Septuagesima (January 31, 2021)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

“So the last will be first, and the first last.”

There are, I think, two natural human impulses. The first is license, and the second is scrupulosity. License is taking advantage, it’s a laissez-faire way of living. We see it in what could only be described as the kind of gross permissiveness so prevalent in our larger culture where even basic boundaries are pushed and fundamental truths brought into question. The other end of the spectrum is scrupulosity, that is a kind of legalism that really prevents us from being fully human. Interestingly, this is the sin Martin Luther’s confessor warned him against. Most religions and “spiritual” worldview trend toward one extreme or another where they either take license or they are so scrupulous that they can’t really permit human flourishing. One of the many geniuses of the Christian religion is its ability to walk between those two lines of taking license and scrupulosity and we see that played out in today’s readings.

In our Gospel lesson from Matthew 20, Jesus tells a story comparing the kingdom of God to a vineyard. The master of the vineyard hires workmen at the beginning, middle, and end of the day Each time he hires them, he is careful to lay out how much they will be paid — 1 denarius. The denarius was the average pay for a day’s work. So no matter what time of day you were hired, you would get paid the same amount. The master’s practice garners complaints from the early crowd. They were, after all, actually putting in the full day’s work while the other workers were hardly pulling their fair share. In response to this grumbling, however, the master rebukes the earlier crowds, reminding them that all got paid the amount they agreed to and that the master paid out of his generosity. Jesus ends the lesson with the claim, “So the last will be first and the first last.”

To understand the story, I think it’s helpful to take a step back and look at what St. Matthew is trying to do by including this parable here. Throughout the Gospel, the story that unfolds is about Christ establishing a New Community, what he terms the Kingdom of God.” At the beginning of the Gospel, Jesus spreads his message primarily to the Jewish people. However, the author, Matthew (who was a Jewish tax collector and would have been on the margins of his own community as a result), is keen to point out over and over again that the Jewish religious elites, the Pharisees, and the crowds of Jewish people tend to reject Christ. As the Gospel progresses, then, the door of this new community is being closed to the Jewish establishments and opened to non-Jewish Gentiles. By the time we get to our passage this morning from chapter 20, Matthew has celebrated the faith of a non-Jewish Canaanite woman (15:21-28), fed a crowd of 4,000 Gentiles (15:32-39) while rejecting the Pharisees and Sadducees who demanded a sign from him (16:1-4). So this morning’s parable has to be read in light of the larger movement of the book. A parable is a story which is used to point to a deeper truth.

Here, the master of the vineyard stands for God.

The vineyard is a common way of depicting God’s chosen people (see Ps. 80:7 and Isaiah 5:1-7).

The early workers are the Jews, those who had access to God via their national history, the Law, and Scriptures.

The late comers are the Gentiles.

The point then, is that Gentiles can still receive grace from God because the grace anyone, Jew or Gentile, receives is always a gift from God.

That is the message Matthew is attempting to convey in his immediate context. His community, along with most other 1st generation churches, was most likely trying to figure out what to do with Gentile Christians and this historical event would have stuck out in Matthew’s mind since it provides a blueprint for the church. The principle of Gentile inclusion is good and true but ultimately occasional, meaning it was a concern for Christ’s followers in their day. However, today, most of us aren’t wondering if Gentiles can be included or not because many of us are Gentiles who are being included.

For many Christians in Matthew’s day, the principle of this parable wasn’t so clear which is why St. Matthew seems preoccupied with this theme. But the principle being applied to this situation is that the Gospel is for all people. And that message expands beyond its occasion. It is a universal truth based on God’s nature, his interventions into history, and the Scriptures themselves. In this regard, then, the parable touches on a deeper reality than merely the occasion which it addresses. It points to who God is and the grace he extends. Whether we are early comers or late comers to the Gospel, whether we were “good” or “bad” before our baptisms, the Gospel, that Christ died for our sins, is for us and we should be happy that we have a merciful God who loves us enough to extend any grace to us at all.When we become aware of that fact, we can’t be like the grumblers who complain about what the others are getting. This parable and the principle to which it points should make our hearts burn with love for God because of the grace he extends to all of us miserable offenders, as we acknowledge ourselves to be in the Prayer of Confession at Morning and Evening Prayer.

This is why our Epistle lesson for today seems puzzling or maybe even out of place. If our Gospel lesson focuses on the grace God gives us, then today’s epistle lesson seems to be about works, two things we’ve been taught since the Reformation that contradict each other. In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul uses the metaphor of a race as a picture of the Christian life. Runners exercise self-control and exert themselves in competition just so they can receive a wreath (which was the ancient world’s version of a trophy). But wreaths are perishable. They shrivel up and die eventually. So Paul argues from a lesser to a great: If an athlete is willing to subject themselves to all this simply for a perishing prize, how much more should we train ourselves to receive a heavenly, imperishable reward from God? Paul speaks of his own resolve, saying, “Well I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air; but I pommel my body and subdue it lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. The point here is not for Paul to pit God’s grace and human works against each other but to help us see how these things are so intricately related.

Grace is unmerited and we receive it in Baptism where we are made dead to sin and alive in Christ. However, when we are given that grace we must tend to it and participate with it. God’s activity in enlightening our hearts at Baptism enables us to live for God. But there is a flip side to that reality: we can squander the gift he gave us at baptism and presume on his grace. So we must train and discipline ourselves, following Christ’s example, so that we might live as living sacrifices unto God.

I think these readings came right in time as we are observing Septuagesima Sunday. The “Septua” part of Septuagesima means 70. It’s referring to the fact that we are 70 days until Easter. Next week we will observe Sexagesima which puts us about 60 days before. And the following week will be quinquagesima which is roughly 50 days before. After quinquagesima will be Ash Wednesday, when we begin the Great Lent. The Gesima Sundays, today and the next two weeks, are collectively called Shrovetide, a mini-season which prepares us for the Great Fast. Shrove comes from the word shrive which means to absolve because it is a common time for people to make their private confessions. And I can’t emphasize the importance of private confession enough. It’s been a while since I’ve said it but confession is available for you any time the office is open and by appointment.

So today, at the beginning of Shrovetide, we are reminded that as Christians, we dwell in tension.

On the one hand, we say a hearty amen to the parable of the workers this morning out of an awareness that we are sinners who are saved by grace based on the Holy Spirit working in our baptisms. We are not saved based on what we do in and of ourselves. If you fail to keep the fast during Lent, for example, it does not change this reality of grace.

However, on the other hand, we simultaneously extend a hearty amen to Paul’s ascetic message in 1 Corinthians because we are aware of what great grace we have been given by God that it draws us into participation with him in our lives. While what we do doesn’t save us in the way the sacraments do, they are not entirely unconnected insofar as both our actions and the sacraments help us become who we are going to be.

So in that spirit, I invite you to participate in Shrovetide and Lent, not out of an attempt to make God love you more (which would be a misguided motive because God can’t love you any more than he already does) but out of your love for him based on the great thing he did for you when our Savior Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.