I’m sure that we’ve all been to a wedding reception at one time or another, in fact we’ve probably been to quite a few wedding receptions over the years. So we know from experience who gets invited to these things, that those people are usually the friends and family of the bride and groom. And because we have this experience, we’ll also know about two other sorts of people associated with wedding receptions; those who are invited but don’t turn up, and those who do turn up without an invitation, the people we often call gate-crashers. And because we have this experience and knowledge, we should find it quite easy to apply some of the lessons of this morning’s Gospel parable to our own situation in the Church. Because we find all these same types of people in and associated with the Church.

As I’m sure you know, the Church is often referred to as the ‘Bride of Christ’, which obviously makes Christ the bridegroom. When we speak about the Church like this, we’re speaking about the Church as the Body of Christ, the Church with a capital C, in other words, the people who make up the Church as opposed to the church with a lower-case c, which is what we use when we’re talking about a church building or when we speak about coming to church. So, for example, on Sunday, the Church has gathered together in church to worship the Lord and receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. And once we understand what we mean when we speak about the Church and the church, it’s quite easy to see coming to church as attending a wedding feast and it’s quite easy too, to see how the parable of the Wedding Feast applies to the Church and its people.

As we think about the people who come to church, we can see all the different kinds of people I spoke about a little earlier. First of all, we have the friends of the bride and groom.

In the Farewell Discourse from St John’s Gospel, Jesus says to his disciples,

“You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”

So the friends of the bridegroom are those who know what Jesus wants them to do and do it. And in a similar vein the friends of the bride, are those who know what being a member of the Church requires of them and do that.

We know that we also have the family of the bride and groom with us in church because, in St Matthew’s Gospel, we read this;

And stretching out his hand towards his disciples, Jesus said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” 

So the family of the groom are those who do God’s will. Part of doing God’s will is building up the Church. We know that because Jesus called the Church into being to proclaim the Gospel throughout the world and to teach people the things he commanded his disciples to do, which was, in fact, to do God’s will. So the Church exists to do God’s will, to teach people what God’s will is, and to encourage them to do God’s will too. So the family of the groom and  the family of the bride are one and the same people.

Then, of course, we have another group of people associated with the Church, not that we’ll see them as we look around church, because these are those who’ve been invited to the feast but who haven’t turned up.

I think we have to be clear about who these people actually are though. These are not people who’ve never heard the Gospel. They’re not people who have little or no knowledge or understanding of Jesus. These people don’t even know about the feast so in that sense, they haven’t been invited. There is an invitation for them, but they haven’t received it yet so they can’t really be blamed for not turning up to the feast, for not coming to church.

When we speak about those who’ve been invited but haven’t turned up, we’re really talking about those people who have heard the Gospel and do know about Jesus but who’ve decided not to come to church anyway, and that  includes both those who’ve never come to church and those who have come to church in the past but don’t come now. These are the people in the parable weren’t interested in the wedding feast and went off to do other things instead or were even hostile to those who reminded them that they’d been invited and I’m sure we all know and have dealt with people like these.

One of the great problems we’ve had in the Church recently is the great number of people who haven’t come back to church after the coronavirus pandemic. I know from my conversations with these people that many of them started doing other things on Sunday mornings when they either couldn’t come to church or felt it wasn’t safe to come to church and these things are now more important to them than coming to church. I’ve also met and spoken to many people who’ve stopped coming to church either because of some problem they’ve had with another member of the Church or because they’ve become disillusioned by things that are happening in the Church more generally. And some of these people can become quite abusive and even aggressive if you try to persuade them that they should come back to church.

It’s always very sad when people stop coming to church, whatever the reason, and it’s only natural that we should want to persuade these people to come back to church, But I think we need to take note of something else we find in this morning’s Gospel. We notice that in the parable, the king doesn’t keep sending servants out time after time to remind the invited guests that the feast is taking place and that they have been invited. What he does instead is sends them out to invite other people, different people, to the feast. And I think that’s a lesson we need to take on board. We have lost people from our churches because of the coronavirus pandemic. That’s sad and it would be nice to have those people back again. But we shouldn’t fixate on getting those people back. We should try, of course, but we’d probably do far better to focus on finding ways to invite new people into our churches to replace those we’ve lost.

That brings us to the last group of people I spoke about earlier, those who turn up at a wedding reception without an invitation, the gate-crashers. But I want to talk about this group of people in a very specific way. In the parable, the uninvited guest is recognised because he’s not wearing a wedding garment, but one way we can spot a gate-crasher is that they don’t bring anything to the party. As we know, when we’re invited to a wedding reception, it’s customary to bring along a gift, or at least a greeting card for the bride and groom. But gate-crashers don’t do that because they don’t really care about the bride and groom. They don’t care who’s party it is, they just care about  the party and what’s in it for them, maybe a free drink and some free food. And in a sense, we can, and do find people like this in the Church and in our churches. These are people who come to church but bring nothing with them, that is, they come to church but don’t bring any gifts for the bride and groom, for Christ or his Church with them. They might have gifts, but they don’t offer them to Christ or his Church to be used in God’s service.

One of the great problems many, many churches have is finding people to carry out the very necessary tasks that have to be done in the Church. Everyone who comes to church must know that there are a multitude of things that need to be done to enable the day to day business of being a parish church to carry on. And yet, and to quote a phrase, I wish I had a pound for every time I’ve asked, or heard someone else ask, someone if they’d consider taking something on for the Church or do something in the church only to be met with an evasive response like, “I’ll think about it” or “I don’t really have time at the moment”, or “I’ve never done anything like that before”, or perhaps, “I’m not really very good at things like that”. All responses which, in my experience and in reality, almost invariably mean “No”.

But we all have gifts, we all have something to offer Christ the groom and his bride the Church. So when people come to the feast, to church, but don’t bring these gifts with them isn’t that tantamount to gate-crashing the feast? We all have gifts, and these gifts were given to us by God to be used in his service and in the service of Christ and the Church. But if don’t use these gifts we might as well not have them. So isn’t coming to church and refusing to use the gifts we have the same as not bringing them with us? Isn’t it the same as turning up at a wedding reception without a gift for the bride and groom, turning up as an uninvited guest? And we know what happens gate-crashers don’t we? They’re thrown out of an earthly wedding reception, and as Jesus tells us in the parable of the Wedding Feast, they’ll be thrown out of God’s heavenly wedding feast too.

It’s not likely that we’ll be thrown out of the Church, or a church, for being an uninvited guest, but we don’t want to risk be thrown out of that heavenly wedding feast. So let’s make sure that we are invited guests and act like invited guests at the earthly wedding feast we call coming to church. Let’s be friends and family of Jesus the groom and his bride the Church by understanding what’s expected of us as friends and family and doing what’s expected of us as friends and family. And let’s not gate crash the feast by turning up without a gift for the bride and groom, let’s bring our gifts with us and use them in service of the bride and groom so that, when we get to God’s heavenly wedding feast we’ll be wearing the right outfit and be recognised as invited guests.

Amen.   

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Propers for the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Trinity 19) 15th October 2023

Entrance Antiphon
If you, O Lord, laid bare our guilt, who could endure it?
But you are forgiving, God of Israel.

The Collect
O God,
forasmuch as without you we are not able to please you;
mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings

Missal (St Mark’s)        
Isaiah 25:6-10
Psalm 23
Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20
Matthew 22:1-14

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Isaiah 25:1-9
Psalm 23
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14

As you know, last Sunday, we celebrated Harvest Thanksgiving in our parishes. As usual on our day of Harvest Thanksgiving, we heard readings relating to harvest time , and we heard the parable of the Rich Fool, a man who had a great harvest but kept it for himself which, whilst it might have made him rich and important in his own eyes, made him poor and foolish in God’s eyes. But we could have used many different readings last Sunday to say something very similar because the Scriptures are full of imagery taken from an agricultural setting and perhaps especially from harvest time. How many parables did Jesus tell, for example, that speak of harvesting crops of grain and fruit?

But these stories very often speak about harvest as a time to separate the good from the bad don’t they? As a time to separate the wheat from the chaff and the weeds, and as a time for separating good fruit from bad fruit. And because Jesus explained his parables to his disciples, we know that when the Scriptures speak about harvest they’re very often using harvest imagery as a metaphor for something else, and that the stories themselves are allegories intended to convey a deeper meaning. Jesus’ explanation of his parables tell us that what this harvest imagery is very often being used for is to speak about a different kind of harvest, not as harvest as a time to collect produce from the land, nor as a time to separate good crops and good fruit from bad, but as that time when God will gather all people together from the earth and separate those who’ve done good, those who’ve done his will, from those who’ve lived according to their own will and done evil as a consequence.

And this is the theme of our readings this morning. Our reading from Isaiah speaks about a vineyard that’s going to be destroyed because it produced nothing but sour grapes. We know this is an allegory for Israel and its unfaithfulness to God because Isaiah tells us;

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel,
and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting;
and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed;
for righteousness, but behold, an outcry!

Isaiah also speaks about the care the owner of the vineyard, the Lord, had lavished on his vineyard. The Lord asks what more he could have done for his vineyard. He says,

What more was there to do for my vineyard,  that I have not done in it?

We know that one of the ways the Lord cared for his vineyard was by sending prophets to call the people back to obedience to the covenant they had with the Lord, and back to righteousness through that. We also know that the prophets were harshly treated by the people. They were imprisoned, beaten, and if they didn’t want to be killed, as some were, they had to flee for their lives. And this is the theme that Jesus takes up in this morning’s Gospel parable. He speaks about the landowner, the Lord, sending servants to collect the produce of his vineyard, the grapes, the good fruit of the vine. But instead, the servants are beaten and killed. These of course, are the prophets. Finally, the Lord sends his son because he thinks that the tenants of the vineyard  are sure to respect him, even if they didn’t respect the servants he’d sent. The son in the parable is obviously Jesus himself. But of course, the tenants treat the son in the same way because they think that if they kill the Lord’s son, they can take the vineyard as their own. Jesus asks what will the Lord do to these tenants when he comes himself? And of course the answer is that he’ll put an end to them and give the vineyard to new tenants who will give the produce of the vineyard to their Lord.

This is a parable that serves as a warning. We know that the Lord’s vineyard is the House of Israel because the Scriptures tell us that . So this is a warning to Israel that, as Jesus tells his hearers,

“….the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.”

We know that the fruits the Lord is looking for are justice, mercy, righteousness, love and so on. We also know that, through faith in Christ, the kingdom has been given to us; we are those new tenants of the Lord’s vineyard. But does that make the Lord’s demand for good fruit from us any less than it was from the old tenants? No, it doesn’t. The kingdom is given to those who do produce fruit. So this parable also serves as a warning to us too, that if we don’t produce the good fruit the Lord is looking for, we’ll come to the same sorry end as those old tenants who mistreated and killed the Lord’s servants and his Son.

We might think that this warning doesn’t apply to us is the same way that it did to the people of Israel. I’m sure we all accept that whilst the Church does produce good fruit, and it does produce a lot of good fruit, there are a few bad apples in there too. But we don’t beat people up and kill them for pointing that out, in the way that the people of Israel did to the prophets. And we certainly don’t mistreat and kill Jesus so that we can take over the Church for ourselves. Or do we? Actually, yes, we do. We do these things in all sorts of ways.

As I said, we must accept that amongst the good fruit the Church produces there are a few bad apples. But try pointing out to a bad apple that they are one and see what happens. People who see things that are wrong in the Church, or people in the Church who are doing wrong, and speak up about it can be just as harshly treated as those servants of the Lord, the prophets, were by the people of Israel. They might not be physically beaten and killed, but they can be made to feel very unwelcome in the Church and by the Church. They can be criticised, be the subject of slander, and be ostracised by the Church, or at least by those members of the Church with the most to lose if people actually listened to these prophetic voices and acted on what they said. They might not be imprisoned or killed, but they can be silenced to the extent that they may as well be locked up or dead. It happens. But what do we think the Lord will do to those who treat people so badly for simply asking people to produce the fruit the Lord wants? Will he not treat them in the same way as the landowner treated the tenants in this morning’s parable?  

But even if this happens, surely we can’t be accused of killing the Son so that we can have the Church as our own?  Well again, yes, we can, and we do. How often have we seen things happen in the Church, things done by people of the Church, that are contrary to the teaching and example of Jesus, and yet these things are simply accepted and become the norm? How often have we seen and heard things that are contrary to the teaching and example of Jesus being promoted as the way the Church needs to do things? One way we see this so often in the Church is in the way the Church mirrors society. I’ve mentioned before the example of a parish in a world-famous medieval market town which has eleven clergy attached to it, whilst in less affluent or perhaps less famous places, two, three or more parishes have to share one priest between them. Is this inequality based on worldly wealth and status really what Jesus taught and showed in his earthly life? No, it’s not. And if the Church thinks this is right and good and acceptable, isn’t this a case of the tenants killing the Son and taking over the vineyard?

Another way this happens very often in parishes is in the ‘Church as social club’ situation that I’ve also spoken about in the past. That’s what happens when certain people in a parish decide the Church should be made up of their friends and people who think like them, like the same things they like and want the same things they want. What usually happens then is anyone who doesn’t fall into those categories can be made to feel unwelcomed, unwanted and unvalued. Those who aren’t in the ‘club’ can be excluded from things and prevented from having a voice in the Church. People can be deliberately kept off PCCs and other decision-making bodies in the parish or, if they should happen to be on something like that, shouted down in meetings or have their ideas ridiculed. Do we find authority or approval for treating people like this in Jesus’ teaching and example? Do we find approval or authority for taking over the Body of Christ in this way in Jesus’ teaching or example? No, we don’t. But this happens too, and when it does, what is this other than tenants killing the Son so that they can take over the vineyard? And what do we really think the Lord will do with those who do these things when he comes? Will he not bring them to the same sorry end that the landowner did to the tenants in this morning’s parable?

Scripture tells us that if we want to be gathered into God’s storehouse we must bear good fruit. The prophets tell us this; Jesus tells us this. In his Letter to the Galatians, St Paul lists the fruits we’re called to produce, the fruits of the Spirit; love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control. And Jesus tells us that we’re to show these fruits, these qualities, to all people, not just to our family and friends, not just to those whom we like and who like us, not just to those whom we agree with and who agree with us, not just to those who are wealthy, high and mighty in worldly terms, but to all people, whoever and whatever they are. This is what it means to bear and produce the good fruit of the vine that God wants from us. If we can produce this fruit, we have Jesus’ assurance that the kingdom of heaven will be ours. If we don’t. Well, then we have Jesus’ warning what we can expect come harvest time.

Amen.    

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Propers for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Trinity 18) 18th October 2023

Entrance Antiphon
O Lord, you have given everything its place in the world, and no one can make it otherwise.
For it is your creation, the heavens and the earth and the stars:
you are Lord of all.

The Collect
Almighty and everlasting God,
increase in us your gift of faith that,
forsaking what lies behind and reaching out to that which is before,
we may run the way of your commandments and win the crown of everlasting joy;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)        
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:9, 12-16, 19-20
Philippians 4:6-9
Matthew 21:33-43

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:9-17
Philippians 3:4-14
Matthew 21:33-46

I don’t think it’s any secret that Harvest Festivals are not universally liked. Some people absolutely love them and for those people, their parish’s Harvest Festival is something to really look forward to and also to spend a lot of time and effort on. Other people though, loathe Harvest Festivals and for them, the parish’s Harvest Festival is something to be left to others in preparation, and to be suffered on the day itself. I don’t want to go into the reasons people have these very different opinions of Harvest Festivals, but what I will say is that, personally, my problem with Harvest Festivals is with how completely OTT some people can go with them. I’ve known churches where people have acted as though the annual Harvest Festival is more important than Christmas and Easter rolled into one. That’s quite preposterous in itself but has been made all the worse by the petty rivalries and jealousies and arguments that have been caused because of people’s over inflated opinion of the Harvest Festival, and very often of themselves too, it must be said! But that’s a problem with people and their behaviour, not with Harvest Festivals per se.

These days we seem to have largely moved away from speaking of Harvest Festivals and instead, we call them Harvest Thanksgiving services. And I think that’s a much better name for them because it’s a name that reminds us of what these services are really supposed to be about. They’re not about who gives the most or gets the most, they’re not about who has the best or most prominent display in church on the day, they’re about giving thanks to God for the food we eat. And it can’t ever be wrong for us to be reminded of our need to give thanks to God, whatever the reason.

But as we think about our Harvest Thanksgiving, we’re also reminded that it takes a lot of hard work to produce the food we eat. It takes people to sow the seed, raise the crops to fruition, harvest the crops when they’re ripe, process them so that they can be eaten, and transport them to shops and markets for us to buy. And this reminds us that, as well as our need to give thanks to God for all his good gifts to us, we have to work with God and use what God has given us if it’s going to be of any benefit to us, or to anyone else either. And this applies whatever the gifts we’ve been given and every particular gift we’ve been blessed with.

We all know, I’m sure, that to be given a gift and not to thank the one who’s given us that gift, is to be ungrateful. But showing ingratitude is not simply a matter of failing to say ‘Thank you’ to the one who gave us the gift. To be given a gift and not use it can also be seen as showing ingratitude because by not using the gift we’ve been given we can show that we don’t appreciate it, didn’t really want it and don’t see that we have any need for it. We can also show our ingratitude for a gift by wasting it. And we can show our ingratitude to God too by not using the gifts he gives us, by wasting them or, perhaps especially, by misusing them.

God gives us gifts for a reason. We might speak about having gifts in order to build up the Church or to bring the love of Christ to other people, but we could simply say that our gifts are given to us so that we can fulfil that great commandment to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves. And so, if we use our gifts to do these things, as God intends us to use them, we show our gratitude to God for the gifts he’s given us. And by using them in the way he intended us to, we also give glory to God because in the process of using our gifts we show something of God and say something about God to the world. But there’s a flip side to this. If we waste our gifts by not using them, then we show our ingratitude to God, we also fail to fulfil the great commandment, and we give no glory to anyone. But misusing our gifts is just as bad, if not worse than not using them at all.

If we do good works to show our love of our neighbour but don’t give thanks to God for the gifts that have enabled us to do that, who are we really glorifying, God or ourselves? And if we use our God given gifts for selfish purposes, then whether we thank God for them or not, we’re glorifying no one but ourselves. For example, if we rise to the top in our work or profession, there’s no point in thanking God for the gifts that have enabled us to be successful, if we’ve used, abused and trampled underfoot anyone and everyone who’s stood in our way, along the way. And if our success has enabled us to have a very high standard of living, there’s no point in thanking God for the gifts that have given us that, if we couldn’t care less about people who are struggling to make ends meet, especially if our success has come at their expense.

Doing these things is glorifying ourselves at God’s expense, patting ourselves on the back for something we should be thanking God for. And this is the lesson, the warning, of the parable of the Rich Fool. This man was successful, and his success had made him rich. I think we can assume from that that he was a gifted man, who’d used his gifts. Being gifted though doesn’t guarantee success unless you’re prepared to work hard at what you’re doing. So we can probably also assume that he was a hard-working man. So, gifted, hard-working and successful. But also very ungrateful and very selfish. A man who patted himself on the back for what he’d achieved rather than thanking God for the gifts that had enabled him to achieve it. A man who used what God had given him for his own selfish purposes, so that he could sit back, relax, take it easy and have a good time, whilst other less fortunate people worked his land, harvested his crops, pulled down his old barns and built  bigger ones, and gathered his crops into them. Perhaps a measure of this man’s selfishness can be seen in his words. Have you ever noticed how self-centred they are? His monologue is all about ‘I’ and ‘me’. Do we really think this man pulled down and built barns and gathered crips into them personally? Surely someone else would have done this for him. But this a very common way of speaking isn’t it. Rich, powerful people saying ‘I’ have done this when what they really mean is someone else has done this for me. In effect, taking the glory for someone else’s toil and sweat and then keeping the lion’s share of the benefits for themselves.

Such was the Rich Fool in the parable. A man who was richly blessed by God, and richly rewarded in earthly terms, but who was poor in God’s sight because he was ungrateful and selfish. A man who had a great deal to thank God for and who could have given great glory to God because of that by using his gifts in the service of God and his neighbour. But a man who, instead, chose to glorify himself. And that did make him poor, and foolish, because, in the end, self-glorification can only last as long as our earthly lives last. In the end, all out pride and boasting about how great we are and how well we’ve done, all that ends. And when it ends, all we have is the hope that God will glorify us by raising us to eternal life with him. And if we want that hope to be a sure hope, then we’d best make sure that we’ve not been the kind of fools whom Jesus spoke and warned us about in this morning’s Gospel.

To use some harvest imagery taken from the hymn, Come, ye thankful people, come, we have been planted in God’s field and we have been given all that we need to ripen into fruitfulness in God’s service. Our hope is that , when the Lord himself comes to gather his harvest, we may be among the wholesome, pure and fruitful grain that will be gathered into God’s store. So let’s be thankful for what God has given us. Let’s show our thanks, not only in praise, but by using all his gifts in the way he intends then to be used, to give him glory by showing our love for him and our love of our neighbour through the thankful, unselfish way we use his gifts. If we can do that then, by God’s grace and mercy, we can relax in the knowledge that we’ve stored up many good things for ourselves, not just for many years, but for eternity. 

Amen.

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Propers for Harvest Thanksgiving 1st October 2023

Entrance Antiphon
The earth has yielded its fruit, the Lord our God has blessed us.

The Collect
Eternal God,
you crown the year with your goodness,
and you give us the fruits of the earth in their season:
grant that we may use them to your glory,
for the relief of those in need and for our own well-being;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)        
Joel 2:21-24, 26-27
Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 7-8
1 Timothy 6:6-11, 17-19
Luke 12:15-21

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Deuteronomy 8:7-18
Psalm 65
2 Corinthians 9:6-15
Luke 12:16-30