Year A Proper 22 2023 Blank Pages

Year A Proper 22, 8 October 2023

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA

“Blank Pages”

Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, you are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than we either

desire or deserve: Pour upon us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid, and

giving us those good things for which we are not worthy to ask, except through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our

Savior; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Matthew 21:33-46

Jesus said, “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press

in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent

his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.

Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying,

‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and

get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard

comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the

vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:

‘The stone that the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone;

this was the Lord’s doing,

and it is amazing in our eyes’?

Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the

kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest

him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

Friends, God did not create us to destroy us. God did not create us to make us suffer. God

did not create us to worry in the dark. God made us as a “part of God's creation, made in

the image of God.” That “means that we are free to make choices: to love, to create, to

reason, and to live in harmony with creation and with God. [Book of Common Prayer, 845] That is all,

by the way, directly from the Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer.

And when God spoke to us, God did not speak to us in stereo instructions. Do this. Then

this. Then that. We are a story telling creature. We see our lives as a story. We learn and grow

from stories, fiction or nonfiction, and it comes as no surprise, when God came in human

form he was a teacher and story-teller.

Even in the Ten Commandments, the list of instructions is couched in a story.

Then God spoke all these words:

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the

house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

In other words, “This is why I have the authority to say these things to you. Remember

where you started. See how far I have taken you. Listen to me!”

When we think on our lives, we see them in a narrative. I first remember paying particular

attention to this after a commentary in Times Magazine back in 2000. It was after the sinking

of the Kursk Submarine, and the sailors who sat in the dark dying, and one of them took

his final moments to tell the tale. Scribbling in the dark, what he said literally is true for so

many of us metaphorically. "I am writing blindly." Lieutenant Captain Dimitri Kolesnikov

wanted his wife, and history to know the story of what 23 of the 118 men suffered in their

final moments. And so he wrote it down. And now, 23 years later, thousands of miles away,

we envision what it may have been like in the cold and dark. [Link to article]

We tell our tales to know that we are not alone. We listen to stories to know we are not

alone. But even more, we share stories so that we can change the ending while we still

have time. Such is the Kingdom of God.

Friends, Jesus told his story of the Rebel Vineyard to hold up a mirror to the religious

leaders who had strayed so far from God’s intent. He told the tale to those listening so

that they would know that they had an alternative. His tale was written down so that we

too could learn and grow and change. We cannot say we were not warned.

He told a story because that is how we drink in the world, for good or bad.

Sometimes, when something happens to us, we see it in a narrative when it is just a

stand-alone happening. We see causation. We seek blame. But sometimes it just is. The

light turned green because it was time for the light to turn green, not because God was

smiling on you. We had a car accident because the road was slick, not divine punishment.

We see narrative where there is none in the causation, but the ramifications do become part

of our story.

St. Paul tells his story couched in the deep story of Judaism. He followed all the rules. He

had done everything “right.” But in his story, he saw that what he had held so dear was

meaningless. The rules he held so dear was nothing, NOTHING, compared to the One

he now held dear. His story had changed.

Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More

than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing

Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard

them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…

We let go of what came before. We run after what lies ahead. It is a part of so many stories.

Watch almost any Romantic Comedy. At the end of the story someone is running. They

have caught a glimpse of a different life, one with love in it that they want and currently

do not have. This Rom-Com Run is nothing in comparison to what St. Paul is talking about.

St. Paul had a new hope that his relationship in Christ enabled. The BCP again…

The Christian hope is to live with confidence in newness and fullness of life, and

to await the coming of Christ in glory, and the completion of God's purpose for

the world. [BCP 861]

Even in our visioning of the future, we see it in a story. Our hope is vested in a story.

Even our grief, which is so profound and painful at times, is us letting go of the story we

have told ourselves about the way that things would be.

We are a narrative creature. We see our story and we are the hero of it. That is not just okay,

it is the way we are wired.

One time in graduate school, we had a writing assignment to tell our story. The only parameters

were that we had to tell it in such a way that was true to us. I was serving as an associate

pastor at the time, and I was in charge of the Christian discipleship programs, so I had lots

of arts and craft supplies in my office. I just happened to glance around and noticed that

there was a stack of blank journals, no lines, about 50 pages each, sitting on my shelf.

I had the time and energy to be creative, so I wrote my story as a Children’s Book, drawing

the pictures and coloring them in, and everything. When I shared it in class, one of the people

in class mentioned that she had a favorite part. I asked, curious. She loved that there were a

lot of blank pages at the end of my story, that my story is not over yet.

And friends, as long as there is breath in our lungs, as long as a heart beats in our chest, our

story is not over yet. There are still more words we can say. There is still more love we can

share. There is still some way that we can fold ourselves into God’s story and God into ours.

The blank pages are yet to be.

Even in the dark in the Kursk, there was a story to be told. This captain knew that they had

no hope of being rescued, but he did not give up on being human and having his story live

on. 

When we give up our hope we give up on God. “Behold, I am about to do a new thing!

Now it springs forth! Do you not perceive it?” [Isaiah 43:19] If it was true for Isaiah, it is

true for us. Our story is interwoven with others’ stories. We are not alone.

Because we live in narrative, we live in relationship. There were all kinds of relationships

in Jesus’ parable. Paul makes claims on his readers because of their relationship to him. 

And if you feel like God has written you off, and there is no hope, remember that even

Jesus was written off. By the pharisees. They had no respect for him. And after he died, he

was written off by everyone. Even the ones who loved him the most. But even here, even

when all was hopeless in the story, there was a hint that the tale was not over. The prophecy

held true. 

Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:

‘The stone that the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone;

this was the Lord’s doing,

and it is amazing in our eyes’?

When everyone and everything tells you that you are worthless or that your story is over,

Jesus is there to whisper, “But wait, there’s more.”

I believe this story. I believe when days are dark. I believe it when I am on top of the world.

My story has HIS-story, or better yet, I am a part of HIS-story so my story has not and will

not ever end. And there is so much yet to come. Amen