The Love of God

Near the end of seminary, on my path toward ordination, I took the General Ordination Examinations, affectionately known as the GOEs. These are considerably less exciting than the Ordinary Wizarding Levels—the OWLs—in the Harry Potter book series. Although, after spending the better part of four days trying to demonstrate what I had learned in three years of seminary, I would have welcomed a magic wand.

I was grateful to receive proficient scores in every area. But looking back, I recognize how much those examinations could not tell me or anyone else. There is a considerable difference between explaining the Good News of God in Christ and allowing that Good News to shape the pattern of your life. You can write a convincing answer about forgiveness and still hold a grudge against a classmate.

Of course, those sorts of blindspots follow us all well beyond formal schooling. We know something about patience, generosity, and compassion. We recognize wisdom when we hear it, recommend it to someone else, even put it into a pithy social media post. Then, someone interrupts us at precisely the wrong moment, and we discover how much we are still learning.

This morning, in our Gospel lesson, we near the end of a long series of tense conversations between Jesus and the religious authorities. We are in Jerusalem, during the days we now call Holy Week. Questions about authority, taxes, and resurrection have become occasions to test Jesus. He has answered with searching inquiries and unsettling stories, inviting his hearers to reconsider their lives before God.

Now comes a question whose answer many of us could give without looking it up. 

A lawyer walks up to a rabbi, this is not a joke, this is simply what our text says. A lawyer walks up to a rabbi and asks, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus answers with words from the Scriptures that have nourished his people for generations: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” 

And then, having been asked for one commandment, Jesus gives another. “A second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” He joins them together and says that all the law and the prophets hang upon these two commandments from Holy Scripture. Everything else depends upon this love.

We hear these words so often that we can almost miss them. Love God. Love your neighbor. Yes, of course. We know the answer. But Jesus is describing something that reaches into every corner of a human life.

Love God with the mind that solves problems and the heart that carries old wounds. Love God with the body that gets tired, the imagination that dreams, and the attention that wanders. Love God with your relationships, your resources, and the hours you would rather keep entirely to yourself. And this love of God takes shape in how you treat the people whose lives touch yours.

Last Sunday, we considered what belongs to God. The answer was everything. This Sunday, Jesus invites us to consider what a life might become when we begin to trust that truth. If everything belongs to God, then everything can become a place where love takes root.

But before we get very far with that invitation, Jesus asks a question of his own. “What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?” They answer, “The son of David.” It is a recognizable, faithful answer: the Messiah belongs to the line of Israel’s great king.

Then Jesus quotes a psalm in which David calls this coming figure his Lord. How, Jesus asks, can the Messiah be David’s son if David himself calls him Lord? We do not need to untangle every thread of that ancient argument to feel its force. Their answer leaves something unexplained; the Messiah is greater than the category they have supplied.

And perhaps that is where their conversation begins to reach us. We have words for Jesus, too. Messiah. Savior. Son of God. Lord. We confess them faithfully, and still the living Christ can surprise us, challenge us, and draw us beyond what we thought we understood.

We can recognize Jesus in a Gospel story and struggle to recognize him in the person standing before us. We can admire his patience with difficult people while quietly hoping he will understand why we have run out of patience when in the same spot. We can celebrate his welcome and then hesitate when someone needs room in our own lives.

Our baptismal promise gives us a practice for that hesitation: seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. Seek means there is looking to do. There is attention to offer, a story to hear, a judgment to reconsider. The neighbor bears a dignity we did not give them and therefore cannot take away.

That neighbor might be the person beside us in this church. It might be someone whose needs interrupt our plans, someone whose politics bewilder us, or someone we have already decided is impossible. We may encounter Christ through a kindness they offer us, too. Sometimes our difficulty is admitting that the person we have dismissed has something holy to give.

And somewhere in all this talk about loving everyone, there is a person we can easily overlook. “Love your neighbor,” Jesus says, “as yourself.” Yourself. The person whose limitations you know so well, whose mistakes you can replay without prompting, whose needs you keep moving to the bottom of the list.

If everything belongs to God, you belong to God, too. Your tired body belongs to God. Your anxious mind belongs to God. The part of you that believes you ought to be handling everything better is already held within God’s love.

That does not mean we have to achieve perfect self-love before we can care for anyone else. Thank goodness. It does mean we cannot assume that everyone deserves tenderness except us. The love Jesus commands includes the person we are.

So here is a question worth carrying into this week: What would it look like to love myself as someone God loves? Sometimes that might mean making a difficult change or asking for help. Sometimes it might mean going to bed, sometimes it might mean soaking up one more moment of joy. It may mean taking a walk, making something for the sheer joy of it, or allowing a friend to listen. 

Rest has a place in a life offered to God. So does delight. We do not have to justify every good gift by explaining how it will make us more productive tomorrow. God loves the person who receives the gift. FULL STOP.

The psalmist here in Psalm 90 gives us a prayer for that receiving: “Satisfy us by your loving-kindness in the morning.” Before we consider what we can even accomplish today, we recognize fulfillment in God’s love. We bring our hunger, our limitations, and our hope that the work of our hands might become fruitful.

That is a prayer we can bring into all parts of our life, including our financial stewardship season. Here at Holy Apostles, our theme is “Plenty Good Room.” Our pledges matter. They help sustain the worship, care, formation, and service through which this community makes room for people to encounter Christ.

God’s invitation to love reaches through those pledges into the whole of our lives. What are we doing with the gifts entrusted to us? What patterns help us become generous? Where might our time, our money, our abilities, and our attention serve the love of God and neighbor?

God’s claim upon our whole lives can sound overwhelming, especially when so much is already being asked of us. But look at the Jesus who speaks these words. Within days, he will embody them through his Passion. His love for God and neighbor will carry him into the heart of the suffering of the world, and through his death and resurrection God will open a future that human violence cannot close.

The one calling us into love is already giving himself to us. We are learning to receive his life and participate in it. Around this table, we come with empty hands. Christ feeds us, gathers us into his body, and sends us to love. 

I am grateful I passed those ordination examinations at the end of seminary. I am more grateful that God has kept teaching me since. Often the lesson comes through someone I did not expect, in a moment I would not have chosen, with an invitation I am still learning to accept.

We know the answer to the lawyer’s question: love God with everything, and love your neighbor as yourself. This week, may we receive that love deeply enough to practice it. May someone encounter its tenderness through us. And may we have the grace to recognize it when someone offers it to us. Amen.

Plenty Good Room To Grow

It's not our vineyard, but we are called to steward it for a season.

Proper 22, Year A

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20

Psalm 19

Philippians 3:4b-14

Matthew 21:33-46

©2026 The Rev. Seth Olson

This sermon was delivered on the 19th Sunday after Pentecost at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Apostles in Hoover, AL. A video of the sermon may be found here.

Holy God, may my words be your words, and when my words are not your words, may your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen.

There is something I want you to notice about Jesus’ vineyard. Before a single tenant arrives, the vineyard is already there. The landowner plants it. He puts a fence around it. He digs the wine press. He builds the watchtower. By the time anybody shows up to work, somebody else has already done the work necessary to make this place fruitful.

And then the landowner does something extraordinary. He entrusts it to tenants. Here is this vineyard—planted, prepared, protected—and he places it into their hands. He leaves them room to work it, room to tend it, room to discover what might grow there. They didn’t create the vineyard. They received a place within it.

Which makes what happens next so strange. Somewhere along the way, the tenants seem to forget something basic: this is not their vineyard.

When harvest time comes, the landowner sends people to receive the fruit that belongs to him, and the tenants beat one, kill another, and stone another. More servants come, and the tenants do the same thing. Finally, the landowner sends his son, and the tenants see him coming and say, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.”

Did you hear what happened?

They have been given an entire vineyard, and somehow they have become convinced that there isn’t enough.

If the landowner receives his fruit, there will be less for us. If the heir receives his inheritance, there will be less for us. If somebody else has something, perhaps that means I won’t. So what began as a gift becomes something to possess. What began as stewardship becomes ownership. What began in abundance becomes scarcity.

I wonder if that isn’t one of the oldest human temptations.

My life. My time. My money. My abilities. My family. My church. My seat. My table.

And those things really are ours in meaningful ways. Our lives matter. Our time is precious. Our gifts are particular. We are responsible for how we use what has been placed into our hands. But Jesus’ parable asks us to remember something deeper: before any of it belonged to us, it was gift.

That same rhythm runs underneath all of our readings this morning. Listen to how the Ten Commandments begin. Before God says, “You shall” or “You shall not,” God says, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”

God does not say, “Keep these commandments, and then I might rescue you.” God says: I already did. Before commandment comes liberation. Before obligation comes grace. Before Israel does anything for God, God has already heard their cries, confronted Pharaoh, opened the sea, fed them in the wilderness, and given water to the thirsty.

And now God begins teaching them how free people live.

Do not worship the gods that enslave you. Do not use God’s name to accomplish your own purposes. Stop working sometimes. Let your children rest. Let your servants rest. Let the immigrant among you rest. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not lie about your neighbor. Do not spend your life consumed by the desire to possess what somebody else has.

The underlying message from God is: You know what Egypt is like. You know what happens when human beings become commodities and production matters more than people. You know what happens when somebody at the top decides there is not enough to go around.

I brought you out of Egypt—out of that way of being. Now, with my help, don’t build another society like that! Gift first. Response second.

Paul discovers something similar. In Philippians he gives us his extraordinary religious résumé: his ancestry, his credentials, his zeal, his righteousness. If anybody ought to be able to prove that he belongs, Paul can.

And then he lets it go. Not because those pieces of his life are meaningless. Not because his body is bad and his spirit is good. Not because his Jewish identity was something shameful that Christianity rescued him from. He lets go of the idea that any of those things can earn what Christ has already freely given him.

And then comes one of my favorite lines from Paul: “I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” Did you hear the order again?! Christ has made me his own. Therefore, I press on. 

Gift first. Response second. 

Which brings us back into the vineyard. Here, I wonder whether one of the great spiritual questions of our lives is not simply, “What do I have?” but “What has been entrusted to me?”

What if my life is a vineyard I have been invited to tend? What if my time is? My money? My abilities? My relationships? What if even this community we call Holy Apostles is not something we possess, but something entrusted to us for a season?

And if that is true, then perhaps the question isn’t how tightly we can hold onto it.

Perhaps the question is: What is growing here?

That is the question I want us to begin asking together today because this morning we are moving into our financial stewardship season at Holy Apostles. Now, we don’t think of just this time as “Stewardship Season” because stewardship is a spiritual practice that we engage year-round. But, the theme of our financial stewardship season this year comes from a wonderful, spiritual song: “Plenty Good Room.”

Now, don’t panic. Nobody is handing you a pledge card this morning. You can unclench.

Before we talk about what any of us might give, I want us to spend some time noticing what we have already received. Look around the vineyard.

Look at the people God has gathered here. Think about the people who made room for you before you ever knew you needed it. Think about the generations who prayed before us, those who gave before us, served before us, worshiped before us. Think about all the people who planted vines whose fruit we now enjoy.

And look at what is growing! 

Children are learning that they are beloveds of God. People bring their deepest questions here and discover that questions do not disqualify them from faith. Bread is broken and wine is shared. People are baptized. People fall in love and make promises. People die and are carried from this place surrounded by a community proclaiming that death does not get the final word. People grieve, and someone sits beside them without trying to make the grief disappear. People are fed. People serve. People discover gifts they did not know they had. People who might never otherwise have known one another become part of one Body.

There is fruit growing in this vineyard. Not perfect genetically-modified fruit. Lord knows, we’re not perfect tenants, nor do we always bear prized produce, but fruit nonetheless. And there is still plenty good room here!

Room for the person who hasn’t walked through those doors yet. Room for the child who cannot sit still. Room for the person who knows every word of the Creed and the person who isn't sure what they believe right now. Room for the grieving and the joyful. Room for the person who has much to give and the person who needs, for a season, simply to receive. Room for people who look like us and people who don’t. Room for people whose lives and stories and experiences might stretch our understanding of just how large God’s vineyard really is. Because it is not our vineyard, it’s God’s.

That may be what the tenants in Jesus’ parable forgot. They began to believe that someone else receiving meant something was being taken away from them. They began to believe that the vineyard belonged to them. And scarcity eventually made them violent.

But grace tells a different story. Grace says there is enough. Grace says you do not have to earn your place here. Grace says the person beside you does not have to earn theirs either. Grace says this vineyard was planted before we arrived and, God willing, will continue bearing fruit long after we are gone.

So stewardship cannot simply mean raising enough money to pay the bills. Yes, we need money to do ministry. Buildings require roofs, staff members deserve salaries, ministries require resources, and budgets are real. 

We will talk about those things. But stewardship begins much deeper than a budget. Stewardship begins with wonder.

Look at what we have been given!

And then comes the question: God, what would you have us do with it?

In a few moments, we will come again to this Table, God’s Table. And maybe there is no better place to begin a stewardship season than there.

Because nobody comes to this Table carrying a résumé.

Nobody purchases a place.

Nobody earns a better piece of bread.

And even before we walk up we hear these astonishing words: “The Gifts of God for the People of God.”

Then, all we do is come to this table, with empty and open hands where we see God’s pattern again: Gift first. Response second.

There is a prayer for after Communion in our Prayer Book that asks God to help us “so to venerate [or make real] the sacred mysteries” of Christ’s Body and Blood that we may “ever perceive within ourselves the fruit of thy redemption.”

The fruit of thy redemption. Perhaps that is what we are being invited to seek in this vineyard. Not fruit that proves we deserved the gift. Not fruit that makes us worthy of grace. Not fruit we can compare with whatever is growing on somebody else’s vine. The fruit of a redemption that has already been given.

So come to the Table. Receive again what you could never earn. Look around and notice all the people for whom God has made room.

And then go back into the vineyard—not as owners, but as beloved stewards. Tend what has been entrusted to you. Make room for somebody else. Give some of what you have received away. Trust that there is enough. And with God’s help, let this life we share together bear the fruit of God’s redemption.

A wise one of our Faith (Saint Augustine) once said of this holy meal, “Be what you see; receive what you are.” So receive the Body of Christ. Become the Body of Christ. And together, let us discover just how much fruit can grow when we trust that, in the vineyard of God, there is always plenty good room. Amen?

Trinitarian blessing based on today’s sermon:

May God the Father, who has planted the vineyard and made plenty good room for us all, give you grace to tend faithfully all that has been entrusted to you;

May God the Son, who has made you his own and given himself for the life of the world, make you fruitful in love, generosity, and service;

May God the Holy Spirit, who brings forth within us the fruit of redemption, send you out to make room, bear fruit, and share freely what you have received;

And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always. Amen.

Where Are Your Feet Headed?

It is one thing to profess our faith with our lips, but what happens when our lives don't follow what our mouth proclaimed?

 

Proper 21, Year A

Exodus 17:1-7

Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16

Philippians 2:1-13

Matthew 21:23-32

©2026 The Rev. Seth Olson

This sermon was delivered on the 18th Sunday after Pentecost at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Apostles in Hoover, AL. A video of the sermon may be found here.

Holy God, may my words be your words, and when my words are not your words, may your people be wise enough to know the same. Amen.

There are few things more satisfying than a Gospel passage that lets us identify exactly who Jesus is talking about. You know the kind. Jesus tells a story about hypocrisy, and immediately a face appears in one’s mind. Maybe it is a politician whose speeches bear very little resemblance to the way that person actually behaves. Maybe it is an athlete or celebrity who built a public image around certain values and then lived very differently when the cameras were turned off. Maybe it is a pastor, priest, bishop, or television preacher whose public proclamation and private life seem to belong to two different people.

And if we are particularly spiritually gifted, we can identify several of them before Jesus even finishes the parable. That second son? Oh, we know that guy. “I go, sir.” Absolutely. Yes, Father. Whatever you need. And then he never goes. His mouth says one thing. His feet say another. And surely Jesus is warning us about people like that.

Which is probably about the moment when this parable becomes dangerous. Because Jesus does not tell it so that we can become better judges of everybody else’s spiritual integrity. He tells it to religious people—people who know the right answers, know the Scriptures, have spent their lives around holy things, can recognize faithful language when they hear it, and probably know how to use plenty of it themselves. People, in other words, a lot like me. And perhaps a lot like us.

The chief priests and elders come to Jesus in the Temple and ask him, “By what authority are you doing these things?” It is a reasonable question. Jesus has entered their religious space and behaved as though he has the authority to rearrange it. He has overturned tables. He has challenged assumptions. He has disrupted a system that had been operating long before he arrived. “Who gave you permission to do this?”

Jesus answers their question with another question, this one about John the Baptist. Was John's authority from heaven or merely human? And Matthew lets us overhear the leaders calculating their response. If we say this, Jesus will trap us. If we say that, the crowd may turn against us. Notice what they do not seem to ask: What is true? What is God doing? What if John actually was speaking for God?

Their concern has shifted from truth to self-protection. And I wish I could tell you that only corrupt politicians and hypocritical religious leaders ever do that. But I know better. Because I do it too. I suspect most of us do.

We say we value truth, until the truth costs us something. We say we believe in forgiveness, until someone hurts us in a way we do not want to forgive. We say every human being bears the image of God, and then discover there are certain human beings whom we find remarkably easy to dismiss. We say we trust God, while quietly arranging our lives so that as little as possible is actually beyond our control.

We promise in our Baptismal Covenant to seek and serve Christ in all persons, to love our neighbors as ourselves, to strive for justice and peace, and to respect the dignity of every human being. Beautiful words. Words I mean every time I say them. And then I go live another week. And sometimes my feet do not follow my mouth. Sometimes my actions do not quite catch up with my theology.

Jesus tells them a story. A father has two sons. He asks the first to work in the vineyard. “No.” At least the kid is honest. But later he changes his mind and goes. The father asks the second. “Yes, sir.” Perfect answer. Respectful. Polite. Maybe even sincere. And then he doesn't go.

“Which of the two,” Jesus asks, “did the will of his father?” Well, that’s easy. The first. And in answering, the religious leaders convict themselves. Because this is not ultimately a parable about saying the right thing. It is about becoming the kind of person whose life begins to align with what we say we believe.

Integrity. That word comes from the same idea as integer: wholeness. Our words, our beliefs, our actions becoming less fragmented, less divided, less like one person on Sunday morning and another person by Tuesday afternoon.

And here is where this story becomes more hopeful than condemning. The first son says no. He gets it wrong. He resists. He goes the wrong direction. And then he changes his mind. That little movement may be the Gospel inside the Gospel. His first response does not have to become his final response. He can turn around. He can reconsider. He can walk another way.

Jesus then says something meant to shock his respectable religious audience: tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of God ahead of them. Not because tax collectors and prostitutes are somehow morally superior human beings. Not because religious leaders are somehow uniquely terrible human beings. But because the people who knew they needed to change were changing. And the people who were most certain they already had it right could not see their need to move.

That means this parable will not allow us to divide the world neatly into the good first son and the bad second son. We are capable of being both. Sometimes we resist God and then, by grace, find ourselves walking toward the vineyard. Sometimes we say all the right things about Jesus and then discover that our lives are walking somewhere else entirely.

We are the religious leaders asking questions about authority. And we are spiritually kin to the people whose lives need turning around. We are not standing safely outside this story. We are inside it.

Which means the spiritual task is not figuring out which political party is the second son, or which church, generation, or celebrities really need to hear this sermon. Which friend on social media we might tag to subtly tell them, this guy’s talking about you. The mature spiritual life slowly takes that pointing finger and turns it around. Where are my words and my life out of step? Where do I say yes to Christ while my feet quietly say no? Where might God be inviting me to change my mind?

Because the only repentance I can actually practice is my own. I cannot repent for you. You cannot repent for me. I cannot make another person become merciful or courageous or truthful or generous. But I can offer this life—my life—to the transforming grace of God. And you can offer yours.

It is never the wrong time to do the right thing. It is never too late for our feet to begin catching up with our words. It is never too late to say, “I was wrong.” “I have been walking in the wrong direction.” “I need to try another way.” The first son is proof of this.

And Christians have developed many practices over the centuries to help us notice where our lives are moving toward Christ and where they are drifting away. Let me give you one today. It is an old spiritual practice called the examen. And you do not need a book. You do not need an app. You do not need an hour.

Find a few quiet minutes once a day. Maybe before bed. Maybe first thing in the morning. Maybe sitting in your car before you walk into the house. Become still. Let the last day pass through your mind. And ask yourself two questions. First ask: Where was God’s presence unmistakably near?

Maybe it was joyful. Maybe someone made you laugh, you noticed beauty, or experienced kindness. But it might also have been a difficult moment: sitting beside somebody who was hurting, admitting something painful, making it through something you did not think you could endure. Looking back, where was Christ the closest? Give thanks for that.

And then ask the harder question second: Where was I out of step with the way of Christ? Where was I less loving than I want to be? Where did fear control me? Where was I dishonest? Where did I diminish somebody else’s dignity? Where did I protect myself rather than pursue what was true?

Not so that you can beat yourself up. Not so that God can catch you being bad. But so that you may notice where your mouth has said yes and your feet have wandered somewhere else. 

And then pray. Thank God for where grace was visible. Ask forgiveness where it is needed. And ask God for strength over the next twenty-four hours to bring your life a little more fully into alignment with the life of Jesus.

Because the good news of this parable is not that some people are hypocrites and we have finally figured out who they are. The good news is that human beings can change. We can change our minds. We can change direction. We can discover that the road we are walking is not leading toward life and turn around. God’'s grace is not limited by the answer we gave yesterday.

So today the question is not whether you have always said yes to God. And it is not whether your life has always perfectly matched what you believe. Mine certainly has not. The question is simpler: Where are your feet headed now? Are they walking the Way of Christ?

Because Christ is still calling. The vineyard is still there. And whatever we may have said yesterday, today we can get up to go and work alongside Jesus, who is the good vineyard owner who tends to our souls. Amen?