Grapes Are Us: A Homily for the Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, Sunday, October 4th, 2026, the Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost (YrA).  Readings: Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Psalm 19; Philippians 3:4B-14; Matthew 21:33-46

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom  (Mt 21.43)

Last Sunday we talked about Jesus’ authority.  Today’s gospel, assuming that we accept Jesus’ authority over our lives, asks us to think about how we show the results of following Jesus in our lives.  In talking about those results, Jesus uses a familiar metaphor of good fruits in the parable of the vineyard.

So let’s start by thinking about vineyards.  We all have our favourite places to visit, but I suspect that a lot of us like to visit a winery.   Joy and I love a winery visit, especially if it’s a sunny day, there’s a nice view, a delicious flight of wine and a tasty charcuterie plate.   But wineries are more than fancy restaurants and bottle stores.

When I visit a winery, I like to notice things like a shovel leaning against a shed, an ATV scooting around, or someone tending the vines.  These details remind me that a winery is a workplace, a factory designed to make good and abundant grapes to become delicious wine.  That’s the point of the winery, to produce good fruits.

Likewise, producing good fruits is the point of today’s gospel, which can be confusing.  We struggled with it in this week’s bible study.  There’s a political battle going on, between Jesus and his adversaries, the chief priests and religious leaders of Jerusalem.  That battle is a continuation of the argument over Jesus’ authority, which we talked about last week.   It’s a battle that Jesus seems to lose when he is executed but the resurrection is his victory and vindication as the Son of God.

So let’s just ask a simple question while focusing on the vineyard in the parable.  What does the vineyard represent?  Well, Jesus is drawing on a Jewish tradition of portraying Israel as a vine planted by God.   In fact, the parable is basically riffing on a passage from the prophet Isaiah:

The vineyard of the Lord Almighty
    is the nation of Israel,
and the people of Judah
    are the vines he delighted in.  (Is 5.7)

As in Isaiah, the owner of the vineyard in the parable takes care to protect and nurture the vines so that they are fruitful and protective.  So in the parable, the owner is God, the tenants are the chief priests, the slaves are the prophets who were often poorly received, and the owner’s son is Jesus.   The parable is thus a prediction of Jesus’ death (the sequence “they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him” mirrors Jesus’ arrest, expulsion from jerusalem to Golgotha, and his death there) but also an assertion of his authority.  When Jesus says he is the “the stone”, he’s quoting again, saying that he is the “stone” rejected by the “builders” (chief priests) and is now the “cornerstone”, the chosen one of God.

OK, all well and good, but how do we relate to the parable?  Where do we find or see ourselves in it?  Well, I’d say it’s clear that we are the grapes.   We are the ones that God has planted and lavished care on.  In Isaiah, God wants his vineyard Israel to grow good grapes that can make wine but all he gets are “wild grapes” (Isa 5.4).  The good grapes are the results of God’s people living by the covenant, the long agreement that God’s people would live well and respect God’s law.  

Law in scripture is God’s way of shaping God’s people.  In our first reading from Exodus, the law given to Moses is a kind of blueprint for what God wants his people to be once they finally arrive at the promised land.  The law is good because it comes from a God that is a liberating God, the God that brought them out of slavery.  The law is designed to orient the people towards God but also to orient the people to one another.   The law is designed to create a people that respects one another, that learns wisdom from its elders, that carves out time for rest, and which allows neighbours to live together in peace.  The spirit of the law is, if you will, the design for the garden or vineyard that God will plant when God’s people reach their destination, so they can grow and flourish as a people.

How does all this relate to us?  Well, I would say that if we want good grapes and good wine, we need to tend our vineyard.    The covenant idea of Israel as God’s vineyard does not apply to us directly, but I think it is helpful in understanding God’s expectations of us as beings that he has created. All that we are and all that we have is a reflection of what God has given us.   Our individual lives as disciples and our collective lives as church are vineyards that God has given us to tend.  

If we want to think of our own lives as vineyards that God has given us to tend, then God expects that we will be spiritually fruitful.  What does being spiritually fruitful mean?   St. Paul gives us a  famous example in Galatians, when he describes the Christian virtues as fruits of the spirit: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal 5.22-23). 

Our accountability to God can seem daunting if we think of it as a series of good deeds that we must produce, or laws and commandments that we must keep (I told you about my speeding ticket last week).   We can dispel this fear when we realize how badly God wants us to succeed and flourish.  In Isaiah 5, God sings a “love-song” to his vineyard, and asks “What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?”  Creating the vineyard is God’s dearest project, and in Jesus’ parable, the landowner pours everything he can into saving the project, including sending his Son.  

The parable shouldn’t make us anxious when we realize that the son comes to us as the gardener, someone who wants us to thrive and bear good fruit.  We only bear good fruit because of Jesus.  We couldn’t do it without him.  In John’s gospel, Jesus says “I am the vine; ^ayou are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15.5).   

Today’s parable teaches us that the goal of the Christian life is to be fruitful.  Traditionally the church saw fruitfulness as being expressed in acts of charity and piety.  A fruitful life was expressed in acts of love and kindness to the poor and in acts of devotion and worship to God. 

These definitions remain valid and worthy but today we might add to them – we can also see fruitfulness as the absence of racism and hatred, as healthy community, and as a care for the environment and the earth as part of God’s creation.  Fruitfulness can be expressed in a hundred small and practical ways, and like a good perennial plant it should be deeply rooted in our lives and sustained by our relationship with Jesus.  Jesus deeply wants us to be fruitful, to show something of the kingdom of God to those around us.   Being fruitful is to live our best life, to flourish as God intended.

My prayer for is is that we can be a fruitful vineyard, or if you will, that we can be a wonderful flight of wine, as varied as our personalities and talents.  Some of us are crisp chardonays, others are rich merlots, with here and there an ice wine or perhaps even a dandelion wine!  The point is that we all flourish and bear fruit if we are deeply rooted in Jesus, all of us a good vintage that will be pleasing to God and to others.

Should The Knee Bend? A Homily for the Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 27 September, 2026, the Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost.   Texts for this Sunday:  Exodus 17:1-7, Psalm 78:1-4,12-16; Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32.  

When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching, and said, "By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” (Mt 21.23)

 

I got a speeding ticket this summer and hoo boy did I deserve it.  Going up that hill in Grey County at top speed was fun until the flashing lights came on.  The cop had me dead to rights, and I basically said as Ias much when I gave him my documents: “no excuse, I was being an idiot”.  He didn’t disagree with me.  The worst part of it was when he came back and said “With your driving record, I’m disappointed in you”.  That stung, like being rebuked by a parent.

Ethicists tell us that there are different types of authority.  A police officer has the right to stop us when we break the law - in ethics that is known as compulsory authority.   Our behaviour is also shaped by something called moral authority, which is summed up by the slogan “Do the Right Thing”.  Moral authority arises from a desire to do right.  During Covid, the church I was looking after had a sign outside that said  “Love wears a mask”.  We got some flack from people who saw not wearing a mask as a rights issue, but our sign was talking about moral authority.

Often the two kinds of authority overlap.  For example, compulsory authority slows us down when driving through school zones because we fear heavy fines, though moral authority slows us down because we just naturally don’t want to hurt children.  Most of us I think have a somewhat grudging relationship with compulsory authority because we don’t like to be told what to do, even when we are rightly pulled over for speeding.      However, that cop’s words, “I’m disappointed in you”, cut through to my awareness of moral authority, and they stung because I knew I had been irresponsible.

How does religion and authority work?   The bible, particularly the Hebrew Scriptures, speaks a lot of compulsory authority – the Torah, the first five books of the bible, are full of laws, especially the Ten Commandments, which Christians still recognize.   The “chief priests and elders” (Mt 21.23) who come to challenge Jesus in today’s gospel were experts in religious law and they were in charge.   They were the aristocratic, hereditary descendants of a priestly ruling class that the Romans kept in power to administer Palestine for them, so in essence a puppet theocratic government.

Today we associate theocracies with countries like Iran, and because Canada guarantees freedom of religion, we see our faith as a voluntary practice, meaning that we don’t think much about religion AND authority.  Our approach to religion can have a comsumerist mindset.  We choose the churches we like, we follow the bible and preaching if we agree with them, and how we manage our relationship with God is pretty much up to us.  I think it fair to say that if Jesus has any authority over our lives, it is moral authority, so that we follow him because we agree with him, and not because he orders us around.   Is that the way it should be?

In actual fact, scripture talks a lot about Jesus’ authority.  The word itself, from the Greek word exousia, meaning power, occurs 88 times in the New Testament.  Usually exousia means power, as when Jesus has power to drive out demons and heal people, but usually it is power that is given to someone, like the power given to a policeman, or what I’ve called compulsory authority.  Today’s gospel reading comes after Jesus has driven out the moneylenders and claimed it as “My house” (Mt 21.13), so when the chief priests come to interrogate Jesus they are asking about his authority in a human sense of who made you the boss of this place?  

In answering the chief priests with another question, about John and whether his baptism came from heaven,   Jesus is claiming that his authority comes from God in heaven, setting up the final challenge between Jesus versus the priests, Herod, and Pilate that leads to the cross.   What Jesus is saying obliquely now in the temple, he says plainly in his final, post-resurrection words to his disciples: “All authority in heaven and on earth as been given to me” (Mt 28.18).  Here, at the end of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus merely confirms what others – crowds, demons, cured men and women, have known all along, that Jesus’ authority comes from God (Mt 7.29, 9.6).

If therefore we seriously wish to be followers and disciples of Jesus, we have to admit that as God’s son he has been given authority over us, that Jesus has a claim on how we lead out lives.  For the early Christians, Jesus was kyrios, lord, and no one on earth, not even Caesar, could rival him.  Considering that earthy rules were mostly cruel tyrants, the lordship of Jesus was welcome because if offered a freedom and a dignity that the bulk of society – the poor, women and children, slaves – were never granted by their rulers.  So how do we understand the authority of Jesus?  Do we welcome it?

Our second reading from Philippians tells us that we have no reason to fear Jesus’ authority.   Paul says that Jesus is “highly exalted” by God, that he is above anyone else, so that at his name “every knee should bend” (the Greek is simply kampto, will bend).   Does every knee have to bend?  Paul is saying that Jesus has the authority to compel our obedience, but he voluntarily sets it aside, so in the words of one of the first Christian hymns, “he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness” and further, “he humbled himself” and obeyed the father’s will.    The cross for Paul is where power and dignity as we understand them in earthly terms go to die.   The power of emperors and presidents is revealed as being petty and hollow and small.    True power, God’s power and authority, are revealed in love and service and sacrifice.

Philippians tells us that while God’s compulsory authority is absolute, God makes himself known to us in moral authority, in the Son who lives and dies to save us. To live the Christian life, we follow this moral authority – as Paul says, we imitate the humility of Jesus on the cross, we don’t think of our own needs before we first think of the way of others.   In the kingdom of heaven, there are no emperors or presidents, there are only servants, who serve one another.      We don’t follow Jesus because we must.  We follow because we are convinced that we should.

Living as a subject of the kingdom of God means that we learn to see authority differently.   There are lots of things that the world sees as authoritative – raw power, the will to win at all costs, wealth, privilege, institutionalized racism and inequality – that, if we see them through God’s eyes, look pitiful and empty.   In the kingdom of God, authority lies in surprising places. Authority is giving food and drink to the hungry and thirsty.  Authority is loving a neighbour who is not like us but still seeing God’s image in them.   Authority is the dignity of the worker.  Authority is care of the sick, authority is teaching, authority is patience, authority is love.    All authority in the kingdom of God is moral because it flows from the heart of God’s goodness and love.   We obey Jesus, not because we must, but because we find the freedom God intended for us in his service.

 

Joy In Faith: A Homily For Welcome Back Sunday

 A Homily for Welcome Back Sunday.  Preached at All Saints, Collingwood, Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 20 September, 2026, the Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost (A).

Readings for Today:  Ex 16:2-15; Ps 105:1-6, 37-45; Phil 1:21-30; Mt 20:1-16

We call this welcome back to church Sunday, and so if you are new here, or if you haven’t been here in a long while, welcome back!  It’s good to see you.   And of course for you, the faithful regulars, we welcome you and are happy to see you every Sunday.

So when we say welcome back, what are we welcoming you to?

To be sure, we’re welcoming you back to a place with a specific address, a building and its grounds on Elgin Street.

If you’ve been away for a while, you’ll notice that we’ve made some changes to the building.  Our tireless Building Manager, Robert, has been busy.  The half of our parking lot that used to be a lake when snow melted and when it rains has been levelled and gravel applied, so it’s drier.  And there’s more spaces to park in.

Robert is also installing new railings on ramp from the parking lot, which is now more attractive and safer!  We have a project ongoing to bring sound and video into the parish hall, which will be useful for rental purposes and for overflow from big church services.  

So we’re welcoming you to a physical space, and we are also welcoming you back to ministry, because this place exists to serve the community as part of our Christian witness  In a few minutes  Barry and the choir will speak musically to that ministry.  The offerings on our altar today speak to our food ministry, as we obey Christ’s command to feed and clothe those in need.  And of course our ministry serves the community in times of sorrow, as with the funeral we held here on Friday, and in times of joy, as with the wedding here yesterday.

And, as with our building, you will noticer some new things about our ministry.  We welcome Rev Amy Pauley to an expanded role as a full time Associate Priest serving the four churches of our region.   Amy brings prayerfulness and a deep faith, as well as humour and vitality, to our clergy team.  Taking her on full time is a significant financial commitment, shared by All Saints  and by our friends at Prince of Peace, and helped by a generous five year diocesan grant.  Another change is that our beloved Rev Sharon and her husband Bryce are now honourary members of our clergy team.  And of course all of our paid staff help make our ministries possible.

So we’re welcoming you back to a building and to the ministries that the building and its staff enable, but most importantly, I would say, we are welcoming you back to a community that is centred around Jesus.   We have our differences of course - age, wealth, education, place of birth, etc - but they shouldn’t be important.  Today’s gospel reminds us that, like the workers in the vineyard, we are equal in the sight of God, all loved equally, and asked in return only that we do our best to love God and love our neighbour.

In our second reading today, we heard Paul speaking to a Christian church and praising their “progress and joy in faith” (Phil 1.25).  I see this joy in faith when we gather, on Sundays, especially when we share the peace.   All Saints has a particular, joyful identity.   We enjoy one another’s company, our worship is reverential but also uplifting, and we are hopeful because the risen, loving Jesus is in our midst.   Each of our four regional churches has its own identity, but I think what characterizes All Saints is a sense of joyfulness.

Over the next few months, our Stewardship Group will lead us through a campaign that we call Joyful Giving.  Giving can be time and talent as a volunteer, but it is also treasure, giving back from the resources we are given    All of the things I’ve mentioned - our building and grounds, our clergy and staff, our ministries and services - come with a cost and need to be paid for.   Yes, we have the cemetery land, but it isn’t sold yet. When we do sell it, the proceeds will help us with our needs, but our needs won’t go way.

So today, my friends, I’m inviting you to think what coming back to church means to you.   What do you find here at All Saints that gives you joy?   What is it about your faith that makes you grateful?    What would make you glad that you’ve helped All Saints and its ministry continue well into the future?