As in many 3rd world countries today, so it was in Jesus’ time. If your only marketable skill was brawn you stood around in the right places early in the morning. Landowners who had work to be done would come by and hire people for the day. Wages were paid in cash, there was usually a meal thrown in, and the pay period was the work-day, not the hour. On the local economy you could get by, not affluent by any measure of the word, but you wouldn’t starve. That is the scene Jesus paints. But the problem comes up when the landowner still needs workers. He returns to the gathering site five times that day and hires more people. Finally, at the end of the day he does something radical. If you worked your 12 hours and someone else worked only an hour in the cool of the evening, you would have expected a prorated wage for the one who did not work as long. But that’s not what happens. The fault lay not with the workers—no one had hired them. The need of their families was just the same, and the work got done just the same, and had the landowner hired them all at dawn and the work ended at 2 he would still have paid them all the same…so he pays them all the same. The early ones complain but the landowner has a right to do what he wants with what is his. In doing so he shows us that God’s justice is generous. It is always a matter of need, never a matter of status. It is never earned, always grace, that generosity of spirit on God’s part that leaves us all leveled before the throne.

When it comes to our worship it means that nobody has anything up on God. I began my conscious walk with the Lord when I was 8 years old, but one day my parents came into my room when I was a babe in the crib. Somehow I had gotten hold of a safety razor blade and broken it up in small pieces in my crib—and there was not a scratch on me. Tell me the Holy Spirit was not active in my life very early! By His grace from that day when I was 8 I have never seriously wandered from the path. There are others whose conscious walk with the Lord is just beginning. But when it comes to worship all that doesn’t matter. We all come humbly, as children, to receive of the Lord what He, our loving Father, has to give. We are all involved in the same thing: The labor of worship—liturgy, work of the people. There are no hired hands, no ranks or prestige, just each with our roles to play for the glory of God. On the surface the laity sing, pray, praise, listen, offer up offerings, participate in communion, in your hearts you mean what you say, commit yourself to praise and action, and believe at the communion rail. On the surface we clergy lead, preach, celebrate and serve, in our hearts we mean what we say, we commit ourselves to praise and action, and we believe as we say the words. If, then, our hearts are going to follow our bodies, we must know the meanings.

The Shape of the Liturgy: (Beginning through the Sermon.) The Introit is the fancy word we use for entering the Holy Place. It is the beginning of a journey into the heart of God, into the sanctity of heaven on earth. It is customary to kneel to pray when you arrive (see BCP p. 833.) Even if you arrive late take a moment to center your heart on God. We sing together (standing), then the liturgy proper begins. We stand, as a way of standing in the presence of God. We greet one another and the Lord. “Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, And blessed be His Kingdom, now and forever. Amen.” There are other greetings for Lent and Easter that set aside these cycles against the other cycles, for they celebrate the Saving Work of Christ. Then we pray the collect for purity. We recognize our transparency before God, and ask for His cleansing to properly worship. In Rite I the Summary of the Law follows: This is God’s command, this is our intent.

Following that we sing a hymn of praise: The Gloria during Green and White seasons, the Trisagion during Advent for its mystical qualities, and the Kyrie during Lent for its penitential tone. Then follows the Collect of the Day. A collect is a prayer in the format of 1) a phrase setting the stage, 2) a petition based on the phrase, and 3) an expression of praise to God. The collect of the day sets the stage for the theme of the day.

The Liturgy of the word is the Instruction of the Mind. We sit, for this is instruction. Lessons are read from the Old Testament, the Sacred History, for it tells the story of God’s work with His people and their growing understanding of it; from the New Testament Letters (Epistle, this is Apostolic Instruction, the teaching of those who received the faith from Jesus; and they are separated by an Old Testament Hymn—the Psalm. A canticle or hymn of praise can also take this slot.

The Gospel Reading follows, and it’s done differently. It takes precedence because it is the story of Jesus. We stand in honor of the One whose story is being read. We bracket it with song (song is praise, praise to God for the gift of His Son, whose story is being told) and with the announcements and responses. (When we speak together we are of one accord—to hear the proclamation of the story of Jesus.) After the announcement of the Gospel lesson we may cross ourselves three times 1) on the forehead: God be in my head and in my thinking; 2) on the mouth: God be in my mouth and in my speaking; and 3) on the heart: God be in my heart and in my understanding.

We listen to the sermon, which takes God’s story and relates it to our own stories, so that our story may become “His-story” in our world today. Our Lord commanded the first apostles to go into all the world to preach the gospel, baptizing and teaching them to observe all that He commanded them. One of the most humbling experiences I had was at St. John the Divine Episcopal Church in Houston. I stood up in the pulpit to preach and a brass plaque on the pulpit read the words of the Greek men to Philip in John 12:21: “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” The pulpit is not for politics or economics, except as addressed by the Gospel. The pulpit is not for movements for the social good except as driven by the Gospel. The pulpit is not for making people feel good about themselves or the preacher except as informed by the Gospel. It is for proclamation of the good news of God in Christ and instruction of the faithful in the life of Christ.

Preachers must be brave. The saying is: “Never step into the pulpit without a letter of resignation in your back pocket!” After all, it is not ourselves that we preach—we must strive above all things to reveal to the people the person of Jesus. To that degree the sermon is sacramental—it communicates the grace of God. And so this sermon about sermons draws to a close. Next week: Our response of faith!

Fr. Paul Moore+