The Two Sons

A sermon for the parish of Stanningley and Swinnow, Sunday 1 October 2023
Text: Matthew 21:23-32
The context of this sermon preached in two churches was the parish has just gone into vacancy, i.e. their vicar has left and they await a replacement

Today as I turned over a calendar to the page for October, I found a beautiful photo of a Scottish woodland in all its autumn splendour. A reminder, if we needed it after this week’s storm, that autumn is upon us.  A season of change, and also a season of preparation. What are you preparing for, I wonder? Perhaps already shopping early for Christmas, or booking a holiday for next year, or looking forwards to a family wedding in the spring? As a church, no doubt you’re already planning your Advent and Christmas activities.

Our Gospel reading today refers to John the Baptist. I have a particular fascination with John, because he’s my patron saint – my birthday is 24th June, John’s feast day in the church. John’s catch phrase seems to have been ‘Prepare the Way for the Lord’. When he baptised people, it wasn’t just as a sign of their repentance for sin, it was also a sign that they were being cleansed as a preparation for a special event, the coming of the Messiah, which would be a great upheaval to their whole way of life.

This was something that challenged the Jewish leaders – the ‘chief priests and elders’ referred to in the Gospel were the Sanhedrin, the religious court.  They knew that they hadn’t given permission to John to baptise people, and neither had they given permission to Jesus to heal people, or for that matter to drive the moneychangers out of the Temple, which is what brought them to challenge him on this occasion. Jesus cleverly asks them their opinion of John, because if they weren’t prepared to admit that John was a true prophet, then they clearly wouldn’t accept Jesus either.

If John’s catchphrase was ‘Prepare the Way for the Lord’ then one of Jesus’ catchphrases was certainly ‘the Kingdom of God is among you’. After Jesus refuses to answer the Sanhedrin’s question, he goes on to tell three short parables to make his point about the Kingdom of God. We just heard the first of them today: A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, “Son, go and work in the vineyard today.” He answered, “I will not”; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, “I go, sir”; but he did not go.


The Parable of the Father and His Two Sons in the Vineyard by Georg Pencz, C16
(c) Creative Commons

As you may know already, the vineyard was a widely used image to represent the Jewish people, and its owner is obviously God. Jesus was clearly saying that there are some people who made no claim to being obedient servants of God, yet who actually do his will, while others claim to be obeying God, but don’t in practice. The men from the Sanhedrin, and everyone who was listening to this conversation, would see that he was having a go at them, the religious leaders, for being like the second son and not practising what they preach. And they’re forced to admit this by saying that the son who actually worked in the vineyard did what his father wanted, rather than the one who promised and didn’t deliver.

When Jesus gives this interpretation, though, he adds insult to injury by saying those who are really doing God’s will are ‘tax collectors and prostitutes’ – whose lives are clearly contravening Jewish religious laws. 

Recent scandals in Christian churches of all denominations have certainly given the lie to any idea that religious leaders are necessarily holier than the rest of us. But beyond that, what does this short parable have to say to us today?

Jesus’ reason for challenging the Sanhedrin leaders on this point was, I think, to make a contrast between their view and his own on where true religion is to be found. These were men whose whole lives were bound up in the activities of the Temple and the religious and political life of Jerusalem. They probably rarely left the city. To them, keeping Temple worship going according to tradition was the most important way of showing their obedience to God.

By contrast, John the Baptist exercised his whole ministry in the desert and in the Jordan valley where he baptised. Jesus had spent most of his ministry in the fishing villages on lake Galilee and farming communities in the hills, as well as in the crowded streets of Jerusalem. Their disciples were ordinary folk, and among these ordinary folk Jesus could see the seeds of the Kingdom that John had sown already taking root and growing. People who had taken John’s message of repentance and preparation to heart, were listening to Jesus’ teaching, and putting it into practice. 

These new disciples, these sons of the vineyard owner who were finally doing what God wanted, are summarised provocatively as ‘tax collectors and prostitutes’.  But Jesus also ministered to fishermen, shepherds, disabled people and a divorcee shunned by society. I suggest that we can take these taxmen and sex workers as representing two groups in society – those who are engaged in the business of the world with no time for the church, and those on the margins of society, unable to participate in the regular economy and forced to live in unconventional ways. What you find, now as well as then, is that the overworked people often have an unsatisfied hunger for meaning in their lives, which only Jesus can address. And that people on the margins of society are often the kindest and most generous people, their ears attuned to God’s Spirit.

Jesus, unlike the religious leaders, recognised that out in the streets and villages, not in the Temple, was where God was actually at work changing people’s hearts and lives.

Therefore, I can see that there are two challenges in this passage that are as relevant today as they were in Jerusalem two thousand years ago.

The first is a personal challenge to each and every one of us, including myself. I’m assuming (but please forgive me if I’m wrong) that everyone here was either baptised or confirmed as a teenager or adult. In which case, we have all made some promises about obeying God. When I was confirmed in 1981 it was three short phrases: I turn to Christ, I repent of my sins, I renounce evil.  In the current service book, it’s a bit wordier with two sets of promises: I reject the devil and all rebellion against God, I renounce the deceit and corruption of evil, I repent of the sins that separate us from God and neighbour; and then: I turn to Christ, I submit to Christ, I come to Christ. As a lay minister I had to make further promises to be obedient to the Lord Bishop of Leeds, and to be ‘a worker for Christ for the good of his Church and for the spiritual welfare of all people’.

Having made these promises before the congregation, and maybe before the Bishop, we are like the first son who promised to go and work in the vineyard. The question is, do we?  In my everyday life, do I actually and actively turn to Christ to direct the way that I should live, and submit to him in doing what I know he wants of me?  That’s a question for each of us to answer for ourselves.

The second challenge is to the Church as a whole and to each local congregation. And it’s particularly relevant to you here at St Thomas’s and Christ the Saviour, as you go into the vacancy following Richard’s departure. A vacancy in the benefice, with key people missing, can all too easily become a time of doing as little as possible, of keeping things going as they are, of focussing on church activities.

Instead, I would encourage you to see this as a time of preparation. Just as autumn is a time of preparing for the new year ahead, just as people went out into the desert to hear John the Baptist and his message of preparing for the coming Messiah, and as Jesus himself after being baptised spent forty days in the desert preparing for his ministry on the margins of society, so this time in the wilderness of a vacancy can be a time to prepare for a new leader and for a new outpouring of God’s Spirit in this parish. This is a time to come together as a community of lay people, as John’s disciples were, and re-commit yourselves to hearing God’s call to minister to the ordinary folk of this area.

You will be preparing a parish profile for the Bishop to find a suitable minister, and that will include both your current activities and future aspirations. I can see from your website and Facebook group that you are not starting from scratch here. You are already engaging with the community through the Mums & Tots and Chat & Craft groups, fellowship lunches, the Friends of St Thomas’s and the various uniformed organisations. All that, no doubt, will go into the profile. But what else might be possible?  Where, figuratively speaking, are the tax collectors and prostitutes in Stanningley: the busy people and the people on the margins in our parish, who may not yet have heard of the Kingdom of God but who will enter it gladly and obediently when they do?

I hope I will see you again during this vacancy, and pray that it will not be long before God calls the right woman or man to serve as your parish priest. But now, and then, you will not be acting alone. It is the work, not of the Church but of Christ himself. I will finish with a quote from the last verse of the New Testament reading for today. Philippians 2:13. ‘For it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.’ The ideal son is the one who both promises to work in God’s vineyard, and with his Father’s help, does so.  Amen.

Let us build a house

Floor to rafter: the nave ceiling of
St Mary Magdalene, Taunton, Somerset

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is ‘Let us build a house where love can dwell’ by Marty Haugen. It’s a hymn about inclusion in the church, and about the church being more than its buildings.  As a recent report from the Church of England put it, Christians vary from being ‘Temple people’ for whom a beautiful building is of great importance to their worship and witness, to ‘Tent people’ for whom the building is nothing more than a temporary shelter to host the all-important task of proclaiming the Gospel. 

Marty Haugen comes across as more of a Tent person in this hymn.  There is indeed some memorable building imagery: rock and vault, wood and stone, floor to rafter (incidentally, the recently deceased American folk singer Nanci Griffith uses that exact phrase ‘floor to rafter’, also rhymed with laughter, in one of her songs: did one of them pinch it from the other?)  But there is much more imagery of the activities that our buildings should host: love and safety; hopes, dreams, visions and prophecy; a banqueting hall; peace and justice; healing, serving and teaching; songs, laughter and prayers. 

This balance is at the heart of my work for the Church, helping local congregations across Yorkshire care for historic buildings at the same time as encouraging sensitive adaptation of those buildings to the present and future needs of mission. If our buildings become museums of architecture then we’ve swung too far the wrong way, for the house of God should be both a house of prayer (as Jesus called the Temple) and a haven for all those in need of grace.

Lord of all your love’s creation

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Lord of all, your love’s creation” by Stephen Parish.  It’s set to the well known tune Abbot’s Leigh.

The section of the hymn book where it is found is titled “dedication festival”. The suggestion is that this hymn is ideal for when a place of worship is dedicated, as there are references to “this earthly house of worship” and “this house of prayer”.  John noted the coincidence that I had picked it for the day when the lectionary starts the book of 1 Chronicles which is largely about the Jerusalem Temple. But those are the only references to a building, and it would be equally suitable for the installation of a new minister, confirmation service or renewal of baptismal promises, for the Church is always more than its buildings.

The words cover several aspects of the Christian life, and there’s a lot of theology packed into a few words here, which I can only touch on in a brief reflection. The first verse, after asking that “this house of worship be a source of heavenly grace” also asks the Holy Spirit to renew and seal us, for without the Spirit we are only doing things in our own strength.

The second verse asks the Word of God, “made flesh in Jesus” to help us in our reading and application of the written word (the Bible), and prays for those who preach the gospel. The optional third verse is about the Communion, and finding the presence of Christ “in the world as in this sign”, reminding us that He is not confined to the places where Christians gather.  It also asks that we learn his sacrificial ways, not an easy prayer to say or fulfil. The fourth verse praises God for his power within us, and offers our worship as a response.

Overall, this is a hymn with carefully crafted words to express in a few verses all that it means to be part of a worshipping and witnessing community. The words bear careful consideration rather than just a quick sing-through.  I looked up the author: Stephen Parish (now retired) was an Anglican priest in Manchester, Stoke-on-Trent and Warrington, Honorary Canon of Liverpool Cathedral and a chaplain to the fire and rescue service.  There’s also a Labour councillor in Warrington by the same name – possibly the same person (are clergy allowed to stand as councillors? I don’t know).

The Lord is here

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “The Lord is here” by Christopher Ellis. I picked it for a Sunday as it’s in the Holy Communion section of the book, and the title is taken from one of the priest’s acclamations in the service.

There is, however, only one direct reference to communion in the hymn (verse 2, “in offered peace, in shared-out bread and wine”). Other references are more subtle and indirect, such as “he gives himself just as he gives his Word”, “he meets us as we share”, and “the Lord is here inviting us to go”.  But then, although the communion service is special in some ways, whatever the nature of our worship we should be inspired (literally, ‘in-breathed’ or ‘in-spirited’) to “go and share the news with people everywhere … intent to seek and find, living this hope that God is always near”.

So it may be better to think of this as a missionary hymn rather than a eucharistic one. The set tune is called “Beacon Hill” but was unfamiliar.  John chose to play it to ‘Woodlands’ instead, maybe because it’s more familiar, but perhaps because that tune is best known to the words “Go forth and tell” on a similar theme.

Lord, you give the great commission

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Lord, you give the great commission” by Jeffery Rowthorn to a tune by the great Edwardian composer C H H Parry.  Its theme follows on from Sunday’s discussion of ordination and yesterday’s of the “enduing” or bestowing of gifts by the Holy Spirit, as each verse ends with the lines “With the Spirit’s gifts empower us for the work of ministry”.

The rest of the words of the five verses are based on various recorded sayings of Jesus in the gospels, mainly the ‘Great Commission’ to teach and baptise all nations in the final paragraph of Matthew’s gospel (although some commentators think this is Matthew’s understanding of what Jesus might have said, rather than a record of an actual event).  It also references the Last Supper in the third verse, and the exhortations to forgive others and be generous in our giving in the fourth.   

The words that are rhymed with “ministry” in the second half of each verse give a good summary of the Church’s mission: integrity, community, liberty, society, eternity.  Whether consciously or not, they reflect the Anglican ‘five marks of mission’ which in abbreviated form are: to proclaim the Good News (one might say of eternity); to teach, baptise and nurture new believers (into the liberty of the children of God, as Paul puts it); to respond to human need by loving service (forming community); to transform unjust structures of society; and to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation.

The last verse returns to the very end of Matthew: “I am with you always, to the end of the age”.  Jesus – if indeed he did say this – must have been aware that as his physical presence was about to depart for the last time, the growth of the Church and its continuing mission would depend on his disciples and their successors who had not seen him having faith in his continued unseen presence and through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Lord of the Church

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is “Lord of the Church, we pray for our renewing” by Timothy Dudley-Smith.  As the first line suggests, it’s a corporate hymn that seems more meaningful when sung by a church congregation (perhaps especially at an ecumenical gathering) rather than by an individual.  Some of the hymns we’ve sung in the ‘ministry and mission’ section have been more individual (such as “I the Lord of sea and sky”) and it’s good to balance these with the corporate ones.

In its three verses, each beginning “Lord of the Church”, we ask Christ (for it is He) for our renewing, blessing and uniting. The first two verses also mention the Holy Spirit, who we ask to “burn for our enduing*, fan the living flame” and fill us.  The three requests of uniting, blessing and renewing belong together: where the church is not united in faith and action, it cannot expect to receive the fulness of Christ’s blessing, nor of the Spirit’s renewal.

The words do acknowledge the difficulties we have in this area: “we turn to Christ amid our fears and failings, the will that lacks the courage to be free, the weary labours all but unavailing… from our restless striving”. Instead we ask to be “brought nearer [to] what a church should be” and to be led by Christ until “one Church triumphant one new song shall sing”. That will only be fully accomplished in the life to come, but we must still strive towards it, with his help.

The suggested tune, and I can’t imagine the author had any other in mind, is the one variously known as the [London]Derry Air, or Danny Boy.  Its long lines don’t make for easy singing unless you know it well, and the folk tune covers quite a wide range, but I find it comfortably fits my tenor range, and I enjoyed singing this hymn.

* Just as an aside: John transcribed and sang this as “burn for our enduring”, which may make some sense, but “enduing” is how it is printed in this book and elsewhere.  An archaic verb, but defined as “to invest or endow with some gift, quality, or faculty”.  So we are asking the Spirit here to endow us with his gifts, which makes more sense.  An even older definition of “endue” apparently is “’induct into an ecclesiastical living” but I don’t think the author here expects everyone to pray to become an Anglican vicar!

I the Lord of sea and sky

Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is another in the set on the theme of mission, and one that is widely known across the churches: “I the Lord of sea and sky” by Daniel Schutte. Its refrain of “Here I am, Lord, is it I, Lord?  I have heard you calling in the night” is taken from Isaiah chapter 6, and the final verse with the reference to God providing a feast for all peoples is from Isaiah 25.

Essentially the message is that when we see people suffering, whether it’s from their lack of understanding of God’s ways (symbolised as being in darkness and needing light) or from the physical hardships of poverty and injustice, we should be able to hear God calling us to do something about it in his name, to be part of the solution that God himself has planned. 

The middle verse is difficult: it reminds us that Jesus has borne the pain even of those who reject him, and weeps for them. Only he can ‘break hearts of stone’ and he calls us to be part of that task too, but first it may need my own ‘heart of stone’ breaking in order to see and feel compassion for those God would call me to serve.

Hymns of mission

A temporary installation on the altar of the chapel at
Scargill House, June 2021

I’ve been away for a few days without a computer or Internet access, hence the lack of blog posts this week.  I’ve kept up singing a hymn a day (actually rather more, having been on a walking holiday at Scargill House, Christian holiday centre) but rather than write about each of them separately, here’s a sort of summary of this week’s Sing Praise choices. 

The actual hymns are: “Lord as I wake I turn to you” by Brian Foley; “Glory to God, the source of all our mission” by Christopher Idle; “Go into the world” by Sylvia Dunstan; and “At the dawning of creation” by David Fox. 

The first is a morning hymn, reminding us that to keep in a good relationship with God requires us to remember God from our first waking thoughts, to praise him and pray to him regularly, give thanks, and live a life of love.  That sounds like a lot of demands, but perhaps the key is in the last line of the first verse: “yourself the help for which I pray”. God does give us the help we need to do what he requires. His grace comes first; our praise, prayer and thankfulness are a response to it.

The middle two are both on the theme of mission. Sylvia Dunstan’s hymn is based on the Great Commission given by Jesus to his disciples before returning to Heaven, to take his message to all the world.  It’s something we know we have to do but most of us find difficult to engage with, especially in a society that prizes freedom of belief and where evangelism can be criticised for “imposing our beliefs” even where that’s not the intention. Some of the phrases which stood out for me in Christopher Idle’s hymn were “Christ’s fellow workers”, and “linked by the cross… joined by the love… one in the hope…”. From Sylvia Dunstan’s I highlight “Go into every place, go live the word of Christ’s redeeming grace”, and “Go as the ones I send, for I am with you till the age shall end”.  This mission, we have to remember, is not ours but his.

I chose the last of these because its theme is baptism, and today (24th June) is the feast of John the Baptist.  He was perhaps the first Christian missionary, drawing people’s attention to Jesus even before Jesus started his own ministry, so although the hymn is not about mission as such, nor even specifically about John, there is a link with the other two, and the final line “to his life of love he calls us by his total sacrifice” again reminds us that it is Jesus himself who calls us to share in his own mission.

Sent by the Lord am I

The song I chose for 8 June (with a slight delay in posting my thoughts on it) was “Sent by the Lord am I”, with words by Jorge Maldonado and a tune arranged by John Bell.  It’s a short, straight-through song, although the second pair of lines is a repeat of the first, so it is usually sung more than once.

The message conveyed by the words is that ‘my’ task (actually that of all of us, to a lesser or greater extent) is to “make the earth the place in which the kingdom comes”, the reason being that even the angels are unable to do so.  While it’s always good to be motivated to play our part in bringing about God’s Kingdom, this seems to me to portray God as an absentee landlord who has just told us to get on with things.  In fact, the Gospel message is surely that God has sent the Holy Spirit to bring about the Kingdom following Jesus’ victory over evil on the Cross, but that we play our part by being open to the Spirit working in us and giving us the gifts needed for the task.

Hope of our calling

The hymn of the day for 15 January is “Hope of our calling” by Ally Barrett.  It follows on from yesterday’s themes of Jesus being called to baptism and service and nuns being called to a life of prayer and work for God, to remind us that all who follow Jesus are answering God’s call.  It’s worded very positively, the theme of hope running through it paired with other positive words (courage, strength, grace, faith and Spirit).  

We are challenged, in the power of that Spirit, to “bring the gospel to a waiting world”, but also to serve in a practical way (‘washing each other’s feet’ as often practised on Maundy Thursday) and to work for righteousness.  This theme links with (and may be inspired by) the Church of England’s “five marks of mission” – to proclaim the Good News; to teach, baptise and nurture new believers; to respond to human need by loving service; to transform unjust structures of society; and to safeguard the integrity of creation. 

That balance of specifically religious work with the practical building and sustaining of society that engages people of all faiths and none is what a living faith should look like.  Christians are generally not to be set apart from society (the monastic calling that we looked at yesterday is only for the few) but should, as Jesus put it, be ‘salt in the earth and a light to the world’. 

The last verse marks this as a communion hymn by reference to the sacrament, and  appropriately draws on the deacon’s words of dismissal at the end of the communion service – we “go in peace to love and serve the Lord”. To which we respond, “in the name of Christ, Amen”.