The Song of the Vineyard

Isaiah 5:1-7 ‘The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel.’

Philippians 4:6-9 ‘Practise these things, and the God of peace will be with you.’

Matthew 21:33-43 ‘He will let out the vineyard to other tenants.’

 

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Today is the last of three Sundays of which the Gospel reading concerns a vineyard.

Two Sundays ago it was the parable of the labourers being hired to work in the vineyard, last Sunday it was the two sons asked by their father to work in the vineyard and this week it is the parable of the wicked tenants.

All speak of men and women called to the vineyard of God’s love and life.

To get the most from this parable we need to go to our first reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah.

We’ve noted that the vineyard signifies Israel, God’s first called people, it signifies the Church, and it signifies the human soul.

But something else Jesus’ first hearers would have been very well aware of is that the vineyard also signified the bride.

Take for example The Song of Songs, in which the vineyard is the setting for the wooing of the bride:

let us go out early to the vineyards
    and see whether the vines have budded,
whether the grape blossoms have opened
    and the pomegranates are in bloom.
There I will give you my love. (Song of Songs 7.12)

This is about a love affair of the bridegroom seeking his bride; and that, St Paul reminds us in Ephesians, is the mystery of Christ and his Church, and we’ll see more of that Matthew’s gospel in the coming weeks.

The Church is the Bride of Christ; Christ the bridegroom.

He seeks out and woos his Bride in the vineyard.

The vineyard, then, should be flourishing, a place of love, love that generates new life and abundance.

So, Isaiah’s song starts well:

Let me sing for my beloved

my love song concerning his vineyard:

This vineyard has rich soil, is planted with the very best grapes.

The vineyard is fertile, arid stones are cleared away, everything is full of promise and of hope.

A wine vat is placed at its heart ready for the sweet juice to flow and become a foretaste of the kingdom of God.

With everything in place the bridegroom looked for it to yield grapes.

There’s a great big ‘but’ hovering there.

… but it yielded wild grapes.

The promise is unfulfilled: instead of the rich fruit it should produce there is only inedible, sour grapes, nothing will flow from them, except perhaps vinegar.

Isaiah is telling the people of Israel and men of Judah something about themselves.

They are the bride who is unfaithful, they disappoint the trust and hope the bridegroom places in them: the lavish care and love given is rendered infertile, barren and fruitless.

Hearing Jesus’ parable of the tenants of the vineyard echoes and amplifies the prophetic message of Isaiah.

In the parable the master of a house plants a vineyard, just as in Isaiah.

And just as the bridegroom in Isaiah, the master puts a fence around it, puts in a tower and digs a wine press in it.

And he entrusts it to others to care for.

In Isaiah it is Israel and Judah; in the parable it is tenants.

Now the parable is told first to the chief priests and elders of the people.

Jesus clearly identifies them as the tenants, and at the end of the parable, if you read on, the evangelist is quite clear about that: the chief priests and elders of the people ‘perceived that Jesus was speaking about them’ (Matthew 21.45).

So Jesus identifies the chief priests and elders of the people as the tenants who beat the servants of the master and killed others: are these not the prophets who were killed, like Zechariah, son of Jehoiada the priest (2 Chronicles 24:20-21), Uriah (Jeremiah 26:20-23), Isaiah and Jeremiah, John the Baptist, all killed for telling Israel to be faithful as a bride to the bridegroom and lover of their soul?

And the connection is explicit, for us who are marked with the sign of the cross in baptism, the son and heir comes to the vineyard to bring it back to the master, for the heir is as good as the master in Hebrew thought.

That son is Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, indeed God himself, the bridegroom.

On hearing this parable, the chief priests and elders of the people wanted to arrest Jesus, but now was not their moment, that was to come, when, as Jesus quotes from the psalm:

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. (Psalm 118:22)

 

He is rejected by the builders of Israel and yet becomes the cornerstone and foundation of the Church.

He is the heir to the vineyard, who is beaten and killed.

He is the bridegroom who is rejected by his bride.

So he declares:

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.’

So the Kingdom is entrusted to other servants, the Church.

Make no mistake, God remains faithful to his ancient people the Jews, for whom we pray on Good Friday each year, that they may be faithful to the Covenant; and, at the same time, the Church becomes his Bride, in the marriage banquet of the Lamb consummated on the Cross.

The death of the Son is not the last word.

Now the cornerstone he becomes the New Temple, the meeting point of heaven and earth, the place of encounter with the Living God.

What does this all mean for us today?

First, we are not entitled to hear the parable and identify the Jewish people as the ones who killed the Son.

Humanity killed Jesus Christ.

On Good Friday it is we, the Church, who are convicted by the words of the Reproaches, as the Lord says to us:

O my people what have I done to thee? Or how have I offended you?’

And one of the verses says:

What more ought I to have done for thee, that I have not done?

I planted thee, indeed, my most beautiful vineyard:

and thou hast become exceeding bitter to me:

for in my thirst thou gavest me vinegar to drink:

and with a spear thou hast pierced the side of thy Saviour.

This speaks to all the times when we reject Christ the Bridegroom, when we are unfaithful as Christians and as a Church.

This parable is a call not to project onto others but to be faithful, fruitful tenants of the Father’s vineyard.

Christ is given vinegar to drink on the Cross: that is the produce of the corrupted vineyard.

Yet as the Passiontide hymn puts it:

Abel’s blood for vengeance

Pleaded to the skies;

But the blood of Jesus

For our pardon cries.

We are given Christ’s own blood to drink, the abundant wine of the Kingdom, our participation and grafting into the Vine of Life, Jesus himself.

The wine of Cana, at Our Lady’s prompting, raised spirits and manifested Christ’s glory, but it was just wine.

The wine of the Last Supper infused the veins of the disciples and gave life because it is not just wine, it is Christ’s own blood shed of the life of the world.

We tenants of the vineyard today receive his lifeblood, his very presence, his promise.

May we be found faithful.

You will see heaven opened - Michael, Gabriel & Raphael

 Revelation 12:7-12a ‘Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon.’

John 1:47-51 ‘You will see the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.’

‘You will see heaven opened’

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Walking along Church Street to the church last week I was beginning to muse on what I might say for this homily.

As I walked I realised that this year I hadn’t seen any Michaelmas daisies, a simple but pretty flower at this time of year.

As I thought that I looked to my right, in the field that is often flooded, and there lining the verge were, none other than, Michaelmas daises.

I must have walked past them a number of times in the preceding days but not noticed them.

Were they a message? An angelic message?

I had totally missed something that was hiding in plain sight.

There is something about the angels in that: always bringing the messages of the God of Heaven and earth who sends them, often ignored or unnoticed by we mortals, unless we tune in to them.

This time of year, late September and into October, is good for us because it reminds us to tune into things angelic.

At risk of sounding like the General Synod of the Church of England, this is the Season of Angels, Angeltide, with today’s feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, and Friday’s feast of the Holy Guardian Angels.

That said, tuning into things angelic is not restricted to a time or season, rather, angelic activity pervades our worship, the scriptures, and the Christian Year.

In our worship we unite with the angels all that we offer in the Sacrifice of the Mass.

As the Book of Common Prayer 1662 magnificently retained (thank goodness):

Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious Name; evermore praising thee, and saying: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory: Glory be to thee, O Lord most High.

And of course, the Sanctus is an angelic hymn using texts from Isaiah and Revelation.

This is a theme much loved by the seventeenth century Anglican Divine, Jeremy Taylor.

He says that ‘the holy table’ on earth is a copy ‘of the celestial altar’.

His Eucharistic theology is well articulated by the Roman Canon which connects the earthly and heavenly sacrifice through angelic means:

In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God:

command that these gifts be borne

by the hands of your holy Angel

to your altar on high

in the sight of your divine majesty,

so that all of us, who through this participation at the altar

receive the most holy Body and Blood of your Son,

may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing.

And from the scriptures we could reference the cherubim, those angelic cousins, guarding Eden after the expulsion of our first parents; the angel who warns the disregarding Balaam, but is only seen by his donkey; the angelic visitors who receive hospitality from Abraham and Sarah - the list goes on.

Angels are there in the psalms: ‘In the presence of the angels I praise you, O Lord.’

An unnamed angel comes to Joseph, and surely the most joyous task of the angelic host is to proclaim the birth of the Messiah and singing, ‘Glory to God in the highest’.

But their activity doesn’t stop there: angels minister to Christ following his baptism; they are with him in Gethsemane; they attend the tomb at his Resurrection; they surround his Ascension into heaven; they lead apostles from prison; Philip to the Ethiopian eunuch and guide Cornelius to Peter.

Angelic activity rightly pervades our worship, our scripture and the every day because they are messengers of the Most High.

The angels still connect heaven and earth, as with the ladder stretching from Jacob’s pillow to heaven, an angelic sign pointing to Christ himself, which unfolds in the dialogue with Nathaniel in our gospel reading:

‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man’.

So at this time of year we glory in the angels in their ministry: you will see heaven opened.

Today we focus upon three of them: Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.

Those who have prayed the Office of Readings today will be familiar with Saint Gregory the Great’s homily that speaks of these three.

He reminds us that the word ‘angel’ is an office not a nature.

Although an angelos - the Greek word for ‘messenger’ - an angel is defined by the message they bear, not the messenger they are.

Yet the message can’t be unravelled from the messenger.

These three are messengers of salvation in its most powerful forms.

To the great Gabriel is given the highest task in preparation for the Saviour.

He goes first to Zechariah to announce the message of the conception of John and then to the Blessed Virgin to deliver what Saint Gregory calls, ‘the greatest message of all’, the Annunciation, so dear to us in Walsingham and at the heart of the charism of this holy place.

In that Holy House of Nazareth Mary joyfully responds to Gabriel, ‘Be it unto me according to thy word’.

Snubbed by Zechariah, heard by Mary, Gabriel takes back the ‘fiat’ of the Virgin to the Most High, the assent that the Word will be made flesh.

Gabriel’s message is salvation through the birth of the Saviour and the one who prepares His way.

Raphael brings salvation in the healing power of God that is manifest in Christ’s earthly ministry.

Raphael, St Gregory tells us, ‘wiped away the shadows of blindness from Tobit when he touched his eyes to cure him’.

Salve is healing; salvation is the healing remedy for the sickness of our mortal condition.

That healing, communicated by Raphael, is fulfilled in Jesus Christ as revealed in the Gospels.

And when Christ heals today, through the intercession of Mary and the saints, Raphael delivers that healing, restoration and salvation to us.

Finally, Michael, of whom we heard in the first reading, is an angel of salvation because he is engaged in manifesting the triumph of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ over the powers evil and darkness.

Michael’s name means ‘Who is like God’ and Michael’s primary task is to tell the ancient enemy, that fallen angel, that it is not him.

Satan is the adversary of God and nothing like him, even if human heads are turned by his wiles.

So as we celebrate the archangels today, and all things angelic on Friday, we’re left with a question.

We’re in an era when more messages fly around the globe than ever before.

‘To message’ has become a verb when once it was a noun, but perhaps in the spirit of St Gregory it always was.

In a message-soaked age – 24 hour news, social media, WhatsApp and email pinging - when angelic messages sit in the spiritual inbox unopened, or don’t get through the firewall of our vanity and deafness, or bounce back as celestial spam: what are we missing?

The angels are indefatigable because they are messages and messengers of the Most High.

I missed the Michaelmas daisies for days before looking out for them and being open to the possibility of their presence.

Let’s be ever more alert to the holy messengers of God, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and all the heavenly host, to lift our hearts and minds to the One who sends them.

‘You will see heaven opened’

 

 

 

Let your 'yes' be 'yes'

 Ezekiel 18:25-28 · ‘When a wicked person turns away from the wickedness he has committed, he shall save his life.’

Philippians 2:1-11 · ‘Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.’

Matthew 21:28-32 ‘He changed his mind and went. The tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you.’

 

Which of the two did the will of his father?

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Who knew that Walsingham has a vineyard?

As it happens I did know, because amongst the many wonderful welcome gifts my family and I have been given since our arrival here, one was a bottle of Walsingham wine.

And very enjoyable it was too!

Last week the grapes were being harvested, even though this year’s weather with a bad frost early on and lack of rain later, means it’s not the biggest yield.

On Wednesday I visited the vineyard, tucked behind the old railway near the Catholic Shrine, to see the harvesters picking the grapes by hand.

It evoked last week’s gospel reading about the master of the vineyard hiring labourers to go into his vineyard, and this morning’s, in which a man asks his two sons to join him in working his vineyard.

Vineyards are an important setting for Jesus’ parables.

St Gregory the Great likes to see the human soul as a vineyard of God’s presence.

Just as vines need tending, so the task in the vineyard of one’s soul is attending to the disciplines of prayer, of seeking after virtue, of allowing Christ to tend our souls so that they are fruitful, like a vine.

In the parable today the vineyard is the setting for a key question for us about discipleship and our response to the Lord’s call, and its implications, in our lives.

The direct context of this passage is that the chief priests and elders of the people had heard John the Baptist call them to the vineyard but, despite outward appearance, they failed to repent and turn their lives around, but when John called the tax collectors, the prostitutes and even the run of the mill sinners to repentance they did.

Origen of Alexandria summarises it well for us:

in this parable the Lord spoke to such as promise little or nothing, but in their works shine forth; and against those who promise great things but do none of these things that they have promised.

So we too are invited to a deep self-examination about how we respond to the will of God: will our ‘works shine forth’?

Two sons are asked by their father to work in the vineyard.

One says ‘no, I won’t go into the vineyard’ but then does.

The other says, ‘yes, of course I will go into the vineyard’ but fails to.

‘Which’, Jesus asks, ‘does the will of his father?’

The answer is clear enough, it’s the first, he didn’t ‘talk the talk’, but he did ‘walk the walk’: he did what had been asked of him.

That is of far more value than the willing child who says yes and does nothing.

We should want to be like the first son; but, if we’re honest, we know we are prone to act – or not act - like the second.

Something very wonderful happened to the first son, and Jesus commends it to his hearers, it is a change of mind, a change of heart, what we call repentance.

The Greek text of this passage tells us that it was a sense of remorse that the son felt that prompted his change of heart.

Guilt, remorse, regret are generally regarded as bad things, and they are if they are left to fester and corrode our souls.

But they can also be the prompt we need to amend our lives.

So, for example, if I feel guilt over neglecting my obligations to a family member this can be the prompt to amend my neglect and make it joyful service.

If I have remorse over something I have done, rather than wallowing in misery, I can make restitution.

The son in the parable who said ‘no’ to his father felt guilt, remorse and regret over his unwillingness and this became the spur to act as he was called, despite his initial ‘no’.

The flip side is that enthusiasm and saying yes, needs to be followed up by action: prayer, reception of the sacraments, acts of mercy.

The letter of James expresses this nicely:

be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. James 1.22-25

The ladder of virtue that we seek to climb takes us even beyond the ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but integrates our ‘yes’ into our action.

We’re not saved by good intentions and neither are we saved solely by doing good.

One son said ‘no’, one said ‘yes’ to the father’s call, neither said the words to which we should aspire:

Be it unto me according to thy word.

In the Blessed Virgin we see the one who both says ‘yes’ to God and acts in fidelity to his will.

Through her total openness to the Father’s will, in the simple word, ‘Fiat’ - ‘let it be’ - she is free from guilt and remorse and is always open to the intention and purpose of the Heavenly Father.

In that she is a mirror and reflection of her Son, Jesus Christ, who was ‘obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross’.

Let us respond then to the call to work in the Lord’s vineyard, sharing in the life of the Christ the Vine, who shed his blood for the salvation of the world.

May we walk into the vineyard of his love as ‘fiat’ people, ready to respond in word and deed like she who did the will of her heavenly Father.

 

 

Called to Christ's vineyard

 Isaiah 55:6-9: ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts.’

Philippians 1:20-27: ‘For to me to live is Christ.’

Matthew 20:1-16: ‘Do you begrudge my generosity?’

 

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Moving into the Vicarage here in Walsingham last month I spent more time than I would care to on the phone - ‘on hold’ - to a national broadband supplier, who I won’t identify from the pulpit.

Aside from the dreadful tinny music, the experience of being left waiting ‘on hold’ is a weirdly frustrating one.

Even being told you’re first in the queue, next in line, doesn’t really help, especially when the answer is not very helpful.

None of us likes to be left hanging around, loitering or rudderless.

The contemporary human experience seems to be one of purposeless that leads increasingly to despair.

The ideas and accoutrements of modern living that were meant to make us so happy and liberate us have proved to be empty and increase the frustrations and not assuage them.

And, as has been observed, human beings are meaning making creatures, and so we want a sense of purpose, purpose that is informed by hope, the setting of our sights on something beyond us and higher than our experience.

The prophet Isaiah captures this in ancient and enduring wisdom.

He reveals purpose and meaning in seeking the Lord, in calling upon him and walking in his paths.

Contrary to therapeutic methods, that focus on self, we find that our meaning as persons is found by looking outside ourselves and beyond our imagining:

For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts.

That puts us in our proper place; not oppressively, but raising our sights to God our maker and redeemer, the Lord who is always beyond us, greater than us.

When we understand the divine-human order, then we can see that human dignity is found in the One who stooped down to us, to raise us up: Christ, born of the Blessed Virgin, humbles himself to share our humanity to raise us up to His divinity.

As Christians we live in and between the realities of heaven and earth.

St Paul captures it in the passage from his letter to the Philippians we heard today.

He savours what the Lord gives him to do in this world, sharing the apostolic faith, but at the same time yearns ‘to depart and be with Christ’.

St Paul lives life in the end times now.

The Lord has not put him ‘on hold’ but reveals through him the Christian calling, both to savour life in this world and to look to the life of the world to come.

We say it in the Creed:

I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

We look forward with hope, that Christ will be honoured in our bodies, whether by life or by death.

Either way, Paul says, ‘Let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ.’

This takes us to the Gospel today, which we must first put in context within St Matthew’s gospel.

The parable of the workers in the vineyard is the last one Jesus tells before entering Jerusalem.

He knows what awaits him there.

No sooner has he finished telling the parable than he says: “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed and condemned to death.”

Notice that: the parable points to the mystery of the cross. 

On the cross the Lord says he will draw all people to himself.

Christ came to seek the lost, the rudderless, the loiterers.

The master of the vineyard is uncannily Christlike because he goes seeking precisely those people.

This parable reveals the gratuity, the grace, of God in drawing us back to the vineyard from which we were expelled through sin.

That ‘vineyard’ was Eden, the garden of creation.

The Lord, like the master in the parable, now seeks those who will labour for his kingdom, not reject life in the kingdom as Adam did.

That is the grace that goes out searching, to which we are invited to respond.

Grace is not a currency, it’s not wages or reward; it is unmerited, it’s boundless, it is all sufficient.

Yet the characters in the parable try to turn it into a debate about workers and shirkers, about labour rights and working conditions.

They miss the point.

And so will we if we think God’s grace is a reward, or that more is given to some people than others: remember, grace is unmerited, boundless, all sufficient.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.

The master – Christ - goes out to seek the wanderer, the lost, the misguided, the ones wrapped up in themselves, to invite them into the kingdom of heaven.

He goes out relentlessly: at the third, sixth and ninth hour, and again at the eleventh.

That echoes the Cross.

At the third hour, in St Mark’s Gospel, the crucifixion begins.

It’s the time of that the morning sacrificial lamb was offered on Israel’s behalf.

At the sixth hour, the middle of the day, the brightest time, darkness fell.

At the ninth hour Christ breathed his last: the time of the slaughter of the evening Passover lamb in the Temple.

The eleventh hour is dusk, when Christ’s dead body is laid in the tomb.

From the cross – his Passion and death - Christ opens the gates, not of a return to Eden but to a renewed creation, born from the blood and water flowing from his pierced side.

At the third, sixth, ninth, eleventh hour, the Lord will seek out those who are ‘on hold’ in lives without him.

On the day of resurrection he will reveal himself - in the garden - to Mary Magdalene, who mistakes him, actually correctly identifies him, as the one who tends the garden of the renewed creation.

His mercy abounds; this parable is not a spreadsheet of the payroll department of the kingdom of heaven: it is grace, it is an invitation, and one you and I are called to pass on, as we join Christ in the market-place inviting the idlers, the rudderless those without hope into the garden of his kingdom and into his Church.

For the householder’s vineyard is a picture of the Church.

Come to the vineyard, where the grapes are produced that fill the cup of salvation and point forward to the ‘new wine’ we will drink with Christ in the Father’s kingdom (Matthew 26:29).

That invitation is not ‘on hold’ it is here, it is now.

Blessed are those who are called to the supper of the Lamb.

Disproportionate forgiveness

First sermon preached at St Mary's, Little Walsingham, and earlier at St Peter's Great Walsingham and Houghton St Giles

Sirach 27:30-28:7 ‘Forgive your neighbour the wrong he has done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray.’

Romans 14:7-9 ‘Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.’

Matthew 18:21-35 ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.’

 

The Lord is compassionate and gracious,

slow to anger and rich in mercy.

 

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One of the great blessings, and challenges, of the Christian life is forgiveness – receiving forgiveness and giving it.

This challenge is being addressed in today’s gospel in the Lord’s conversation with Peter and in the parable that comes from it about someone who is forgiven but then who cannot then forgive.

Aren’t we all locked into that to some degree?

All too many people, even in the life of the Church, hardly dare believe that, in the words of the psalm, ‘The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and rich in mercy’.

The psalm is absolutely serious – and do go back and read it – when it describes the heart and nature of God and the power of His forgiveness:

It is the Lord who forgives all your sins,

who heals every one of your ills,

who redeems your life from the grave,

who crowns you with mercy and compassion.

What a glorious promise!

And if we do accept that forgiveness are we ready to be mirrors of forgiveness?

So there’s a question posed by the Gospel today: is this promise of lavish forgiveness on the radar of your life as a Christian?

So Jesus shows that true forgiveness, God’s forgiveness, is lavish and generous and it doesn’t grudge: and it needs putting into action.

70 times 7 equals 490: that’s a lot of forgiving to be getting on with.

It’s as if Jesus is saying ‘do the maths!’

This is not to test your powers of mental arithmetic, but to emphasise that the forgiveness we give to others is a reflection of the forgiveness we receive from God, through the saving death of Christ on the cross, out of love for the world (cf John 3.16).

And in saying ‘do the maths’ the Lord is drawing on a character from the book of Genesis, chapter 4.

Lamech is a relentlessly unforgiving character, who takes disproportionate vengeance on those who slight him: he says that he won’t just take sevenfold vengeance, but seventy-seven fold (Genesis 4.23-24).

Recognise it?

Jesus flips that round for Peter and you and me.

Forgive, not just seven times but seventy-seven fold.

Lamech dealt in disproportionate vengeance, and vengeance, of any sort, is not the way of Jesus Christ and not worthy of his followers: Jesus deals in disproportionate forgiveness.

So today’s gospel is all about how we live our lives as forgiven and forgiving people.

It is first about life in the Church – that’s why Peter is part of it – it’s about being reconciled to God and to one another, and then about how that forgiveness spills out into our daily lives, thus revealing the ways of the Kingdom of God.

Forgiveness demands honesty, frankness and realism from the forgiver and the one seeking forgiveness.

If I cannot be real about my sins, I can never be ready and receptive to receive forgiveness.

Farmers and gardeners alike know what happens to hard dry ground when the rains come: the rain runs off the surface and leaches any remaining goodness.

When the surface of the ground is broken up and worked then the water can soak deep into the ground and water the roots of the growing seed and plants.

So too the watering of our souls with God’s forgiving grace means that the hardened shell we protect ourselves in must be tilled, so that forgiveness can soak into us and wash out the toxins of sin.

The Church, in her wisdom, gives us a powerful sacrament to aid this in our spiritual lives.

The Sacrament of Confession is the moment when we place ourselves before God - honestly, frankly and realistically - to receive his forgiveness.

Kneeling in penitence, articulating the hard and gnarled realities of our lives that repel God’s grace, is a healing balm and saving medicine.

That is what the Sacrament of Confession gives.

Confession is perhaps the most under used Sacraments of the Church, and yet one that can give deep and enduring comfort.

Getting back to regular confession - or getting started as penitents - reacquaints us with what forgiveness is about, and draws us close to the heart of the guardian of our souls.

Confession is good for us, and those with whom we share our lives, because it is the hinge of the Lord’s Prayer, praying to the Father: ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’.

You cannot truly forgive until you have been forgiven.

And the parable makes clear; there is little worse than the forgiven person who then fails to forgive.

It shows how crushing an inability to forgive really is, especially from someone who has been relieved of the debt of sin.

The very word forgiveness has a gift at its heart.

It is a gift to receive and a gift to give.

The parable is not a tale with a moral at which we nod our heads, but is a prompt to live lives as forgiven sinners who themselves put forgiveness and reconciliation into practice.

Know yourself to be forgiven, so reacquaint yourself with God’s forgiveness in the Sacrament of Confession.

It’s hard but eternally rewarding: the clutch of sin is washed away at baptism, but our sinfulness abounds, as does God’s disproportionate forgiveness.

Seek out a priest – and there are plenty around here - knowing that he voices God’s forgiveness of your sins, the Lord ‘who’, through his saving death on the Cross, ‘forgives all your sins, who heals every one of your ills, who redeems your life from the grave, who crowns you with mercy and compassion’.

And, knowing yourself to be forgiven, forgive.

Today’s gospel is then a relentless and demanding account of forgiveness and the spiritual corrosion of the failure to seek forgiveness and forgive.

Forgiveness is not a path of weakness but a noble, virtuous way that needs the strength of God’s grace.

Try it out this week! Amongst those who rile you, offend you, disturb you, be they family, friends, colleagues, even new parish priests: no doubt there will be plenty of people and moments who can provide you with the opportunity to give disproportionate forgiveness – what a gift that is to you!

So, as redeemed sinners let us now be ready to come to receive the Lamb of God, who when entering under our roof says the word and heals us.

Treasure new and old

1 Kings 3:5-6a, 7-12 ‘You have asked for yourself understanding.’

Romans 8:28-30 ‘He predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.’

Matthew 13:44-52 ‘He sells all that he has and buys that field.’

Preached at St Michael and All Angels, Croydon, at the Parish Mass, on the 30th anniversary of the priestly ordination of Fr Tim Pike.

And Jesus said to them, ‘Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.’

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What a field! What treasure! What a pearl!

Who wouldn’t want to trade everything in for something so very wonderful and precious?

The parables in today’s Gospel reading speak of the great spiritual riches of the kingdom of heaven: treasure to be sought and found for which we trade-in everything.

Jesus tells us: the kingdom is like treasure; the kingdom is like a merchant who seeks fine pearls.

So they sell up and buy that one field with its treasure, and that one pearl.

The parable isn’t independent financial advice – in fact it’s very unwise financially – but it is spiritual wisdom: offload everything and anything that impairs your grasp on the kingdom of heaven.

The Patristic writers, the Church Fathers, variously, see the field in which the treasure is found as the Church; the treasure within the field is the scriptures; the pearl is Jesus Christ the bread of life.

St Paul says ‘the kingdom of God is… righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.’ (Romans 14.17)

The kingdom of heaven is not a human social or political programme but it is the reign and rule of God, his sovereignty in our world and our hearts and the intimacy of a relationship with Jesus Christ the Word made Flesh.

People seek the kingdom in different ways.

Some are like the man in the first parable.

They encounter God in the Church and commit themselves totally to it but their instinct is to cover it up: once they are in the field they uncover the treasure and delight in it.

The next parable spoke of someone who traded in pearls.

This is the sort of person who trades in spiritual type things, is seeking meaning and purpose in life, knowing there’s something more.

These people dabble and trade in those sorts of pearls, until the day when they find the Greatest Pearl is in front of them, and they can have it, if they renounce their dabblings and delusions.

It’s a bit like the Magi at the birth of Christ.

It wasn’t pearls in their case but the stars: and when they saw The Star, they doggedly followed it and look where it led them.

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You inhabit that field – the Church – and the treasure is here for you: continue to delight in that treasure; yearn for it.

When we open the treasure chest of the Church there are riches beyond imagining: the Sacraments that nourish and sustain us; spiritual tools to fight off the Evil One; virtuous living shaping us in faith and hope and love; prayer that roots us into the very life of God; the saints who accompany us, give us good examples of Christian living and pray for us as we go on our journey.

You have The Pearl before your eyes and in your hearts: the pearl that is Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Mary.

Christ is The Pearl who gave everything for us, so that we can give everything to him and for him.

Knowing the field of the Church; the treasure within it; knowing Christ the Pearl of Great Price we are also given a challenge to tell others about this.

But if you found treasure in a field, or a priceless pearl, would you tell others about it?

We think of these things as a ‘zero-sum game’: if you win, then I lose; if you have the treasure then I can’t.

But the paradox is that the kingdom of heaven doesn’t work like that; the love of God doesn’t work like that.

Righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit endlessly generate more righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Even human parental love does not diminish with the birth of each new child; rather, it grows.

The love a parent has for one child doesn’t halve when the second is born, it doubles! Three, it triples; four, it quadruples, and so on.

That’s a good argument for large Christian families!

If that’s true for human parents, it is truer for the his treasure of our heavenly Father.

When you and I have His treasure, we don’t have half the treasure each, there is double the treasure.

These are great parables to ponder.

That takes us to the third of the parables this morning, of the great net cast into the sea.

This parable sounds trickier and quite tough, but in fact is very merciful: God is all-merciful.

The kingdom of heaven, Jesus says, ‘is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind.’

The kingdom seeks to embrace everyone, draw in everyone.

At the same time our worthiness to be participants in the kingdom of heaven is not taken for granted.

To be citizens of the kingdom of heaven places demands upon us: we are to renounce evil and embrace righteousness.

No one is destined to be outside the kingdom but through our evil deeds, our lack of love and our rejection of the field, the treasure and the pearl, we can put ourselves outside it: that is enough to make us weep and gnash our teeth.

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Mindful of Fr Tim’s 30^th anniversary of Ordination to the Sacred Priesthood these parables give some important pointers to the life and task of the priest.

The priest must have discovered the field for himself, renounced everything and bought the field and its treasure.

The priest must tend the field where the treasure is to be found and invite others into it to discover the treasure.

The priest must know the Pearl of Great Price and behold and adore that Pearl, Jesus Christ.

Supremely the priest has the task of presenting the Pearl of Great Price to the people.

In the Mass this invitation to the treasure and to receive The Pearl is distilled into these words:

Behold the Lamb of God,

behold him who takes away the sins of the world.

Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.

And you stretch out your hands to receive Him.

The parable of the Great Net gives another dimension to the priestly task, and that is calling the faithful to holiness of life and rejecting evil.

The priest joins Christ in saving souls: no priest wants anyone to go to the fiery furnace but, as fishers of men, with the apostles, want all to be drawn into the saving net of the Church.

That task happens by calling you to repentance, by enabling you to make confession of your sins so that you rediscover the Treasure and The Pearl in your lives day by day.

Along with the altar, the priest wants to be busy in the confessional!

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Jesus said to the crowd, ‘Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.’

Today let us give thanks for Fr Tim’s 30 years as a priest, for the way each one of us shares his life and he ours.

Pray for him, support him, love him: for, like the master of the house, who Jesus commends in the Gospel, he brings out the treasure and pearl of Christ, in wisdom ever old and ever new, and presents it afresh to you.

Let us then go together, with joy, to seek the kingdom of heaven.

Deliverance and renewal in Christ

 Exodus 19:2-6a ‘You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’

Romans 5:6-11 ‘If we were reconciled by the death of the Son, much more shall we be saved by his life.’

Matthew 9:36-10:8 ‘Jesus called to him his twelve disciples and sent them out.’

 

Today’s first reading and Gospel both speak of a movement.

The movement is from a desert place to the promise of refreshment and life.

In Exodus that’s a physical deliverance, and in the Gospel that is a spiritual deliverance.

It’s the movement of life before we know Jesus Christ to life in Christ.

It’s the movement of salvation which St Paul says:

we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

God’s pattern is one of deliverance and renewal: deliverance from the power of darkness and renewal through life in His presence.

When we are in the wilderness, or in thrall to things that are spiritually corrosive or dangerous, then God will bear us on eagles’ wings and bring us to himself.

It is in this pattern that he delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

It is in this pattern that he sees the crowds who are harassed and helpless, ‘like sheep without a shepherd.’

Sheep without a shepherd lack direction, they don’t know where to find good pasture, they fall into ditches and cannot get out, they are vulnerable to predators.

That is the human condition without the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ.

In Exodus the people who were extracted from Egypt were formed into a people, into a nation, whose first allegiance is to the Lord.

They are told that they will be a treasured possession, and they will be formed into ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’

This priestly people will offer prayer and spiritual sacrifice to the Lord: this echoes the words of the first letter of St Peter addressed to the Church:

…you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. (1 Peter 2.9)

Jesus knows that the human condition needs men and women acting in His Name to be a royal priesthood, a holy nation to aid the movement from darkness into his marvellous light.

The Apostles are the first men called to that task.

The tools they are given are the tools that are needed to get to the heart of things, tools that are powerful.

Society has various tools that can help people feel better but never ultimately lead them to salvation.

Politics is a tool for society, but it is ultimately about the ‘art of the possible’ and that does not give us meaning.

Health and wellbeing is a tool to boost people but even the fittest people can be harassed and helpless.

Work is a tool for purpose, but not everyone has it and many people are in work that does not fulfil them.

So Jesus gives the Apostles tools and power that no one else can give.

This is authority over unclean spirits, the power to heal disease and every affliction.

How often do I hear people say they are harassed and helpless, although they usually use phrases like, ‘I am just so tired’, ‘I’m running on empty’, ‘I’m tired in a way sleep can’t fix’.

Jesus sees that need, knows that need, and respond to that need in the only way that will restore, refresh and renew.

That movement is from darkness to light, slavery to freedom, life without Christ to life in Christ.

The Apostles will do that by being the Church; and we will do that by being a holy people built on the witness of those men and the power given to them.

Look around Waddon: what do you see?

I see lives in need of Christ.

And here, in this church, I see people who Christ can use to save and to heal, I see labourers being called to the harvest.

What are the tools we’ll use in this mission?

Those tools include, but are more than, social action; include, but are more than, local and national politics; include, but are more than, health and wellbeing.

Ultimately the power comes when we take up and embrace the commission of Jesus Christ first given to the Apostles:

And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay.

Fed by Christ’s word and sacraments, committing our lives to the Good Lord, who wills our good and not our harm, who gives us a future with hope, is the way we move from death to life in all its abundance.

Lord, give us this bread always!