out there? 

The uncomfortable truth of the Gospel is that none of us owns the vineyard.

 None of us owns the Church.

 None of us owns the world.

 None of us controls the guest list.

 None of us gets to decide when someone has arrived too late for grace.

 That belongs to God.

 And God is extraordinarily generous.

 Of course, this doesn’t mean that justice somehow doesn’t matter.

 Quite the opposite.

 Notice what the landowner actually does.

 He makes certain that even the people who stood unwanted in the marketplace all day receive enough to live. 

He sees the people everyone else overlooked.

 And he gives them what?

 Dignity.

 That’s not cheap grace.

 That’s mercy becoming justice.

 It’s the kingdom of God breaking into a world that constantly assigns human worth according to productivity, usefulness, success, wealth, stats, race, sexuality, age, health, achievement, or respectability.

 Jesus says,

 That is not how God measures a human life.

 In God’s vineyard, human worth is not earned.

 It is given.

 Because you are God’s beloved child. .

 Or as we will hear toiday at Lucelia’s baptism,

 “You are Gods’ work of art!”

 You are God’s own.

 You belong to god.

 Period.

 And perhaps that is why this parable ultimately leads us to this table.

 Because here, at the Eucharist, the same thing happens.

 Nobody receives a larger piece of Jesus because they have been faithful longer. 

Nobody receives more grace because they prayed harder this week.

 Nobody receives a better cup because they’ve made fewer mistakes.

 We simply come forward.

 All of us

 The lifelong Christian and the person barely holding onto faith.

 The certain and the doubtful.

 The joyful and the grieving.

 The happy and the bitter.

 The righteous and the messy

 Which, of course, is every single one of us.

 We stretch out our empty hands.

 And God gives God’s very self to us.

 The same Jesus.

 The same grace.

 The same mercy.

 The same astonishing love.

 Some of us came to the vineyard early.

 Some came at noon.

 Some of us may have arrived only five minutes ago.

 It doesn’t matter.

 The invitation is always the same,

 Come.

 There’s still room.

 There’s still work to do.

 There’s still enough mercy.

 There’s still enough grace.

 There’s still a place for you.

 Because the kingdom of heaven is not something we earn.

 It is something God gives.

 Freely.

 Lavishly.

 Almost scandalously.

  All we can say in response—this time without gritted teeth—is 

Thank God.