Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, September 27, 2026:

First Reading: Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

First Reading (Semi-cont.): Exodus 17:1-7

Psalm: Psalm 25:1-8 (Psalm 25:1-9 NRSV)

Psalm (Semi-cont.): Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16

Second Reading: Philippians 2:1-13

Gospel: Matthew 21:23-32

Before we dig into today’s Gospel, let’s situate it in the timeline of the life of Jesus, according to Matthew. Earlier in the 21st chapter, Jesus has entered the city of Jerusalem in an event we’ll celebrate as Palm Sunday. It’s a triumphant entry, followed by Jesus throwing money changers out of the Temple.

In short, it’s becoming clear to those in charge of all sorts of societal institutions that Jesus will cause trouble. So the beginning of our Gospel shows the leaders of the Temple trying to determine what they should do. If he’s truly sent from God, we imagine they might take one path; if he’s just a scruffy vagabond preacher type, they might take another. But how to know?

They ask a question about Jesus’ authority, and in classic form, Jesus responds with a question. He asks them about the baptism of John, and in doing so, some Bible scholars see him as aligning himself with John and prophets like him. He certainly doesn’t look to the Temple elders for authority.

Here, as in other places, the questions of Jesus are seldom about coming up with the right answers. Jesus asks questions to make the ones who hear the questions think about transformation. And here, as in other places, Jesus offers a parable to help us think further about the questions.

In today’s Gospel, we have another parable set in a vineyard, which those Temple authorities would hear as a story about Israel, the people and the land, since several ancient prophets used that language. For us, listeners in the 21st century, it may be the language of two sons that feels familiar.

Think about how often we have stories of two sons in the Bible: Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob, the Prodigal son and his disgruntled brother. It’s tempting to approach these parables with the air of a detective. Which brother is the one who is doing the right thing, the good thing? Which one should we cheer for?

Here, as with many a story of siblings, the answer is neither one. Both sons are wrong. Both have acted in a less than upright way. More important, we have been both of these sons. We will be both of these sons.

This parable reminds us, though, that ultimately our actions are important. It’s not enough to say the right things. Action is required.

This idea may fly in the face of what we believe to be good Lutheran theology. What about the idea of grace? Many of us were taught that we're such dreadful humans that there's nothing we could do to justify the gift of salvation. God swoops in and redeems us, even though we're fairly hopeless people. That was the message I got from many a church event, Lutheran and otherwise.

But as a grown up, going back to revisit these passages, I'm amazed at how often God requires more of us than just saying we believe in Christ, more than just accepting Christ as our savior, more than just having faith. In the words of Luther, faith should move our feet. In the words of James, faith without action is dead. We don't confess belief in Christ so that we can say, "Our job here is done." We don't confess belief so that we can collapse and snooze on the sofa. We confess our faith and go to work in the vineyard.

The good news is that the invitation to do the work is ongoing. We may disappoint God—by saying yes and not showing up, or by saying no thanks. God remains steadfast, offering us opportunity after opportunity to be part of the kingdom team.

The end of this parable makes clear that the stakes are high: we may think we’ve already done the work. We may think we’re part of God’s team. We might be rather self-righteous about that. At the end of this parable, Jesus reminds us that the last shall be first. And when we look at that list, it’s clear that those who would be last in the hierarchical society of Jesus would also be last in our time. Jesus tells us that these people on the margins might be the ones who recognize the Good News before the rest of us do.

We have time to recognize the truth, the truth told to us by people like John the Baptist and Jesus. We have time to change our minds. We have time to think about our own claims to righteousness and to change course.

When we look at the totality of Jesus’ teaching, we hear a more complete good news. Even when we fall short, God will still love us. If we've said we'd do the work, and we fail to do it, we have other days when we can show up. God will still welcome us.

There's plenty of work to be done: weeding out the thorny vines of injustice, tending the seedlings that can grow to produce good fruit. We can each do the tasks that are ours to do. God invites us to be part of a much grander vision. Let us say yes to that invitation today and every day. Let us say that we will do the work, and then, let us do it.

Of Apple Farms and Alternate Futures

Later today, I will stop by my favorite apple orchard on the way home.  I will be buying apples today and then again later in October--all for the sake of writing projects for my classes.  Tomorrow my Nonfiction Writing will have 3 kinds of apples, and we'll discuss the kinds of reviews we could write.  Then on Friday, we'll write those reviews.

I have a memory from a past autumn of driving to my favorite orchard and seeing a farm for sale.

This morning, I went back through my blog to find the reference, and I did; this post from September 29, 2011 has this bit:  "I continue to try to convince myself that a farm for sale is not a sign about my life's direction. I'm trying not to think about the proud tradition of poet-farmers in this country. I'm reminding myself that a farming life would leave me too exhausted to write. Too exhausted and broke to boot."

Each time I make the drive, I try to remember which property was for sale, and today will be no different.  But I do wonder if the house that was part of the property has since been torn down. It was looking old and tired 15 years ago:

Fifteen years ago!  I didn't ever call to find out how much the farm would cost, but I assume that even 15 years ago, I couldn't have afforded a 38 acre farm.  It is one of those choices, though, that still intrigues me.

If I see a farm for sale today, on my way to the apple orchard, I might make a different choice.  I would imagine keeping my teaching job in Spartanburg, while also running an apple orchard, while also teaching online classes part-time, while also preaching part-time in Bristol, Tennessee.

And then, I probably would make the same choice I made in 2011.  I would back out of the driveway and try not to look back.

I am so grateful to have arrived to living in this area, even without buying a farm 15 years ago.  If I had bought that farm, I might have missed out on my dream jobs that I have now:  teaching English classes at a small, liberal arts college (a dream job for my whole adult life) and preaching every Sunday at a small, country church (only very recently recognized as a dream job).

God's Generosity: Youth Sermon and Adult Sermon

It was a good Sunday at Faith Lutheran, in Bristol, Tennessee.  I didn't have any brilliant new ideas for a youth sermon, so I went with a standard approach, modified a bit from last time.  I encouraged a thought experiment, stressing that no actual money would be given out.

The text was Matthew 20:  1-16:  laborers in a vineyard arriving at different times, all paid the same amount of money at the end, regardless of arrival time.

The 4 youth who are regulars, I asked if they would make a banner for the church.  It would be an all day project, from 9-6, and I'd pay each one of them a thousand dollars.  They agreed--no surprise.

What if I included some newer members of our youth church?  They could come at noon and be paid the same.  A bit of hesitation, but nodding heads.

What if toddler Malachi joined us at 3 p.m.?  Same amount of money, but starting much later.  Wrinkled noses, less agreement.

Now what if I included some adults, let's say, Carl, Pete, and Diane?  They could come at 5 p.m., work for an hour, get $1000 each--are we O.K. with that?  Definitely not.

After the thought experiment, a brief talk about God's generosity and ideas of fairness.  The adult sermon covered much the same ground.  I think that the youth sermon was more engaging, as it often is, on some level, even though the ideas are developed differently.

You can see the adult sermon here, on my YouTube channel.  If you'd like to read along, I posted the sermon manuscript in this blog post.

Sermon for Sunday, September 20, 2026

September 20, 2026
By Kristin Berkey-Abbott



Matthew 20:1-16



Children have fierce notions of fairness. It’s fairly common for children with siblings to wonder which one is the favored one. If we’re lucky, we have parents who insist that all children are loved equally. My mom went so far as to make sure my sister and I had the exact same amount of Christmas presents to unwrap, so that we wouldn’t read anything into the pile of gifts.


Today’s parable explores the issue of fairness: that everyone should be treated fairly. But today’s Gospel asks us to consider what fairness means. Is it complete equity? Is it proportional? Needs based? Yield based equity? Is it promise based, or is it contractual justice?


Obviously, we’re not reading a capitalist management textbook. The householder pays all the workers equally, no matter how much work they’ve done. For most of us, we’d see this as a quick route to bankruptcy—by way of spending all of our cash, or the slower route to bankruptcy, by way of demoralizing your most dependable workers, the ones who show up to do a day’s work for a day’s pay, not the ones standing idle.


The workers standing idle might tempt us to a different reading of the parable, 2 different readings, depending on our relationship to work and depending on the translation of the text. If we read the words as “standing idle,” we might see these workers as lazy, people who could be working but are not—and they are rewarded for their laziness, paid just the same as those who have been working all day.


The Greek word is “argos.” It can mean “at leisure.” It can mean “free from work.” It can mean “lazy.”. It can mean what the late hired laborers offer as a reason for their idleness: “because no one has hired us.”


If we’re tempted to see Jesus teaching us a lesson about the value of capitalism and bosses and workers, you’d be about to hear a different sermon that frankly does not seem to be supported by the majority of Christ’s teaching.


It’s also tempting to see this parable as about God’s relationship to Jews and Christians, and while it’s one standard interpretation, it poses dangers. Throughout the Scriptures, a garden is often used as a way of talking about God’s relationship to people of the Covenant, and in today’s parable, the garden is not only for the Jewish people. From there, some interpreters see this text as showing a shift in God’s favor from Jewish people to Christians, but that interpretation isn’t supported by the text.


It’s much more likely that this parable isn’t about the workers at all. It’s much more likely that Jesus is trying to show us how God is generous in ways that humans are rarely generous, particularly humans who are in charge of workforces, of land, and policy decisions about justice and fairness. Consider that the landowner hires people and offers to pay them. He makes every laborer the same offer. Those of us who have been in charge of workplaces know how rare this generosity is. I’ve been part of the hiring process from both sides, and it is just exhausting, this measuring of worth, and it starts even before the worker is hired, with paperwork and evidence of past education, training, and work.


The landowner isn’t having any of it. He has work that needs to be done, and there are workers waiting to be hired. He makes every one of them the same generous offer.


And how do the workers respond to this generosity? We don’t know about the workers hired later in the day, but we do know how the ones hired in the morning feel: envious and exploited. They worked longer hours, and they are paid the same amount of money as the ones who only worked an hour???? Outrageous. Shouldn’t the ones who worked longer now get more pay? Ten day’s wages, surely, if we do the math.


The vineyard owner doesn’t engage. He says that they made an agreement, and both sides kept the terms, and thus, the workers have been treated fairly. You can almost hear the vineyard owner saying, “If you want fairness next time, I can do that, but you won’t like that as much as you think you will.”


Again and again, Jesus shows us that our legalistic approach to life will not serve us very well. And much more importantly, Jesus reminds us that it’s humans who have this mind set, not God. It’s humans who stretch their clenched hands wanting more—but with this clenched hand mindset, we can’t open our hands so that God can fill them. A clenched mindset means we can’t open our hearts, our minds, our boundaries of what’s acceptable in an alternate approach to justice.


Instead of seeing this reading as a parable about workers, it’s much more useful to ask what this parable tells us about God. God doesn’t make contracts—God makes covenants. God isn’t a boss rewarding us only for merit—and thank goodness! And the covenant isn’t dependent on human behavior—what a relief, because we all fall short. God isn’t keeping a ledger sheet; Luther would remind us that we can’t be redeemed by our works, but only by God’s grace.


God doesn’t bestow grace on us because we deserve it. We don’t get privileged treatment because we were early to say yes to God. We don’t get payment because we worked hard and had a higher yield than others.


On the contrary, God’s generosity extends everyone, from those dependable workers that labor long, to the ones hired last, the ones that have been waiting because it seems that no one will ever call upon them. In the business world, we’d say that there must be a reason that no one has hired them, and we’d avoid hiring them too. But the vineyard owner hires these laborers, at the close of the working day, for the same rate, when he could have hired them for far less. It’s no way to run a business.


Praise be to God—God is not running a business. God is tending a vineyard in ways we won’t always understand, but God will always invite us to be part of this creating. We can react to God’s generosity in any number of ways, and today’s parable shows what happens when we respond with envy.


A far better response is to release all of the tight and clenched parts of our lives and say yes to God’s invitation. A far better response is to open our hands and respond to God’s generosity with gratitude. And let us always remember to say daily prayers of thanks to our triune God who gives us so much, each and every day.

Lutheran Safe Houses

For several weeks now, I've found my brain returning to an idea that doesn't exist as much as I can tell.  I wish we had a nation-wide network of Lutheran safe houses.  I don't mean that term in the 60's radical kind of way, as a shelter for people out in the world working to overthrow any number of societal forces.

It would be great to have houses with individual sleeping spaces with doors that lock, and communal spaces like bathrooms, kitchens, and living spaces--perhaps sleeping spaces with private bathrooms too.  People could stay as they were traveling or if they needed a retreat.  Houses could offer long term housing too.

We used to have more of these kind of spaces, although Lutheran ones were probably more likely to be connected to campuses.  I'm thinking about Catholic Worker houses and other dwellings connected to monastic traditions--how many of them still exist?

Is there a website or some other network that lists them all?  I did a quick internet search and didn't come up with one.

Longtime readers of this blog know that I'm never far from contemplating communal housing, particularly communal housing with a religious connection.  I've had this on the brain even more intensely because one of my church members in Bristol could really use this kind of resource as she waits for a unit to open in one of the places for low income seniors.

Would it be cheaper than the cheap motel which costs $430 a week that we're helping her pay for?  Hard to say--but I'd feel better about our church money going to a local Lutheran safe house.

The Feast Day of Hildegard of Bingen

 September 17 is the feast day of Hildegard of Bingen, mystic, herbalist, musical composer, naturalist, and Abbess. Her life was full of accomplishments, an amazing feat considering she lived in the twelfth century (she was born around 1098 and died in 1179).

Until recently, I had never thought of the twelfth century as a high water mark of feminism, but female monastics did amazing things during that time period. By studying them, I come away with a new appreciation for the medieval Church, where talented women found a cloistered kind of freedom. In many ways, the cloistered life was the only way for medieval women to have any kind of freedom. Cloistered life offered the only protection available to women who lived at the edges or outside the margins of society: widowed, artistic, not wanting to be married, weird in any way.

But Hildegard's life shows that freedom was constrained, since women monastics answered to men. For years, Hildegard wanted to move her group of nuns to Rupertsburg, but the Abbot who controlled them refused her request.

We all face constraints of various kinds, and the life of Hildegard shows what could be accomplished, even during a time where women did not have full rights and agency. She was an Abbess, and because being in charge of one cloistered community isn't enough, she founded another. She wrote music, and more of her music survives than almost any other medieval composer. She was an early naturalist, writing down her observations about the natural world and her theories about how the natural world heals us. She wrote to kings, emperors and popes to encourage them to pursue peace and justice. She wrote poems and a morality play and along the way, a multitude of theological meditations.

She did all of these things, in addition to keeping her community running smoothly. Yes, I'm thinking about Hildegard as an administrator, a woman who could be efficient and artistic at the same time. It’s no wonder that I find her inspiring.

It's interesting to think about the different types of groups who have claimed her as their own. Feminists claim her importance, even though she didn't openly advocate equality. Musicians note that more of her compositions survive than almost any other medieval composer. Her musical works go in different directions than many of the choral pieces of the day, with their soaring notes. New Age types love her views of the body and the healing properties of plants, animals, and even minerals. Though her theology seems distinctly medieval, and thus not as important to modern Christians, it's hard to dismiss her importance as a figure from church history.

I often say that it's odd I'm drawn to monasticism, as I'm a married, Lutheran female who has all sorts of worldly commitments, and thus cannot fully vow obedience. But as I think about church history, I'm struck time and time again by how often monasticism has offered a safe space to women that no other part of society did. I shouldn't be surprised that it's a tradition that speaks to me still.

It’s a tradition that speaks to many others too: have you listened to the Hildegard of Bingen channel on Pandora?  At one time, the channel was one of the most popular on that streaming service.

Maybe today is a good day to tune in that medieval music. We could listen while writing letters to those in charge, letters which demand more work towards social justice. Or we could focus on other writing projects, as Hildegard of Bingen did. We could plant a healing herb garden.

Today, on her feast day, let us say a prayer of thanks for Hildegard of Bingen and other medieval matriarchs of Christianity.

The Ghost in the Machine and the Holy Spirit

In late 2022 and early 2023, I first heard about ChatGPT and the current incarnation(s?) of artificial intelligence, I heard a lot of experts telling us that machines/programs/AI can't learn the way humans can learn.  Then they'd explain the creation process of these technologies and how humans programmed them to learn, and I thought, that process sure sounds the way my students learn.

Now I'm hearing a few people talking about the technology and issues of morality and spirituality.  Granted, more people are talking about how AI might kill us all--this week, at least, more people are talking about those dangers.  I saw one pastor post his notes from a Carey Nieuwhof webinar on AI and the Church and this bit intrigued me:  “AI doesn’t have the Holy Spirit. You have the Holy Spirit. AI doesn’t pray.”

When I was growing up in the 1970's, almost every Christian faith tradition taught that humans were God's supreme creation, the best of the best.  Many of those traditions taught that only humans go to Heaven.  It's a different faith scene now--says this pastor who is thinking about her first blessing of the pets as part of a worship service, at least first as one I've led.

This morning, I find my mind coming back to AI, to our beliefs (hopes?) about how human neurons are superior to silicon neurons.  I think about an NPR show back in the early days of this century that had philosopher Daniel Dennett as part of a panel discussion on Artificial Intelligence. He said that he thinks that silicon based life forms (like computers) are eclipsing carbon based life forms (like you and me). Further, he said that computers are using humans to assist in the evolution of computers. The part of me that loves sci-fi was intrigued, and continues to be intrigued. The part of me that doesn't understand machines was horrified at the thought of enabling them to take over the world and enslave us.  The rest of the panel scoffed at Dennett's idea.

Now it seems like prophecy--or that Dennett was keeping up with the research in a much more comprehensive way than most of us.

I am aware of the dangers of anthropomorphizing this technology, and yet I keep thinking of Claude or ChatGPT praying.  What would those prayers sound like?  Would God hear them?  How would God respond?

This morning's pondering took me back to other times when I've tried thinking about God in different ways than I was taught in childhood.  It's made me think of a poem I wrote a long time ago, when I looked up at the pre-dawn sky and thought about how many astronomical objects are cold, hard rocks as far as we can tell. It led to this poem, which has become a renewed favorite of mine, after the spouse of a dear friend told me how it had stuck with him and made him think about the universe differently. It was published in my first chapbook Whistling Past the Graveyard.


Geology, the True Life Science


Our planet—warm, gooey corner
of a cold, lifeless cosmos,
a primordial ooze which forms
the perfect building blocks for life,
a miraculous exception to the universal
rule. The official astronomer’s story.

But perhaps God prefers rocks and minerals.
Why else create such a diverse abundance?
Maybe animals and humans are the experiment
gone horribly wrong, an accident of pumping liquids
surrounded by decaying flesh.

Bones calcify, kidneys form stones, arteries harden
with plaque—instead of medical disaster,
perhaps our bodies move towards their ultimate evolutionary
destiny, seeking God’s pleasure.