Trinity 20, 2024

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Last Sunday we heard about nakedness and clothing. There is the nakedness of man’s sin and shame, and the clothing of Christ’s righteousness, given in Holy Baptism. What we have at the end of today’s parable is a man who rejects that clothing. He refuses the wedding garment, he refuses Christ’s righteousness. He wants life, he wants the kingdom on his own terms.

The same thing is going on at the beginning of the parable. What is a parable? It’s a story with you in it. And in the Bible, it’s a story with Christ in it. If you get those wrong—if you mistake yourself for Christ—you’ll end up with a different kind of religion altogether….

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Septuagesima 2024

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This parable has long been called The Laborers in the Vineyard. But it would be better to call it The Parable of the Landowner. He is the key figure here, and as in so many of the sayings of Jesus, it borders on the absurd. No landowner would do what this one does, just like in the parable of the sower you have a farmer who just throws the seed wherever, not seeming to care where it goes. This landowner doesn’t follow any customary business practices….

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Sermon for Trinity IX, 2018

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This parable has a surprise. If you’ve heard the parable before, you lose the surprise. But imagine you’re hearing it for the first time.  There’s a manager who has been cooking the books. He’s been caught, and the CEO has told him to clean out his office. But instead, he quickly alters the records even more, so that the people who owe the company money get a big reduction. He’s hoping that the people he helps will in turn help him once he’s out on the street. 

Now right at that moment, when the evil person has been exposed, many of Jesus’ parables will conclude with condemnation, something like, “It would be better for that man to have a millstone hung around his neck and cast into the depths of the sea”; or, “Bind him and cast him into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth”; or, “Assuredly I say to you, that man will be cast into prison and not get out until he has repaid the last penny.”

We expect to hear a pithy ending to the story that promises justice in the end. But instead, Jesus surprises us with a radically different kind of ending: the embezzling, wasteful, dishonest manager gets praised. So what’s going on?

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