Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost Yr A Proper 20 September 20 2026, Grace Church, Mpls

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost Yr A Proper 20 September 20 2026, Grace Church, Mpls

Exodus 16:2-15, Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45, Philippians 1:21-30, Matthew 20:1-16

So your teenager walks into the house after school, or after football practice, or band rehearsal, or just takes a break from homework, or even about an hour after dinner, and looks through the cupboards, opens the refrigerator door, and says, "Mom! There's nothin to eat."

At least that’s been my experience. Which is why this story in Exodus about the Israelites makes so much sense to me. Aren’t we just like them? Whining, whining, whining, "God, we have nothing to eat, and what’s more, we don't like what you’ve given us to eat." I do think that if I were wandering in the wilderness with Moses and Aaron for 40 years, I might be a little whinny too. “God, we’re tired, we’re hungry, we may as well have stayed in Egypt for all this gets us.” And they are reminded that in Egypt they were slaves, at least in the desert they are free.

It’s a great story. In the verses that follow these we just heard, God instructs them to gather up what they need for themselves and their families. Each family gets just what they need, no more, no less. Then Moses instructs them not to save any of it, don’t take more than you need, he tells them. Well, some didn’t listen to Moses, and hoarded the food that God had provided for them, they put it in their pockets and their backpacks, and it got wormy and smelled bad. So not only do they not seem to want or like what God provides for them, they go ahead and eat it anyway, and then save some up for later, only for it to go bad on them. Lord, lord, lord, give us something to eat, give us something better to eat, we don’t like what you’ve given us, but even though we don’t like it we’ll hoard it for ourselves and risk losing what is right here in front of us.

Matthew’s gospel is paired with this story from Exodus and it carries the theme even farther. Matthew’s story is a tough one, it always seems so topsy-turvy, so inside-out. The day laborers that show up at the end of the day get paid the same as those who showed up early to work, and work or no work, everyone gets paid the same. 

What is God’s kingdom like? What is God’s economy like? God’s kingdom is not business as usual. These kingdom parables in Matthew serve to show us that God is doing this absolutely new thing, there is no business as usual. In this kingdom everything is re-ordered. It’s not even as simple as the last will be first, and the first shall be last. God coming into our midst, living, loving, suffering, dying, and being raised from the dead creates life in a way it has never been before.

So this kingdom parable doesn’t sit well with those who heard it centuries ago, and it doesn’t sit well with people who hear it today, when some have come to believe there is always a reward. For example, if we live a particular right way, or do all the right things, there will be a reward. For some that reward is heaven. This parable refutes that kind of thinking. Our wages are paid at the baptismal font, not at the grave. The new life, the defiant, embodied, joyful life in Jesus is available from the beginning. We live our whole lives loved by God, the delight of God’s life.

Following Jesus is not about earning our wage or getting our reward in heaven or even on earth. Following Jesus is about responding to God’s amazing and abundant love, about being bathed in God’s grace, right here, right now. Following Jesus is about the fruits of our baptism; following Jesus is about responding to the joys and challenges of our lives in ways that show forth the grace that God has given us. Following Jesus is not easy nor is it clear, it is not about finding Jesus, it’s about being found by God’s love. Following Jesus is about grace and forgiveness, the grace and forgiveness that God offers us, and the grace and forgiveness that we offer one another as we love our neighbors as ourselves.

God does ask us for our undivided attention, and God gives us all we need. Those wandering in the wilderness have so much trouble accepting God’s gift of enough, and instead made their own god out of the gold they had found. They got greedy. We get greedy, and we are encouraged in our greediness by a culture that constantly encourages us to buy more, and bigger, regardless of our ability to do so, regardless of need. Now, as much as the Hebrew people needed to hear “no other gods, only me,” and as much as the Jews of the first century needed to hear the inbreaking of God’s kingdom re-orders all that they knew to be true, we, in the 21st century need to hear this message that we are sought and we are found, that God loves us abundantly and claims us. Our wages are paid at the baptismal font, we are new creations.

This is good news indeed as we as a country stand at this precarious place, the slippery slope if you will. This place in our collective lives where we know we are called to be followers of Jesus, and sometimes we don’t know what to do about that, or we know the risk and are unsure of stepping out and taking it. One thing we are certain about, is that God calls us into community, and it is in community that we learn to love one another. And in community we know that every one of us is loved, regardless of wealth, social status, color of skin, ability, or so many other categories we place people into. 

There was a group that gathered last Monday night to address these very questions. How do we be followers of Jesus in public? What do we do about injustice? How do we protect our multiracial democracy? And we spent some time identifying the cloud of witnesses on whose shoulders we stand, those who have gone before us as witnesses who risked everything for the things that Jesus calls us to, loving one another, feeding one another, mercy, compassion. This coming Monday night we’re going to go a little deeper into what public discipleship, public ministry looks like. One of the ways we will practise that is by having conversations with one another, getting to know our neighbors in this church better. And we will begin to plan the ways we can step out in faith and make a difference right now.

God gives us enough grace for every single day. We do not need to hoard love or wait for a distant reward. We are already found, and we are already loved. Gathered here in this community, we find the courage to stand together. We can love our neighbors without limits. We can share God's abundant gifts with a world that is hungry for hope. Let us step out our doors this week ready to serve. Amen.

 

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 18, Yr A, Sept. 6 2026, Sts. Martha and Mary, Eagan MN

Rev. Dr. Kathy Monson Lutes
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 18, Yr A, Sept. 6 2026, Sts. Martha and Mary, Eagan MN
Exodus 12:1-14, Psalm 149, Romans 13:8-14, Matthew 18:15-20

I had the great good fortune a few years back to take classes at the Vancouver School of Theology, in Vancouver, British Colombia, in the Indigenous ministries program. In one of those classes we spent some time telling food stories. The people in the class were First Nations people from Canada, Alaska, and the United States, and Anglos like myself from those same places, and one fellow from Africa. Our professor had us tell food stories because they reveal so much about culture and relationships with one another, and with the land. The class was about food, water, and sustainability. A Navajo woman told us about the corn and the corn pollen. Corn is one of the main staples of the Navajo. Every spring, Navajo families plant large fields of corn. But its use goes far beyond just nutrition--it's also an important part of Navajo prayer. The pollen of the corn is dusted off the tassels and used in ceremonies as a blessing, and is offered in prayer. Corn is used to make many traditional dishes, including kneel-down bread, blue corn mush, dried steamed corn and roasted corn. The corn is also used during a ceremony when a Navajo girl comes of age--a large corn cake is cooked underground in a circular pit lined with corn husks.

Well, that's her story. And I had an opportunity to tell my story. About Lefse, of course. I told them that my mother, who was of Irish descent, stood next to my great aunt Minnie, who was Norwegian, as she mixed the Lefse dough, the potatoes and the cream and the flour, until the consistency was just right. Just right could only be felt, not measured. My mom stood by aunt Minnie while she rolled the dough out flat on the lefse rolling board, with the lefse rolling pin, until it was just right. There was no way to measure that, you just had to feel it. My mom stood by aunt Minnie while she peeled the lefse off of the lefse rolling board and set it flat on the griddle over the wood fire of the kitchen stove. Years later, I stood by my mother's side, feeling the lefse dough to see that it was just right, rolling the dough until it was thin enough, placing it on the electric lefse griddle as it turned just a little bit brown. Years later, my sons and my daughter in law, stand by my side, mixing the potatoes and the flour until the dough is just right, rolling it out just thin enough, placing it on my mother’s lefse griddle until it is just a little bit brown.

The story is less about the corn pollen, or the lefse, or the tortillas, or the bread, and much more about the relationship, the connection to those who came before, and those who come after. It is about who we are and to whom we are related. It is about how our diverse cultures form us as a people, and how our story sustains us. The story we hear today from Exodus is a story like that. It is a story that forms Israel as a people, and it is a story that remembers who they are. Today's portion of the story almost reads like a recipe, it is that and it is a call to remembrance and to reconciliation and forgiveness. It says this is who we are and what we do together, this is what we eat, why we eat it, when we eat it, and who we worship. It calls Israel to remember. This story says to the people, and to us as well, this is hard, being a people is hard, and you can do hard things. This is a story of survival, of tragedy, of heartache, and of hope. It says, if we can hang together, we can make it. It is a family story.

This is a really important story for us to remember today. It seems we have forgotten about being a people, a people who live in a world of reconciliation and forgiveness. A people who live in diversity, and respect.

We, right here, have a story centered in a loaf of broken bread, made real by Jesus' love for us, and when we tell the story, and eat the broken bread, Jesus' brokeness makes us whole, our fragmented parts are put back together again. We are healed, we are whole, we are forgiven, we are set free.

And in the gospel of Matthew our family story tells us about how followers of Jesus are in right relationship with one another, even when the relationships are troublesome. Churches are full of troublesome people, imperfect people, sinful people. And some of these people are us.

Church though, in this part of Matthew is a future reality, it is not present in the mind of the author as we know it today. So this passage is not necessarily about church as we experience it today, but it is most certainly about family, about community, and about connections, it is most certainly about how we interact with one another, and I believe it is most certainly about how we approach one another with forgiveness. We don't forgive to help the other person, and we don't forgive for others, we forgive for ourselves. We forgive, because not forgiving kills us from the inside out. Forgiveness is never about the one forgiven, it is always about the one doing the forgiving. Jesus knows this, of course. Forgiveness is about right relationship.

Being in relationship can be at times wonderful, at times fulfilling, and at times very very painful. Such is the nature of trying to love one another in a fallen world. We witness bad behavior and anger all around us. Anger is often a response to hurt, or even fear. And we are living through some hurtful and fearful times. But what if we forgave instead? The problem we have is that many think forgiveness is about the other person. Like it is a transaction of some sort. You can only forgive if the other person is sorry, or if the other person changes their behavior, or if the other person does what you want them to do. But forgiveness is not a transaction. Forgiveness is about a transformed heart. Anger really gets us nowhere. Anger only kills us from the inside out. Anger only hardens our hearts and cuts short our lives.

Forgiveness changes us. Forgiveness covers us with its grace. Forgiveness can even rewrite the narrative of our lives. And, just as importantly, we are forgiven. In all of our impetuous imperfection, in all of our risky races, in all of our messy murkiness, we continue to be the delight of God's life, we continue to be loved perfectly, and forgiven abundantly. God continues to come to us in love, God comes to us in the unreasonable incarnation, God comes to us in Jesus. Each and everyone of us has that which we must forgive in ourselves and in the others in our lives. But we don’t want to, we want the one whose behavior is bad or sinful or unlikeable to be punished, or to lose something, their lives, their health, an election. But in the bread, in the wine, in each other, God says to us, there is nothing, absolutely nothing you can do that will separate me from you. God says, I forgive you now, and I will forgive you forever. 

Thanks be to God.