On the Vineyard Workers

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and

of the Holy Spirit, amen. Today is one of those

Sundays with great many themes, far too many

for us to ponder here in a sermon. For example,

first the church is preparing us. for tomorrow's

feast of the birth of the Virgin Mary. It's a

birthday celebration of the Theotokos, and it's

the first of the 12 great feasts of the church.

So we'll have vespers at 4 today and liturgy

tomorrow here in the cathedral at 9. We also

had readings from the scriptures preparing us

for next week's feast day. That's the second

of the 12 great feasts of the church. the exaltation,

or you can say the elevation of the precious

cross. You know, the cross will be brought out,

it will be decorated with basil and flowers,

and we will sing before thy cross. So for that,

we heard from the Gospel of John a very famous

verse for football stadium end zones. Coincidentally,

the NFL begins its season today. And that verse

is, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,

even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that

whoever believes in him should not perish but

have eternal life. For God so loved the world

that he gave his only begotten Son. You see in

the end zone, John 3, 16. Maybe not anymore,

but I simply offer those things for you to consider

on your own. Now, just in time for the grape

harvest in wine country, we're also given a parable

told by our Savior that takes place in a vineyard.

It's an autobiographical parable rather than

one with a moral exhortation. Autobiographical.

Takes place just after Palm Sunday when the Lord

delivers it. Only a few days before his crucifixion,

he describes what will happen and what had happened.

He tells the story of a vineyard, God's vineyard,

a precious, bountiful thing. The Lord builds

his parable on that found in Isaiah chapter 5,

Isaiah 5 · chapter mention

which starts, My beloved had a vineyard on a

very fertile hill. He dug it. and cleared it

of stones, and planted it with choice vines.

The story goes on. The vines made thorns and

wild and sour grapes, and the vineyard owner,

God, tore it out. The end of the parable that

Jesus tells, the son of the vineyard owner, Jesus

himself, obviously. The son of the father has

been taken out of the vineyard as Golgotha is

outside the walls of Jerusalem, and he's crucified.

At the end, Jesus quotes the famous Psalm 117,

where it's familiar to us all. The stone which

the builders rejected has become the cornerstone

of the building. I told Father, Damien, I wasn't

going to talk about this last night, but I can't

resist myself. Stone and sun, Eben and Ben in

Hebrew, they sound the same. Jesus is saying,

it's not the stone, it's the sun that is the

cornerstone now. And not just a messenger of

God, not just a prophet, not a religious teacher,

but the divine sun. Of one essence with the Father.

And by this Son, as we say, all things were made.

This Son, says the epistle to the Colossians,

is the icon, the image of the invisible God.

Everybody hear that. The icon of the invisible

God. He who sees Jesus, sees the Father. Jesus

said that himself. Jesus is saying this because

he's identifying himself with that story. And

he's telling us, lo, I am with you even to the

end of the age. Because the workers in the vineyard,

they thought that the owner was gone. Because

it says in the gospel, he went into a far country.

He was gone, the owner of the vineyard. And he

was expecting the harvest and the fruit. But

the workers felt, he's gone. Let's kill the heir

and we will have his inheritance. But of course,

God is not absent. God is never absent. We offer

unto him thine own of thine own. He is everywhere

present and fill us all things. Though I am with

you, says the Savior, even to the end of the

age, he is not absent. It is I that am absent

from God. How? I feel God's absence because of

my absence of any heartfelt prayer. You know,

there's no quality without quantity. You can't

get good shooting a basketball. until you've

shot that basketball many times. You can't get

good hitting that golf ball, as I've learned

recently, without going out there and trying

with some instruction. You can't get good at

playing scales and music without some practice.

We can't develop and mature in the life of prayer

without some quantity. Always directing our heart

toward the Lord. God seems absent because of

that, because of my faithlessness, my forgetfulness

of the blessings that the inheritance belongs

to God, not to me. I forget his goodness. I'm

disobedient to the ways of the church, which

many seem to think the church is somehow separate

from Jesus Christ. He is the head. It is his

body. The church is his. We can't say, I believe

in Jesus, but what the church teaches, I can't

accept that. It's the same. It's the Lord. And

we focus on horrible things so often. How many

times do I hear in confession anger at politicians

and world leaders? And our hearts are filled

with this kind of resentment and anger, which

does you no good at all. We should be filled

with sorrow, yes, and many, many prayers. But

anger will not help you. What do we do then?

What should we do? Well, you heard St. Paul.

Watch. Stand fast in the faith. Be brave. Be

strong, he says. Let all that you do be done

with love. We heard St. Paul a moment ago say

that. If we, workers in the vineyard of the church,

we have been given that task, we have been blessed

to share the fruits, to receive the fruits of

the church, peace, love, joy, mercy, long -suffering,

gentleness, self -control, all of these things.

If we, the workers of the vineyard, betray the

love of God because of our selfishness, because

of our lack of faith, because we don't stand

strong and fast, how are we different from the

people described in the parable, the elders and

the religious leaders? Think carefully. This

story is not about them. It's about us. It's

directed towards us. That we have been grafted

on to the vine of Israel. We were just wild shoots.

Now we've been grafted on to the house of God.

And we are now told in this parable that there's

an accountability that we have to give. I was

in Turkey last year. How many churches? that

I see destroyed, turned into mosques, piles of

rubble, ancient churches in ancient places that

we read about, St. Nicholas of Myra, Nicaea,

Chalcedon, Constantinople. We are getting to

the point where this church decoration is almost

done. But the main decoration that we have to

worry about is not decoration. It's the vineyard

of our heart to nurture that vine so it is filled

with prayer and love and mercy and works of alms

and true belief. The church is often called God's

vineyard. This is his vineyard. It's full of

good fruit. planted by Christ himself through

the gift of the Holy Spirit. It's hedged about

with Christ's commandments and the holy sacraments

that protect our life of intimacy with Jesus

Christ from the chaos and the delusion in the

world from anxiety, from fear, and from demons.

It's our task, brothers and sisters, to nurture

that vineyard in our heart and then to be able

to just live what we know of God, which is different

from the delusion of the world. The church is

hedged about. It has a tower. It has a wine press.

It has all those things that Jesus talked about

in the parable, which are the commandments and

the scriptures and the prayers and the liturgy

and the fellowship. The garden is a hospital

for those who are being saved. We cannot give

them false, counterfeit medicine. That's what

the world can give. We have something else from

God, which is pure and holy and good. And the

fruit will grow. We don't want this taken away

from us. We don't want this to be destroyed.

So let us, brothers and sisters, cleanse our

hearts of anything that grows within that is

not the vine with the true fruit. Let us tend

it and let us give thanks and pay back. Give

to the owner of that vineyard that which is due

to him. To love God with all our heart. all our

strength, all our mind, and our neighbor as ourself.

Let's remember how much we have been given. To

our Lord, our gracious Lord, be glory now and

ever to ages of ages. Amen.