Tag Archives: Philippians

God’s Vineyard (October 4, AD 2026; Proper 22)

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Readings (Track 2)

When things go well, the grape harvest brings joy. When things don’t go well, it gets complicated. Happily, our God is creative enough—not to mention downright stubborn—that “complicated” doesn’t get the last word. That’s more or less what today’s readings are about.

As you probably guessed listening to the readings, Jesus is playing off Isaiah’s “love-song:” the vineyard, the watchtower, the wine vat. That love-song is transparently about the Lord’s history with Israel, a history intended to result in justice and righteousness, but actually resulting in bloodshed and a cry.

Isaiah, of course, had a lot to say about justice and righteousness. If we asked what justice and righteousness are for, he might direct us to another of his oracles: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, / the leopard shall lie down with the kid, …They will not hurt or destroy / on all my holy mountain” (11:6a, 9a). Jesus’ “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10b) applies equally to the Lord’s project with Israel: life in abundance for all, not just the top 1%. But faced with bloodshed and a cry the project is going to get more costly. The hymn about Jesus Paul cited that we heard last week talked about that: “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness” (Phi 2:6-7). And in today’s Gospel we’re approaching that hymn’s center.

Jesus, playing off Isaiah’s love-song, updates it. The vineyard owner sends servants to collect the produce, or, literally, the fruit. “Fruit:” Matthew uses the word more than any of the other Gospels, and almost always metaphorically. John the Baptist: “Bear fruit worthy of repentance” (3:8). Jesus: “You will know them by their fruits” (7:16a). And in Jesus’ parable about the sower and the soils: “Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty” (13:8). It would be imprudent to assume that this fruit is simply Isaiah’s “justice and righteousness.” It would be equally imprudent to assume that they’re much different. Early in the Sermon on the Mount we heard “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (5:20). So Jesus’ updating of Isaiah’s love-song is not about redefining the fruit, but is about the vineyard owner’s son now being onstage.

Before moving on to Philippians, what of “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom”? The Jews are out and the Christians are in? While the parable’s been read that way, that reading runs counter to Matthew’s framing. Recall the ending: “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.” Matthew hears the parable as being pretty tightly focused.

But on to Philippians! With both vineyard parables still ringing in our ears, how do we hear Paul? One popular reading of texts like this text: after Jesus, God’s given up on looking for justice and righteousness (Isaiah) or fruit (Matthew) from us; all we have to do is have “faith.” But with this reading why does Paul say “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead”? Now just before that, that phrase about Paul’s preferred righteousness “through faith in Christ” might better be translated “through Christ’s faithfulness” (so the NRSV note and the CEB). This shifts the focus from our faith to what God has accomplished through Christ’s faithfulness, that is, opening for us the way to life by participating in that faithfulness.

What does participating in that faithfulness look like? Paul’s description here is one that’s liable to have us looking for the nearest exit: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” So it’s important to notice that this is in essence what we heard Paul calling on his hearers (us!) to do last week: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited…” (2:3-6 NRS alt). Sometimes this participating involves literal death; more often it involves accepting that I’m not the center of the universe—which is often harder. The world tells us that “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” is a sure way of ending up as roadkill. But we’ve already heard Jesus tell us “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Mt 16:25). So we do have a choice we need to keep making.

The important thing here is that Paul isn’t talking about imitation, as we might try to imitate Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. Recall his language: “in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him… but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own,” or, from last week’s reading “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (2:12-13). There’s effort involved (“straining forward to what lies ahead”), but it’s not a self-improvement project.

Participating in Christ’s faithfulness: that sounds like what Paul’s colleague John the Evangelist records Jesus talking about: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.… Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:1-2, 4-5).

So here we have, if you like, a third vineyard parable. The Lord, it seems, has solved the vineyard/fruit problem by Jesus himself becoming the vine, and those participating in Jesus’ faithfulness, the branches.

OK, preacher, you might say, you’ve just swapped one metaphor for another: what’s John’s “abide” about? Well, too briefly, it’s about two things. First, it’s about the typical practices in our Episcopal tradition, “the means of grace” as the General Thanksgiving puts it. Perhaps its most concentrated form is in the Holy Eucharist, in which we ask God to roll up the sleeves for two projects: “Sanctify [make holy] them [the bread and wine] … to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son… Sanctify [make holy] us also that we may faithfully receive this holy Sacrament, and serve you in unity, constancy, and peace.” (No points for guessing which project involves more exertion on God’s part!) Second, it’s about the neighbor, because the neighbor is usually the test of whether I’m looking to my own interests or to the interests of others. Perhaps we should simply add “the neighbor” to our listing of the “means of grace.”

In any case, Jesus talking about being the vine, with the branches bearing fruit brings us back full circle. “The wolf shall live with the lamb, / the leopard shall lie down with the kid, …They will not hurt or destroy / on all my holy mountain.” Life in abundance for all. That’s still the endgame. Participating in Christ’s faithfulness our fruit witnesses to it and, God knows, perhaps even contributes to its realization.

“Are you envious because I am generous?” (September 20, AD2026; Proper 20)

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Readings (Track 2)

Today’s parable starts with a familiar scene, a landowner hiring workers early in the morning. But then the landowner keeps going out to hire, even as late as five in the afternoon. In the evening the workers are paid, starting with those last hired. They receive the usual daily wage (surprise!) and those hired first receive the same wage (big, unpleasant surprise!). There’s a conversation about that, and then Jesus closes the parable with “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” That only partially matches the parable; what’s it doing there? It turns out that it links this parable with two conversations that Matthew’s recently narrated. At the beginning of Matthew 18, the disciples ask Jesus “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus puts a child in their midst: “Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” I suspect that Jesus’ response went in one ear and out the other, because in the next chapter, after the encounter with the rich young man, who asks what to do to have eternal life but balks at Jesus’ answer (“sell your possessions and follow me”), Peter says “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” That sounds like another version of “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Jesus responds with breathtaking promises—which end with “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first” (Mt 19:30). So today’s vineyard parable looks like a continuation of Jesus’ response to Peter.

Peter’s question (implicitly) and the parable (explicitly) focus the question of God’s justice. In the parable justice is affirmed: “did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?” But justice is not the only value in play: “Or are you envious because I am generous?” And that question is pretty much the backbone of this sermon. On the one hand, the landowner (God!) values generosity over justice. As James puts it: “mercy triumphs over judgment” (2:13). On the other hand, demands for justice can sometimes—not always—be expressions of envy, part of the “Who is the greatest?” competition.

Our lectionary chose—appropriately—Psalm 145 and the ending of Jonah to accompany today’s Gospel. Recall in particular the last verse of the psalm that we read: “The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, / slow to anger and of great kindness.” That’s good news—until applied to those guys who only worked one hour in the vineyard or our competitors or enemies.

Our enemies—which brings us to the Book of Jonah. God had called Jonah to prophesy against Nineveh, capital of the Assyrian Empire, the chief threat to Jonah’s nation’s survival. Jonah had fled that call, and there was that business with the large fish. So Jonah finally arrived, prophesied, Nineveh repented, and the Lord repented of the threatened calamity, bringing us to today’s reading. Jonah explains why he fled: “[F]or I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Jon 4:2). (Parenthetically, both Jonah and the psalm are quoting from the Lord’s self-description in the wake of the Golden Calf incident, easily the most important self-description in the First Testament, which description was the reason why there was an Israel after the Golden Calf incident.) Jonah saw—rightly—that “gracious” and “merciful” threatened the justice he quite understandably wanted visited on Nineveh.

The lesson here is not that it’s a bad idea to argue with the Lord about justice. The First Testament in fact records two strikingly similar arguments over the fate of cities: this one, and the argument with Abraham about Sodom. That one is explicitly about justice: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Gen 18:25) And by the end of the conversation the Lord has agreed that ten righteous will spare the city. Both Abraham and Jonah are arguing for justice, but Abraham is the one leaning into the Lord’s gracious mercy. There are different ways one can argue for justice; “be more like Abraham” might not be a bad take-away.

As I noticed earlier, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last” links back to the disciples’ question “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Among other things, it’s Jesus’ warning that in most circumstances that’s a really unhelpful question. But it keeps appearing. We humans find it really difficult to drop out of that game. Even the Philippians.

Paul’s letter to the Philippians, which we’ll be hearing also the next three Sundays, is a study in Middle Eastern indirection. He doesn’t get around to what looks like one of his chief concerns until last chapter: “I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel” (4:2-3a). And already in the first chapter (in the part the lectionary omits) he’s preparing the ground. Speaking of his imprisonment: “Some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment” (1:15-17). Paul’s not ready to talk about envy and rivalry in Philippi, but he wants to get the subject on the table. Envy and rivalry can power a lot of very good work. But envy and rivalry are fatal to what Paul considers most important: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus” (2:5). So in today’s reading: “live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ… standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel” (italics mine).

Two bottom lines for this sermon suggest themselves. First, since there are various ways of calling for justice, better to be like Abraham than Jonah. We really want to avoid Jesus asking us “Or are you envious because I am generous?”

Second, ironically, our failure to disengage from the “Who is the greatest?” game can drive much good work, creating its own sort of blindness. We really want to avoid participating in that scene described by Jesus toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount: “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers’” (Mat 7:22-23).

As I mentioned, Jonah and our psalm draw from the Lord’s self-description in Exodus. Let’s close with that:

“The LORD passed before him, and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.’ And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped” (34:6-8).

The Damascus Road was the easy part

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A Sermon on the 6th Sunday of Easter (5/5/AD2013)

Acts 16:6-15; Psalm 67; Revelation 21:9-12, 21-22:5; John 14:23-29

We don’t often think of it in these terms, but the Book of Revelation may be the most important book in the Bible for understanding Christian worship. It offers a set of images to describe this world’s future: a future better than we deserve, a future we certainly can’t achieve. It is a future so glorious that it’s only right that we start celebrating, giving thanks for that future now. And so one of the most frequently used words for our worship is eucharist, a transliteration of the Greek word for celebration. Further, the same book describes the worship revealed to the seer: angels and archangels and all the company of heaven singing out “Worthy is the Lamb…” So in our Eucharistic prayers when we say “with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven” we’re acknowledging that our worship is joining with something bigger.

That future is a given. “After this I looked, —writes John—and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’” (Rev 7:9-10 NRSV) In the midst of a world bleeding from more divisions than most of us can keep track of, it sounds wonderful. And we have the privilege of witnessing to this future now in our actions.

Wonderful. Piece of cake. Or—in light of the first reading—maybe not. Because if we pull out a map to make sense of those first verses it’s clear that Paul’s trying to go anywhere except Macedonia. And why would that be?

Well, although the Jews had been oppressed by many nations (Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, etc.), it was only the Macedonians, Alexander the Great and the leaders who followed him, that had seriously tried to abolish Jewish faith and practice. Less than two hundred years earlier Antiochus Epiphanes, paragon of enlightenment, had offered countless Jews a simple choice: eat pork or be tortured to death. (Read about it in the books of Maccabees!) Which nation had shown itself to be the deadliest enemy of the Jews? Macedonia. And Paul was supposed to go there?

“Those who love me—Jesus had said—will keep my word.” Paul, loving Jesus in the only way that mattered—kept his word. It took the Holy Spirit vetoing his travel plans twice and a vision in the night, but Paul kept Jesus’ word, went to Macedonia.

That was good news for Macedonia: for Lydia and her household, for others whose story we’ll hear next week. It was good news for our ancestors, for Macedonia represented the beginning of Paul’s mission to Europe, to our people. It would be nice if Acts had reported that Paul was eager to evangelize our people. Kicking and screaming would be closer to the truth—but we’ll take it.

And it turned out to be good news for Paul as well. Years later he writes a letter that readers refer to as the joyous letter. There’s so much joy in the letter, joy over what’s happening in that city, the joy that the Christians there give Paul, the ways they nurture his spirit. And that’s the letter to the Philippians.

We come together each week to celebrate the future that God is preparing for this planet. People “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” will participate. Some days we find it easy to witness to that future; other days—like Paul—we find it not so easy. Some days we deal with folk we hope are part of that future; other days… “Those who love me—Jesus had said—will keep my word.” May God grant us grace to continue loving Jesus, to continue witnessing to his vision of our planet’s future each of our days.