Sermon preached at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church 9/24/23

(Audio version here: https://www.stmarksaustin.org/sermons)

The landowner said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’

Less than five miles from here at the Home Depot on I-35, men (and it is all men) gather every day and wait for work. They have a huge range of skills – and many of them have multiple skills. Carpentry, masonry, plumbing, roofing. They can trim your trees and mow your lawn, demolish buildings or construct them. They have skills, but what they don’t have is a place to use them. So they gather at the Home Depot and wait for someone to hire them for the day.

That is just one of many day labor sites in Austin. They are places of hope and desperation. It’s great if you get a job. Most people hiring show up early and select the team they need for that day. If you are not selected early, you wait. You might get lucky if someone comes by later in the morning or even the afternoon, or you might waste all day there with no job at all.

Everyone starts over again the next day. Sometimes you are selected and you work hard all day – and sometimes for this you are not paid. Wage theft is routine for day laborers. And there is often not much they can do because their work agreement is not documented. They rely on trust in strangers. 

Even when you do get paid to work for a day, the wages can be paltry. You are often paid in cash – or by check and then have to pay a hefty fee at a check cashing service. The amount you are paid might feed you for a day or two, but it’s unlikely to feed and house your whole family. It would take a whole lot of you working a whole lot of days to make that much. 

If you were paying attention when I was reading the gospel, you might think you know where I’m going with this. In Jesus’ parable of the laborers in the vineyard, a landowner hires day laborers to work for him in a vineyard. Some he hires early in the day, others at later and later times. And then he pays them all the same wage no matter how many hours they put in. 

This parable is seen as an allegory about how generous God is; the vineyard is the kingdom of heaven and God rewards all those who do the kingdom work no matter how long they work. (And some of the workers get jealous about this whole scheme and try to tell the landowner/God it’s unfair. And the landowner/God reminds them that it’s God’s prerogative to be generous and merciful – and that is what we believe God is like, generous and merciful.)

It’s not a bad understanding to focus on God’s generosity and how we all have equal access to God’s kingdom no matter how long we’ve been laboring in God’s vineyard. 

But that’s not what I was thinking about with this parable. After all, Jesus uses images like the vineyard and the day laborers not only because of how they might represent the holy, but how they reveal the unholy.  

In Jesus’ time day laborers were a cheap and plentiful source of labor. Many had been forced off their farms due to debts they owed to the Roman Empire. Now living in extreme poverty, these displaced workers hoped to be hired in any way that would help them feed their families. Their prospects were more precarious than slaves, who for all their hardships at least had a place to live and food to eat. 

The pay for day laborers was not great. A single denarius, enough to buy one’s daily bread. 

Think about those workers who wait and wait to be hired.

About what it means to be left out of the work day after day after day.

We might wonder if the parable is just about the pay or the work. Maybe it’s about the whole unjust way humans have structured work. 

The laborers in the story end up misunderstanding how this vineyard operates – they want some economic fairness from the landowner. Who can blame them? They are not greedy; they are all just a couple of hours away from being the ones who were left waiting in the marketplace, the ones no one asked. 

They are just a couple of hours away from no pay at all – and now they’ve worked really hard and shouldn’t they get a reward for THAT? 

Back in the 21st century, at the same time that day laborers without work are gathering daily at Home Depot, there are other laborers around the country leaving their places of work on strike. When negotiations for better working conditions fail, often the only strategy workers have for bettering their situation is to withhold their labor. 

While the laborers in the vineyard were upset that some got paid the same wage for less work, today’s strikers are protesting so that everyone can get a fair wage.  Unlike the laborers in the vineyard, they are not jealous of another’s wage, they want what’s best for the least paid. Historically, workers who strike have gained all sorts of humane treatment that you and I now take for granted – like weekends or an 8-hour workday or safe working conditions. 

When we think about day laborers and autoworkers, it raises the question of why it is so hard for a society such as ours 

a world such as ours 

in which there is plenty of work to do…

why is it so hard for people to have work to do that meets their needs for survival and our collective need for all of our skills and effort?

Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.”

Even before we get to the wages the landowner will pay, the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who hires laborers for his vineyard. 

Perhaps it is working in the vineyard that is the gift. Not the wages. 

Work is more than what you do and what you are paid. Work is part of what makes us human and makes us a community. In fact, you can make the argument that we were made for work. 

In the Tuesday Bible Study Group, we are reading Genesis. In the second chapter we read about God creating humans from the earth and 

The Lord God took the human and settled him in the garden of Eden to farm it and to take care of it. 

God created us to work in the garden – or you might say, to work in the vineyard. 

And harking back to that image of humans working the earth at the beginning of time, Jesus describes the kingdom of heaven as a place where humans also work the earth. 

This parable presents us with challenges. 

Jesus used an exploitive work practice to illustrate the kingdom of heaven, not because the kingdom itself is exploitive, but because kingdom work will reveal and overturn those structures. 

When I drive by the entrance to Home Depot, I see dozens of people ready to work. I hope they are asked to work in someone’s vineyard and given at least their daily bread. 

There are many reasons a person could be in the shoes of a day laborer. It could be immigration status or being recently released from prison. It could be disability or a language barrier. It could be because they are in debt to our version of the Roman Empire. 

I hope that all our sisters and brothers who’ve been left out might someday be invited in to till the soil with us. 

We were created to work this soil, to use what we have in God’s creation and participate in God’s mission.  

Jesus tells us that the kingdom of heaven is here and in this parable he tells us that it is a realm in which our labor is valued and needed. Every day.

Whenever we are engaged in the work of the kingdom, there is always enough work for anyone who accepts the invitation. That work, as our baptismal covenant tells us, includes seeking and serving Christ in all persons, striving for justice and peace among all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being. 

So, anytime you are engaged in service, justice making, peace making, and dignity raising – you are working in the vineyard. And if you have done that work before, you know that everyone is invited to join in. 

What the laborers in the Home Depot parking lot can remind us is that it is a gift to work in the vineyard, to toil in the world God made for us and made us from. 

All of us are made to work here and in God’s vineyard. 

If you’ve ever found yourself waiting to have your gifts and labor valued – know that God has invited all of us in. 

AMEN

Sermon preached at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church on 4/10/22

(Audio version here: https://www.stmarksaustin.org/sermons)

“You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

There is an organization in Austin that takes advantage of two of our city’s unique assets: our relatively large number of professional musicians and also our relatively large number of people who want to be professional musicians. Anthropos Arts matches professional musicians with low-income band students for instrument lessons and opportunities to perform in public. It is a genius idea that yields amazing results – because if you are learning to play a musical instrument, having a good teacher who believes in you is important.

And just as important is practicing. You know the old joke: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. So these pairs of adult mentors and students practice regularly – scales and technique and songs. And one of the distinctive things about their program is that they also practice improvisation.

Now, it might seem counter-intuitive to practice improv. When you improvise you are creating something on the spot, out of the blue and you will never do that particular thing again. You might think, there is no way to practice that, but there is. You learn to improvise by doing it. And every time you do it, you get better at it.

That sounds like some kind of crazy, circular logic, but it’s true. You do need to know the basics of how to play your instrument, what musical notes are, and all that. But the only way to really learn to produce a unique musical expression with no notice is to do it. And that is what these students do. They practice and know their instruments – and when they perform in public they know that their director might point at them in the middle of a piece and they will be expected to improvise. And in fact each of them performs at least one solo improvisation in public each year. They never know when it will happen.

There’s something compelling and beautiful that happens when musicians improvise. They get out of their heads and into the music. The rest of the band and the audience root for them. It turns out the beauty of improvising – in music or acting or even in ministry – is that it requires you to be connected to those around you. You have to listen because what you do is connected to what came before and what comes after.

Improvisation is all about what you DO, not what you KNOW. And at the same time, when you do it, you will understand what you are doing better. I’ve seen this happen with the students in that program. Knowing their own part is not enough. They want to know what all the other kids on stage will play because they might be called upon to take that tune to the next level with a riff that they cannot anticipate. All their preparation individually and as a group prepares them to create something novel at the drop of a hat.

I think being a disciple of Jesus is a lot like this kind of musical improvisation, and it is the way Jesus models for us what a life following him is like. Certainly no one expected him to get up in the middle of dinner and start washing their feet. But that is what he did, at the drop of a hat, out of the blue.

And he told them, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

Surely there are lots of times in the Gospels that the ones closest to Jesus, the ones who know him best, don’t understand what he is teaching or what is going on right in front of them. Why does he flip tables in the Temple court? Why does he talk to thatSamaritan woman by the well?

What did he mean when he said all those things about being bread, a shepherd, a gate, or a vine?

Jesus confronts their lack of understanding on a daily basis, yet instead of getting frustrated he improvises a way to show them who he is and show them how to follow him. He does it by getting on his knees and washing their feet. Then he tells them to do for each other what he has done for them.

There is no other way to understand what it is to be a follower of Jesus that to do this. Just like there is no other way to learn a musical instrument other than to play it.

He washes their feet. He tells them to wash one another’s feet. He commands them to love one another. To wash another’s feet – indeed to let Jesus or one of his followers wash your feet – is an act of love. It is humble, tender, and vulnerable.

There is a lot that is symbolic in this foot washing. In this act, Jesus is acting out being a servant to his disciples – which is why Peter objects so vehemently – so the foot washing is a visible way to enact that servant leadership.

And Jesus washes their FEET, which can mean all kinds of things. In those days, when everyone walked everywhere in sandals, feet were dirty, calloused, and hard working every day. To clean another’s feet was the lowliest task and for the Lord to do it reversed all the expected roles of a Messiah.

And Jesus tells us that this reversal is how people will know we are his followers. He wants us to believe, certainly, but our belief is not how the world will know us.

“You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

We might or might not “get” why he washed the disciples’ feet or told them to wash each others’ feet. It’s possible that we don’t understand why we are about to wash each others’ feet here tonight. That’s okay.

The world will know us by how we love one another. And we will show our love for one another in ways large and small that are like washing each others’ feet.

The love we show by washing each others’ feet is sort of like practicing for musical improvisation. We need to know the basics of how to play our instruments, as it were, our scripture and tradition. We should spend time in worship and fellowship with other believers.

And we should practice improvising acts of selfless love for one another. Because at any moment Jesus, our band director, might point at any one of us and say, “You! It’s your turn to improvise! It’s your turn to create an act of humble service at an unexpected place and time!”

To be ready for that time, we practice. We practice by washing each others feet so that we know what it feels like to be tender and caring for another and what it feels like to let them take care of us. We practice so we know what it takes for us to be vulnerable and reveal our calloused, ticklish feet that have carried us through this day, this week, this Lent, this lifetime.

None of us is born knowing how to love this way, we learn it. We learn it from Jesus and we learn it from each other. We practice loving each other as much as we can. At an unexpected time in an expected place you will have the chance to show that love in an unexpected way. At the time, you may not understand why, but it’s okay to understand later. For now, the most important thing is to love others as Jesus loved us. Amen.

Sermon preached at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church 7/2/23

(For audio go here: https://www.stmarksaustin.org/sermons)

Matthew 10:40-42

Jesus said, “… whoever gives even a cup of cold water to these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

Many years ago, I was working at El Buen Samaritano. This was so long ago that they were not located on their current beautiful campus just south of here – they were in a dilapidated building on South 1st street that could barely contain the clinic, food pantry, and other programs. Still we served a lot of people all over the county and sometimes instead of them coming to us, we went to them. 

Now, I was a grant writer, so most of my time I sat in an office in front of a computer. I’d craft descriptions of our work that could be boiled down to something like this:

El Buen Samaritano is a mission of the church that brings the love of God to people who need food, health care, and education. 

And there is no denying that is what we did – or at least what the amazing staff did. 

One day, however, I got to see my work, our work, from a very different angle. 

On that day, a member of our staff named Jorge invited me along to visit a client who lived all the way out near Elgin. He thought I’d benefit from seeing in person the kinds of people he met in his work. Jorge was what we called a “promotero” or Community Health Worker. A native of Mexico, Jorge could help immigrant families better understand the health and social systems here and he’d direct them to resources to address their needs. The families he visited lived in extreme poverty. 

So we drove out to what Jorge called “the medium of the nothing” which was his rough translation of “the middle of nowhere.” On a wooded lot with a deteriorating mobile home, an elderly couple greeted us with big smiles and invited us into their home. They conducted a conversation in Spanish about what was going on in the family and what help they needed. I listened and looked around. This couple had worked hard for years as agricultural laborers in Florida and Texas. 

When it was time to leave, the couple walked us out to Jorge’s car and then the woman told us to wait and she smiled at me. She rushed back into the house and came out with a dozen eggs from the chickens she was raising. She insisted that I take them. It was humbling. A woman with almost nothing gave me what in my suburban neighborhood would be considered a gourmet treat. 

Jesus tells his disciples 

“whoever gives even a cup of cold water to these little ones in the name of a disciple – truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward” 

I think maybe those eggs were like a cup of cold water. After all, Jorge and I were out there in the medium of the nothing on an errand of Good News and when that elderly couple welcomed us it was as if they were welcoming Christ himself. 

But the flip side of the story could also be true – That couple was offering us Good News. They were on an errand for Christ as well. 

It is common and not a mistake to hear the words of Jesus to his disciples as words to us, his followers today. Like them, we are called to share the Good News, to minister to the vulnerable.  But sometimes I think we forget their context and how different it is from ours. 

Jesus’ original disciples were a small group of people spreading a new message to people who had never heard it before. These first disciples, and a short time later the early church, were a small minority group with no power who faced lots of skepticism, to say the least. In those days, Christians were the “little ones” and they were asked to identify themselves with the other “little ones” of the world. 

Today, most people in the world have heard of Christianity. In our country Christianity is the majority religion. Not only that, but in a global and historical context, many Christians in America have access to power and resources – we don’t usually think of ourselves as the “little ones.” And when we go out to share the Good News, it is very likely to people who have already heard it. 

And that brings about an intriguing possibility: what if the people to whom we minister are also ministering to us? We might go out into the world hoping people will welcome us and our message- what if they are hoping we will welcome them? 

The vulnerable can be missionaries, too.

Have you even been on the receiving end of welcome from an unexpected source? Has someone you thought of as a “little one” been the bearer of Good News?

What scripture and our own experience tells us again and again is that we welcome and encounter God when we encounter the other. Our acts of comfort and kindness touch the heart of God and can transform our lives. Likewise, when others welcome us there is also an encounter with God. 

There is reciprocity in welcome. Each time you encounter another person with welcome you have the opportunity to gain insight, to learn a new story of faith, to experience a new way to encounter the Holy. We approach each other through God. God reaches us through one another. 

What if we erase the distinction between those we think of as objects of our charity and evangelism and those who have something to give and to share? What if the “little ones” to whom we go have a saving message for the sake of OUR faith? 

It is possible that when you give a bottle of water or a dollar bill to a beggar on the side of the street that you are, in a way, offering a cup of cold water to Christ. The person to whom you are offering the Love of God might also be offering love to you – and from a perceptive very different from yours. 

One of the humbling and glorious lessons we can learn from receiving the Good News from unexpected places is this: Like the original disciples, all any of us really have to share is the Love of God. Doing that requires an act of trust. 

When you have no money, no health insurance, and your physical safety is threatened, then welcoming a stranger with trust is an astounding gift. It is humbling to be received in that way. That is the way I felt when a destitute elderly woman gave me eggs from her chickens. 

Like the early disciples she was a “little one.” And although she was welcoming me into her home for my mission, she was also on her own mission to share the love of God. My faith was strengthened because of her hospitality and my vision of God grew larger. 

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”

As you go out into the world to share the love of God, be open to receiving it as well. Especially from those who have nothing but love to give you. 

AMEN.