St George's Sermon Blog

Matt 21:23:32; Philippians 2:1-13 It’s fighting season in the lectionary.   Today in the Gospel of Matthew we see the religious authorities go and pick a fight with Jesus.   And this fight that they start with Jesus today goes on in our readings for the next 7 weeks.   These people, they just keep arguing, they keep attacking Jesus, one group after another, for like the next month and a half. And I just can’t.   I can’t do it.   Not this year.   I have preached through this series of readings before, and it does have a lot to teach us.   It’s good, see me in 3 years, we’ll talk about it, we’ll do it all.   But not this year.   Not when every time I turn on the TV, I see some of the most ridiculous political ads I have ever seen in my life (are we really fighting over which candidate likes football more?).   Not when we seem to have forgotten even the most basic rules of civil discourse.   Not when our church recently literally c...

Jonah 3:11-4:10; Matt 20:1-16 So today we have a set of stories from the bible that really get us thinking about the principle of scarcity and how it affects us.   Our Gospel lesson for today tells one of the more infuriating stories in the whole bible about a landowner who goes out and hires people to work for the harvest in his vineyard.   And he goes out time and time again to hire more and more workers throughout the day.   Some end up working a full 12-hour day and others for only a hour.   And then at the end of the day, when it’s time to get paid, the owner very publicly, very intentionally pays all the workers the same standard daily wage no matter how long or hard they have worked. And I am betting this story probably annoys you a little bit.   It’s okay, it does me too.   It violates our basic common sense of fairness.   What the owner does just doesn’t seem right.   Some people worked so hard and the others that came late barely wor...