10/04/2026
Good evening. I can't wait to be with you tomorrow morning. Here's my sermon -- it's a bit different, but I think (hope) will draw you into the text in a new ways that opens the words in your heart. See you then! With love, Mother Barbara
In the most intense and horrific moments of my devastating grief, I heard God speak loudly to my heart. God directed me to “go into the woods”, “walk the labyrinth each day”. I obeyed, for I believed God knew that the largeness, the goodness, the sacredness of God’s creation could alone touch and salve my broken heart and battered soul. I have walked that labyrinth day after day, month after month, year after year, allowing the energy of creation to bring me into a place of new life. I did this by listening to the wind move through the trees to whisper healing prayers heard by my heart; by feeling the damp moss beneath my bare feet in the summer, and being reassured that my rootedness in prayer was what would bring healing to my soul; by gazing upwards toward the sky to see the hawks soar above, and allowing my spirit to soar to new heights, reaching toward the holy; by noticing the changes to the woods each day, and affirming again that God’s love and providence remains unchanged, even in the midst of the many changes we endure; and by feeling the presence of the Spirit, holding me, loving me, and ushering me into healing.
Creation holds and offers us our redemption. And, because creation holds God’s love, and has been given the power to re-create, to live out the deepest rhythm ordained by God, the paschal mystery, the movement from life to death to resurrected life, because creation heals our hearts and strengthens our souls for our walk in this world, we can be made whole.
During this Season of Creation, we have listened to a language different than the voices so often speaking at us. We have engaged in language, practice, and prayer which emphasize goodness, interconnectedness, honesty, stewardship, tender care, responsibility, repentance, and integrity. We have delved into the truth of all creation: being God’s beloved, not just God’s people, but all of God’s creation. We have sung hymns praising and honoring God’s creation and understanding our only response to the gift of God’s creation is to offer glory to the creator of this all. It has been a powerful season for us to experience together.
And for today’s sermon, I invite you to imagine my daily pilgrimage that brings me to my place of resurrection or new life: my labyrinth in the woods. Many of you have walked this labyrinth with me or by yourself, so it is easy for you to imagine. For others, you have an image of my labyrinth that you can use as we walk around, into, and out of the labyrinth as we explore today’s text, so you can find the place of resurrection for all of humanity.
I invite you to take this journey with me, as we journey to the center, as we uncover important information about the text, when we will find our “aha” moment in the center of the labyrinth, and then crystalize the revelations as we exit the labyrinth. For our active minds, reasoning, insights, moments of burgeoning clarity are all part of creation as well – and we will use those parts today to unravel the truth in our text.
So let us begin. Let us imagine we are entering the labyrinth as we head toward the first turn.
For this first piece of information, helpful in opening our minds to the truth in this narrative, we need to know its context and determine its influence on the story. We are interested in the broader circumstances, the “where, how, and with whom” of how this exchange of words is happening, and perhaps even the broader historical context of this gospel.
This is what we know.
The day before, Jesus rode his donkey down the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem and was hailed as the Son of David. It’s Passover. The city is swarming with pilgrims. There is already tension in the city. As Jesus makes his descent on a donkey from the west, legions of armed soldiers are storming into the city from the East. There is explosive energy between the soldiers of Roman Empire whose desire it is to squelch any uprising caused by the faithful pilgrims and the crowds who tell their story of liberation in their celebration of Passover. On Palm Sunday, Jesus goes into the temple, turns over the money tables, heals the people, teaches the crowds, and retreats across the Kidron Valley to Bethany for the night. This morning, on his way to the temple, Jesus curses the fig tree, further setting up the tension and which foreshadows the destruction of the temple, which has happened by the time this gospel was written. The city is in chaos. And, into this turmoil, Jesus tells 3 parables, this one being the 2nd of the three.
The second piece of information we should know is that Jesus directly addresses the temple religious leaders. This story doesn’t draw the line between the Jewish people and those following Jesus. This story distinguishes between those who bear fruit for the kingdom and those who do not, or those who keep the fruit for themselves. This is not about ideology or theology, but about right action.
With these pieces of information, you may imagine in your mind, times when you’ve been in that type of explosive situation, either causing it, or being the pulled in as the recipient of the madness. You may be asking yourself: what was I thinking about as I was directly confronted? What judgment have I received? How did I respond, or what was the outcome? And what exactly was the sin of the religious leaders that caused this intense response from Jesus? Allow your mind to go there. This is the first turn in your labyrinth.
We travel to the next turn of the labyrinth by examining the literary form of allegory used in this story. An allegory is where every word and image stands for something other than what is being said. Now, our minds may be racing, wondering why Jesus uses this literary form for this parable? Why doesn’t he just say his truth directly to the religious leaders? What is the power of an allegory? Well, as we later discover, Jesus uses this form to draw the religious leaders into a situation where they condemn themselves. Now, Jesus clearly could have articulated their sin directly and fully so there was no mistake in his condemnation. But Jesus uses the allegory here so the religious leaders, as sinful and misdirected as they have become, can do some serious self -examination, which always has the potential for inner transformation. Rarely are we transformed when someone simply shares with us our sinfulness, but change is possible when we discover it ourselves – and that is always what Jesus is all about – deep transformation of the way we think and therefore act. This is where God’s mercy flows into their lives, and of course, ours.
In our allegorical story, we can imagine the following:
God is the landowner; the Jewish religious leaders are the tenant farmers (entrusted with bearing fruit for God’s kingdom); the prophets are the representatives of God who have come to collect what is due; Jesus is the Son who is killed; and the church is the group who is invited to work in God’s vineyard.
Are you beginning to wonder when and how have you been invited to work in God’s kingdom, or where exactly the vineyard is now – is it inside the church building, outside, or both? Have you ever thought about how you tend God’s vineyard? Will you have anything to offer when God comes to collect the fruits of your action? Good questions to ponder as we take another turn in our labyrinth.
We know the context – the audience and main players – and are getting a sense of the deeper message by allowing ourselves to ruminate on how this will fit together into something that draws us into the story. You may be thinking: how am I ever going to get out of this labyrinth? The journey is getting a bit complex and difficult. And because we know Jesus is the fulfilment of the prophecies, we begin to wonder what specific prophecies are being realized in this text.
The action in this text refers to several passages in Isaiah as well as Psalm 118. But I will mention two here, because they can begin to make this very real for us.
Isaiah 5
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watch-tower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a w**e vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.
And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
and people of Judah,
judge between me
and my vineyard.
What more was there to do for my vineyard
that I have not done in it?
When I expected it to yield grapes,
why did it yield wild grapes?
And now I will tell you
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down.
I will make it a waste;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it.
For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are his pleasant planting;
he expected justice,
but saw bloodshed;
righteousness,
but heard a cry!
Now, we begin to see that the vice here is self-centered greed, which turned the fruit toward what served the tenants, not what was best for the vineyard grower. God expected the fruits of justice and mercy, and found bloodshed and violence instead. This revelation then draws us to Genesis 4: the story of Cain and Abel, when Cain (in his logic of greed and violence) said, “God has shown regard for Abel. If I kill him, I will stand alone, and the inheritance will be mine.” Is Jesus condemning the religious leaders for wanting to stand alone, to imagine God’s inheritance of love was only for them?
I’m wondering, and maybe you are to, about times when you have been self-centered, when you kept the fruits of the kingdom for yourself, rather than offering them back to God, or to others in need? When you have sown wild grapes, rather than tend the vineyard to create the best – of yourself, your lives – our world? If or where God has destroyed that which you built because it wasn’t what God asked you to build?
Could that be what some see happening to our church? That God is rebuilding it in a new way which can be faithful for our context today where God’s love spills out from the church to all people around us? Have the Church’s wild grapes become the divisions among us as a Body of Christ.
Suddenly, this seems more personal. We’ve taken another turn toward our “aha” moment.
Toward the final turn into the labyrinth – specific words.
Our very last step toward the center has to do with the scriptural reference and meaning of the word “cornerstone”. This word is being used for the image of Christ in relation to the Church. It names Jesus as the standard by which the church is measured, which includes the need to recognize the primacy of Jesus, the need to keep Jesus as the keystone, who completes and binds the church together.
Ask yourselves this: is Jesus at the heart of everything you do? For you are the church, not the building or just what we do collectively as members of this church. Are you allowing Jesus to bind the parts of your life together – and your life with others? Are you wondering what that means? It’s a good conversation for us to have some time.
The center of the labyrinth – the “aha” moment.
We move now into the center of the labyrinth. We realize this isn’t just a story about Jesus being angry at the religious leaders in the Jerusalem temple during Passover. He isn’t just predicting his own death or the destruction of the temple 35 years later. Jesus is speaking to us, and this is always the “aha’ moment with scripture, when we realize we are in the story and the story is in our lives.
This story is a warning about the dangers of greed and self-centeredness. And it is an invitation to be good stewards of what God has offered us, to be active and faithful workers in the vineyard, to prepare ourselves for God to collect our good works, about our desire to not show up empty-handed or with wild grapes which have destroyed God’s beautiful vineyard.
Suddenly we realize there’s a lot about us in this story. Here’s a place to sit and reflect. I’ll give you a few minutes.
We begin to exit the labyrinth.
We begin to exit the labyrinth, changed in our thinking, walking forth with a new perspective, a new conviction. This is a purpose of the allegorical telling of this story, so we see ourselves in the mess and in the city of chaos, so we draw the story from the historical context into our own minds, so we don’t make ourselves the exception, but think hard about how we are accountable to the vineyard owner, to God.
We might wonder, “how are we like the religious leaders, thinking we’re doing it all right, but somehow, somewhere our good intentions have gone terribly wrong?” We may wonder how we find God’s path again.
Our we may wonder, as the prophets did, who in our world is misusing the resources God gave to us to build the kingdom? Honestly, probably all of us in terms of the care for our creation. But are there today religious and political leaders who have lost their grip on God’s desire for justice and mercy or have lost their way in speaking God’s truth.? We may wonder where our prophetic voice is. Should we be showing up at Guns to Garden Events everywhere, as an effort to speak the truth of non-violence to those in power? What corners of our world where wild grapes of destruction and violence are sown that we need to speak God’s love into?
Or maybe we can identify with God, who has created something beautiful, entrusted it others, and they have squandered it. This could be our relationships, ministry initiatives, or possessions. Do we know the pain of betrayal?
Or this story can teach us that we have a time to do it right, and then it’s someone else’s turn. They will do it differently, in a way that’s right for them, but that’s how a vineyard works – there is a time to pull out the old plants which are no longer producing grapes, and plant new ones.
So, what has changed in your thinking? What new idea is bouncing around your brain? What do you think you will ponder this afternoon? Or how will you allow this text to change you?
The good news in this story for me is the idea of Jesus’s being the cornerstone – God turned the rejection of Jesus by so many into a whole new architecture – a whole new chapter in the story of humankind’s redemption – by making new what was old and had lost its way. This happens in this scripture story. It happens in our lives – that which rejects the truth of the Way of Love in our minds becomes the thing from which new life will emerge. God’s justice and mercy are relentless in drawing us into being good stewards of God’s resources, of our desire to tend the vineyard and to be fruitful together, and that it is never too late to change our course, no one is beyond God’s amazing grace, and we can, always begin again, to bear the fruit of justice and mercy into God’s kingdom, which is our world. Amen.
