In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit, amen. Today is one of those
Sundays with great many themes, far too many
for us to ponder here in a sermon. For example,
first the church is preparing us. for tomorrow's
feast of the birth of the Virgin Mary. It's a
birthday celebration of the Theotokos, and it's
the first of the 12 great feasts of the church.
So we'll have vespers at 4 today and liturgy
tomorrow here in the cathedral at 9. We also
had readings from the scriptures preparing us
for next week's feast day. That's the second
of the 12 great feasts of the church. the exaltation,
or you can say the elevation of the precious
cross. You know, the cross will be brought out,
it will be decorated with basil and flowers,
and we will sing before thy cross. So for that,
we heard from the Gospel of John a very famous
verse for football stadium end zones. Coincidentally,
the NFL begins its season today. And that verse
is, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that
whoever believes in him should not perish but
have eternal life. For God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten Son. You see in
the end zone, John 3, 16. Maybe not anymore,
but I simply offer those things for you to consider
on your own. Now, just in time for the grape
harvest in wine country, we're also given a parable
told by our Savior that takes place in a vineyard.
It's an autobiographical parable rather than
one with a moral exhortation. Autobiographical.
Takes place just after Palm Sunday when the Lord
delivers it. Only a few days before his crucifixion,
he describes what will happen and what had happened.
He tells the story of a vineyard, God's vineyard,
a precious, bountiful thing. The Lord builds
his parable on that found in Isaiah chapter 5,
which starts, My beloved had a vineyard on a
very fertile hill. He dug it. and cleared it
of stones, and planted it with choice vines.
The story goes on. The vines made thorns and
wild and sour grapes, and the vineyard owner,
God, tore it out. The end of the parable that
Jesus tells, the son of the vineyard owner, Jesus
himself, obviously. The son of the father has
been taken out of the vineyard as Golgotha is
outside the walls of Jerusalem, and he's crucified.
At the end, Jesus quotes the famous Psalm 117,
where it's familiar to us all. The stone which
the builders rejected has become the cornerstone
of the building. I told Father, Damien, I wasn't
going to talk about this last night, but I can't
resist myself. Stone and sun, Eben and Ben in
Hebrew, they sound the same. Jesus is saying,
it's not the stone, it's the sun that is the
cornerstone now. And not just a messenger of
God, not just a prophet, not a religious teacher,
but the divine sun. Of one essence with the Father.
And by this Son, as we say, all things were made.
This Son, says the epistle to the Colossians,
is the icon, the image of the invisible God.
Everybody hear that. The icon of the invisible
God. He who sees Jesus, sees the Father. Jesus
said that himself. Jesus is saying this because
he's identifying himself with that story. And
he's telling us, lo, I am with you even to the
end of the age. Because the workers in the vineyard,
they thought that the owner was gone. Because
it says in the gospel, he went into a far country.
He was gone, the owner of the vineyard. And he
was expecting the harvest and the fruit. But
the workers felt, he's gone. Let's kill the heir
and we will have his inheritance. But of course,
God is not absent. God is never absent. We offer
unto him thine own of thine own. He is everywhere
present and fill us all things. Though I am with
you, says the Savior, even to the end of the
age, he is not absent. It is I that am absent
from God. How? I feel God's absence because of
my absence of any heartfelt prayer. You know,
there's no quality without quantity. You can't
get good shooting a basketball. until you've
shot that basketball many times. You can't get
good hitting that golf ball, as I've learned
recently, without going out there and trying
with some instruction. You can't get good at
playing scales and music without some practice.
We can't develop and mature in the life of prayer
without some quantity. Always directing our heart
toward the Lord. God seems absent because of
that, because of my faithlessness, my forgetfulness
of the blessings that the inheritance belongs
to God, not to me. I forget his goodness. I'm
disobedient to the ways of the church, which
many seem to think the church is somehow separate
from Jesus Christ. He is the head. It is his
body. The church is his. We can't say, I believe
in Jesus, but what the church teaches, I can't
accept that. It's the same. It's the Lord. And
we focus on horrible things so often. How many
times do I hear in confession anger at politicians
and world leaders? And our hearts are filled
with this kind of resentment and anger, which
does you no good at all. We should be filled
with sorrow, yes, and many, many prayers. But
anger will not help you. What do we do then?
What should we do? Well, you heard St. Paul.
Watch. Stand fast in the faith. Be brave. Be
strong, he says. Let all that you do be done
with love. We heard St. Paul a moment ago say
that. If we, workers in the vineyard of the church,
we have been given that task, we have been blessed
to share the fruits, to receive the fruits of
the church, peace, love, joy, mercy, long -suffering,
gentleness, self -control, all of these things.
If we, the workers of the vineyard, betray the
love of God because of our selfishness, because
of our lack of faith, because we don't stand
strong and fast, how are we different from the
people described in the parable, the elders and
the religious leaders? Think carefully. This
story is not about them. It's about us. It's
directed towards us. That we have been grafted
on to the vine of Israel. We were just wild shoots.
Now we've been grafted on to the house of God.
And we are now told in this parable that there's
an accountability that we have to give. I was
in Turkey last year. How many churches? that
I see destroyed, turned into mosques, piles of
rubble, ancient churches in ancient places that
we read about, St. Nicholas of Myra, Nicaea,
Chalcedon, Constantinople. We are getting to
the point where this church decoration is almost
done. But the main decoration that we have to
worry about is not decoration. It's the vineyard
of our heart to nurture that vine so it is filled
with prayer and love and mercy and works of alms
and true belief. The church is often called God's
vineyard. This is his vineyard. It's full of
good fruit. planted by Christ himself through
the gift of the Holy Spirit. It's hedged about
with Christ's commandments and the holy sacraments
that protect our life of intimacy with Jesus
Christ from the chaos and the delusion in the
world from anxiety, from fear, and from demons.
It's our task, brothers and sisters, to nurture
that vineyard in our heart and then to be able
to just live what we know of God, which is different
from the delusion of the world. The church is
hedged about. It has a tower. It has a wine press.
It has all those things that Jesus talked about
in the parable, which are the commandments and
the scriptures and the prayers and the liturgy
and the fellowship. The garden is a hospital
for those who are being saved. We cannot give
them false, counterfeit medicine. That's what
the world can give. We have something else from
God, which is pure and holy and good. And the
fruit will grow. We don't want this taken away
from us. We don't want this to be destroyed.
So let us, brothers and sisters, cleanse our
hearts of anything that grows within that is
not the vine with the true fruit. Let us tend
it and let us give thanks and pay back. Give
to the owner of that vineyard that which is due
to him. To love God with all our heart. all our
strength, all our mind, and our neighbor as ourself.
Let's remember how much we have been given. To
our Lord, our gracious Lord, be glory now and
ever to ages of ages. Amen.