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Pentecost 17
24/9/2023

Exodus 16:2-18
Psalm 105
Matthew 20:1-18

Sermon preached by Matt Julius

God, may my words be loving and true; and may those who listen discern what is not. Amen.

What is the point of the Church? The building, the ritual, the symbols, the music, the week in and week out? What are we trying to achieve with all this? And not just the weekly service, the whole apparatus of it all: the theological college, the books in the library, the Bible studies, the agencies, schools, the Synod offices? What is the Church for?

The Church exists in an intermediate space within history. The time between what some theologians call the “already” and “not-yet” of divine salvation. After the “already” of Jesus’ saving work through cross and resurrection; and before the “not-yet” of the final consummation of all things.

This eschatological horizon frames the life of the Church as it plods along through the mundane rhythms of history. By “eschatological” here I mean the grand end towards which history is ultimately aimed: the end and goal which is the reconciliation and renewal of the whole creation; the end and goal which is God’s complete dwelling all in all within and among creation itself — walking in the garden with humanity once again.

The church’s life is sustained in this intermediate space, so the story goes, by the foundation and promise established by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And the Church is carried forward by a future hope: the final enthronement of this same Lord, where every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

In this intermediate space the Church is perhaps a vessel which carries faithful souls from saving promise to final consummation. A vessel which seeks to add as many souls as possible to the voyage. And to make of the passengers a good crew for the journey.

To what end, then, the Church? To be the lifeboat for a world bound for destruction, and an enjoyable cruise for those aboard the ship? All these rituals, and songs, and sermons, a series of onboard entertainment for the cruise?

Our daily lives together mere small, trivial, fleeting fancies awaiting God’s making good on Jesus the divine down payment.

Is that the point of the Church?

Set in the context of grand — eschatological — history, the parables of the Kingdom can help guide the Church’s life between the times. Parables like the one we have heard in today’s Gospel reading, of day labourers working in a vineyard. These parables can be a kind of key for addressing the questions raised by the Church’s place between promise and fulfilment, between the already and the not-yet, between the foundation and future. Like all good parables, the story of the day labourers in the vineyard helps to unsettle and recast our understanding of ourselves, and our place within God’s redemptive project. It can be read as a parable of the long day of the Church’s existence in history.

The parable of the vineyard workers takes place in the context of a long, but single day. The vineyard owner goes out early to the marketplace and hires workers for the day. The practice of day labouring was fairly common in the ancient world, and indeed is fairly common around the world today. A day’s work should guarantee a day’s pay at the price of a day’s provisions.

Labourers intent on ensuring they get the work they need to survive are wise to get to the marketplace early. Ready to accept an offer of work, lest they arrive late and all the work is gone. Labourers who are late to the marketplace risk missing a full day’s work and going without. In the great reversal of this parable even those who are late to the worksite are given the full day’s wages — much to the chagrin of the diligent workers who stood ready and waiting early in the day.

In the context of the early Christian communities who first heard this text we can imagine the kinds of issues which come to mind. The tensions between the Jewish believers who stood ready for the coming Messiah early in the day, as it were; and the Gentiles, who came untimely late.

The Jews, of course, had spent their lives in hopeful anticipation for God’s vindication and arrival: the coming of the Messiah, the outpouring of the Spirit, the liberation of Israel and the wrapping up of history. Their deep devotion, recalling the stories of Exodus and Exile, kept alive the flickering hope of God’s reward. They had been eager to take their place in God’s harvest, keeping alert from the earliest dawn.

Who, then, are these Gentiles, those untimely born, who only recently came into the fold of this Jewish renewal movement — as if only at the end of the day? Not even with a requirement for circumcision, nor food laws, nor seemingly much else beyond the confession of the Risen Jesus.

The point here isn’t so much about the disjunction between law and grace: Torah observant Jews supplanted by Gentile converts — there is enough evidence of Jesus’ own Torah faithfulness throughout Matthew’s Gospel to put that idea to rest. Rather, the point is to pay attention to the basis of inclusion in the workforce. It is the needs of the vineyard and its harvest, and the generosity of its owner; not to the work or the pay of the labourers that really matters.

That new labourers are brought into the vineyard late in the day perhaps suggests that the abundant harvest demands even more work than the labourers can provide. The harvest is plenty but the labourers are few. The vineyard’s harvest has more than enough for everyone.

So too the generosity of the vineyard owner is not tied to the work of the labourers, but to their need. Regardless of whether a worker begins in the morning or at dusk, their need for wages and the provisions those wages pay for does not go away. The generosity of the vineyard owner is not simply in paying everyone what they deserve, but in returning again and again to the marketplace, seeking out new labourers so that none would be without.

The work of the church, like the work of the labourers, does not serve first and foremost our own satisfaction. The church does not exist merely as an elaborate hobby to while away the time before the miraculous return of Christ. Rather, in this parable is a vision for a community which models to the world a proactive concern that all would have enough, and their needs met. The church ought to be the community which seeks to include everyone in the generous harvest of God.

Set between the time of God’s planting the vines, and the great feast of wine and celebration, the great labour of the Church is to harvest the vines of God’s present work in the world. To align our own need as human beings, with the need of God’s kingdom flowering and fruiting in the midst of the world today.

The church’s life, in this sense, exists not simply between the “already” and “not-yet,” but as a labour which stitches together the promise and fulfilment. So that the gap between them might be revealed to be no gap at all. Not to build God’s Kingdom, which is God’s alone to build, but to be ready at the present harvest to gather in and celebrate the fruits of God’s work in the world.

The task of the church, then, is not to be the keeper of safe passage through a world bound for destruction. The task of the church is to be co-workers with God in the fruiting work of reconciliation in the world already. To be witnesses of joy, to be partners in justice, to be doers of mercy. The church’s life is caught between the times, but it is not defined by an absent past and distant future. The church’s life, and all its apparatus, serves the harvest of plenty where God calls all humanity into the present work of new life. Where there is more than enough work to do, and plenty enough to be enjoyed by all.

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Pentecost 15
17/9/2023

Romans 14:1-12
Matthew 18:21-35

Sermon preached by Rev. Rob Gotch

History bears witness to the primordial human reactions to being threatened, offended or hurt – aggression, retaliation, vengeance, retribution, saving face. These are the basic instincts of our humanity, and they have terrible consequences for families, communities and nations; terrible consequences that we see throughout our world.

These basic instincts provide a context in which we hear Simon Peter seeking to clarify the leadership responsibilities given to him by Jesus. He asks: ‘Lord, how often should I forgive? Should I forgive even seven times?’ To which Jesus replies: ‘Not seven times, but I tell you seventy-seven times.’ This reflects the tradition of Psalm 130 that, with God, sins are forgotten and forgiveness is unconditional and unlimited: ‘If you, O Lord, should remember sins, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be worshipped.’ Jesus knows that keeping count is not true forgiveness, but merely the postponing of vengeance until an opportunity arises to inflict a more painful retribution.

He tells a parable about a slave who owes his master 10,000 talents. Given that a talent is more than 15 years wages, this is a debt of such magnitude that it could never be repaid. The slave falls on his knees, seeking his master’s patience and claiming that he will repay the debt, which is completely ridiculous. And yet, in an extraordinary act of mercy and forgiveness, the master cancels the slave’s debt and sets him free. The former slave swaggers off, and happens to meet a fellow slave who owes him a much smaller debt. But the forgiven slave is not forgiving. He assaults and imprisons his fellow slave. The forgiven slave has received mercy, yet he doesn’t practise it. He’s been set free, but he ignores the obligations of this unexpected and undeserved liberty. His community is so distressed by this injustice that they tell the king, who summons his former slave, and rebukes him: ‘You wicked slave, when you pleaded with me, you received mercy and forgiveness. Why haven’t you shown mercy and forgiveness to others?’ The king orders that the slave be tortured until he can repay his entire debt.

And just as we imagine that the slave has received his just deserts, we’re interrupted by Jesus offering his commentary on the parable: ‘So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’ It may sound like hyperbole, but Jesus knows that the practice of forgiveness offers liberation from the seductive power of vengeance that breeds violence and disfigures all that God has made good.

We recall that, in Matthew chapter 6, Jesus teaches his disciples a prayer that has the practise of forgiveness at its core. At first glance, this prayer seems to imply that forgiveness is transactional – that we are forgiven only if we forgive others, or that forgiveness is proportional – that we are forgiven in equal measure to our forgiveness of others. But the Lord’s Prayer actually proclaims the reign of God, whose heavenly will arrives on earth among those for whom forgiveness is the source and destination of covenant life. Jesus is not merely offering his disciples another spiritual resource; rather, he teaches them a prayer that expresses his own faithful ministry, his own trusting death, his own newness of life. Indeed, it’s a prayer in which he himself is present and active. The will of God being done on earth as in heaven is nothing less than the forgiveness and reconciliation that leads people into the life of Christ, crucified and risen.

This is the point being made by the apostle Paul when he writes to the church at Rome, to challenge disunity in this new Christian community. Paul encourages them in this way: ‘We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.’

I noticed in this week’s order of service some words by a grieving widower expressing his appreciation for the care he’s received and his ‘deep feeling of belonging in a covenant community’. Belonging to Jesus Christ is a privilege and a responsibility’; it offers much and it expects much. Indeed, it invites the surrender of our own basic instincts in order that we might participate in Christ’s disruptive insistence on forgiveness, through which we’re drawn into God’s future for all humanity. A couple of weeks ago, the Rev. Tim Costello, wrote an open letter to church leaders on the Voice, in which he recalls how the gospel is proclaimed through the church’s distinctive lifestyle. He writes: ‘From its earliest days, the church has navigated conflict and inequality. Jewish Christians insisted they would not eat with Christian Gentiles, until the apostles made it clear that transcending those divisions was at the heart of living out the gospel. They had the courage to overcome resistance, and the message of freedom in Christ and one family in Christ soon carried across the world.’ ¹

In the book of Genesis are two stories that I find particularly moving, and both are stories of unexpected forgiveness and reconciliation. Genesis 33 recalls the reunion of Jacob and his bother Esau, who’d parted years before in bitterness because Jacob had stolen his brother’s birthright and their father’s blessing. Believing that the passing years will have done little to diminish his brother’s rage, Jacob anticipates their reunion by sending numerous gifts to Esau as a peace offering. On the eve of their encounter, Jacob wrestles through the night with a shadowy figure, and is blessed by a transformed destiny as he is renamed Israel. As Jacob limps towards his brother, Esau breaks into a run, not to attack Jacob but to embrace him, and Jacob declares: ‘To see your face is like seeing the face of God, since you have received me with such favour.’ And Gensis 45 recalls how Joseph, the son of Jacob sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, is now in a position of enormous power as governor of the Egyptian Pharoah. The brothers arrive in Egypt seeking food to take home to their famine-stricken community. Joseph now has the opportunity and power to make his brothers accountable for their violence towards him, and for a while it seems like he might do precisely that. But he becomes distressed by their suffering, and ultimately embraces them in reconciling grace, later declaring to them: ‘What you intended for evil, God intended for good.’

These ancient stories deeply reflect the purpose of God in Christ, crucified and risen, who forgives without limit, cancels all debts, and offers the life of reconciliation and peace. The psalmist declares: ‘If you, O Lord, should remember sins, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be worshipped.’ And Charles Wesley explains how this works in the life of community: ‘All praise to our redeeming Lord, who joins us by his grace, and bids us, each to each restored, together seek his face.’ In the midst of all that seeks to divide and conquer, may the Lord of grace give you courage to pursue his peace, as we share in his ministry of reconciliation.

And now to the holy, blessed and glorious Trinity, three persons and one God, be all glory and praise, dominion and power, now and forever. Amen.

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Pentecost 15
10/9/2023

Romans 13:8-14
Psalm 119:33-40
Matthew 18:15-20

In a sentence
The ministry of Jesus in the world’s dark places is a call to us to be, ourselves, light

As in the day
Though it is night, St Paul declares, live “as in the day”.

Clearly, he doesn’t mean, Sleep less! Rather, he takes the natural division of day and night and uses them metaphorically to develop a subtle account of the human situation after the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The day-night metaphor serves Paul in two principal ways. The most obvious is the suggestion that the night is nearly over, and that it is time for sleepers to wake. Dawn – the expected return of Christ – is about to break; awaken, then, and prepare for it.

But it’s important that Paul’s call here is not built on the threat that God is about to arrive, so you’d better look busy at good works. (Although, more good works is always good! ). The possibility of living day-fully despite the night is found in the ministry of Jesus. For Paul, even Christ on the cross is night inhabited “as if in the day”. This is God in the world’s night. The resurrection of Jesus reveals not only(? ) that heaven is coming but that, in the person of Jesus right through his ministry, heaven was already present, in the world’s night. It is just this Jesus whose future is coming.

Night as day
This means that Paul’s metaphorical night and day are now not a thing which will pass or arrive but are interwoven here, in the moment within which we live. Time now no longer “flows” – second by second, hour by hour – from bad night to good day. Time is now a choice: to continue to sleep is now to acquiesce to the dark, letting it tell us what to do or to be. To awaken is to contradict the night, without wiping it away.

When Paul reminds us, then, “You know what season it is”, it is not to present the threat of the proverbial bus which might run me down tomorrow, so that I might get right with God now. He means rather: though it feels like night, life is possible here and now. The day is not so much “coming” as an addition to night, or its completion. The day is an overlay of the night, with the implication that we are what we do in the night.

Paul’s own account of what constitutes night-like activities is somewhat moralistic, although covering the kinds of things most people would think should be avoided – drunkenness, debauchery, jealousy, and the like. To these, we might add other modern immoralities operating under the cover of darkness: the anonymous internet troll hides in the dark, as does the hidden-in-plain-sight child molester and the online scammer.

But darkness is also active in more subtle ways. Consider our modern denial of death, treating it as a night we would rather pretend is not there. Or consider our next month in politics in terms of a struggle over what is night and what is day in the form of debates over the question of the Parliamentary Voice. What are we to do with the dark colonial history and its continuing effects? We cannot simply declare – as elements of the No campaign do – that the night is overcome with the passage of time, and we are now in a new day. The night continues, but the glimmer of day is possible.

And debates about global warming will themselves doubtless heat up if the coming summer here is like what it has been in the northern hemisphere this year. What does Paul’s “as in the day” look like in the deep night of an intensely carbonised economy?

Being day
Of course, living “as in the day” is not always straightforward. But Paul calls us from any refusal on our part to see, as if we had grounds to claim that we are blinded by the night. Christ on the cross is the presence of God in the dark, God’s kingdom come. It is by this strange light that the church sees. The call to discipleship is the call to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (13. 13), and be such light in darkness. Take up your cross and follow: be day in the night. Be hope calling to despair. Be forgiveness where it is not sought. Be mercy.

None of this is because “God is coming,” and we better be ready. It is because God has already come, light shining in the darkness, revealing the truth and destiny of us and all things. God’s approach in the night of the world is the only thing which will light the darkness in and around us. For God is neither afraid of the dark, nor hides in it, nor simply washes it all away. God is the possibility of day in the night.

And this is what the disciples of Christ are to be as well. We are here today because we suspect that – though it is night – day is more than a rumour.

More than a rumour, it is a revelation – in the ministry of Jesus – and a calling – live “as in the day”.

Let us live, then, as in the day, as light in the midst of darkness.