[RCL] Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Psalm 19; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46 A form of wordplay people think is either great or terrible, depending on whether or not they’re fans, is the pun. You know, jokes that play on words with different meanings or words that sound alike. Silly things like, Why do cows have bells?…

[RCL] Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Psalm 19; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46 Being preached to on a parable can sometimes feel like you’re at the Grand Canyon and the tour guide is standing right in your line of vision. Or you are meandering through a stunning art gallery and the curator stops right in the middle…

The easiest way for a preacher to deal with the challenging story in today’s Gospel reading might be to understand it as simply a metaphor for events we already know well – another tale of deadly confrontation between Jesus and the Jewish leadership of his day. As we heard at the end of the passage,…

Any halfway decent real-estate agent or commercial property manager could probably explain today’s gospel parable from Matthew in two seconds flat. It is all about landlords and tenants after all. And there is an entire body of business law devoted to them and their all-too-numerous disputes. In Jesus’ telling, a vineyard owner contracts with tenants…

Those characters in the parable we just heard – there’s something about them that’s hard to accept. The landowner responds to the abuse and murder of his slaves by sending still others who are treated by the rebellious tenants in the same way. He responds to this further outrage by sending his son. But the…

Today’s gospel is like any clear, simple narrative account in many regards. First of all, it is a story, not exactly a factual account: the characters are anonymous, and the setting is spare. It’s another in a long series of stories told by Jesus, a series that we’ve been hearing for a few Sundays, and…

What more was there to do formy vineyardthat I have not done in it?When I expected it to yield grapes,why did it yield wild grapes? . . . he expected justicebut saw bloodshed;righteousness,but heard a cry! Isaiah 5:4 and 7b “Finally he sent his son to them, saying,‘They will respect my son.’” Matthew 21:37 There…

Among the most powerful forces we experience in life are expectations. Some expectations come from other people. Parents, spouses, peers, bosses, friends, children, neighbors, customers, and plenty of others all have their expectations of us. They expect certain things regarding our speech, our behavior, our character. Often, the most influential expectations are the ones that…

As we come to the end of the Gospel of Matthew that has been our main Gospel during Pentecost, we are forced more and more into an encounter with Jesus. The passage today lays things out quite plainly. The story of the vineyard, based on an old song which we heard part of in the…