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.