Sunday readings and prayers

The collect for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us your gift of faith that, forsaking what lies behind and reaching out to that which is before, we may run the way of your commandments and win the crown of everlasting joy; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

First Reading:  Isaiah 5.1–7

Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: 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 wine 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!

God created a wonderful fruitful vineyard for his people, no expense spared, but both northern Israel and Judah have forgotten their identity as God's beloved, redeemed from Egypt and planted in the Promised Land. Leaders have ended up oppressing their people and living for themselves. The inevitable will eventually come in the fall of the northern kingdom to Assyria in 722BC and Judah to Babylon in 587 BC. They had been warned! Themes of redemption and God's continuing love for Israel continue in other parts of Isaiah, fulfilled ultimately in Christ's coming.

Psalm 80:7-14

Restore us, O God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved. You have brought a vine out of Egypt; you cast out the nations and planted it. You prepared the ground for it; it took root and filled the land.                                                        

The mountains were covered by its shadow and the towering cedar trees by its boughs. You stretched out its tendrils to the Sea and its branches to the River.Why have you broken down its wall, so that all who pass by pluck off its grapes?  The wild boar of the forest has ravaged it, and the beasts of the field have grazed upon it.  Turn now, O God of hosts, look down from heaven; behold and tend this vine; preserve what your right hand has planted.

Second Reading: Philippians 3.4b–14

Even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet 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, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.               St. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus.

Gospel Reading  Matthew 21.33–46

 ‘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 watch-tower. 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.

We know that this is an important parable because it is one of only three that appear in all of the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In his story Jesus is bringing to mind the long history of thinking of Israel as a vineyard. God is the landowner and the tenants are the religious leaders of the time who rejected the Son of God and sought to kill him.  

No longer would Israel be God’s “cornerstone”, a stone that is usually the first one set in the construction of a building and with which all other stones are aligned.  God would build a new temple of a very different kind and the cornerstone would be Jesus himself.   All of this would make much more sense at the time as the temple was in the midst of a great renovation. When Jesus said these words, the religious leaders of the time would be thinking about the new temple.  Jesus, on the other hand, would be thinking about the need to preach love of God and love of neighbour!

Heavenly Father, the cornerstone of our faith and the source of all strength,

Through faith in Christ, we find righteousness and hope for the world.

In times of trial and uncertainty, your love sustains us, and your promises give us strength.

We thank you for your faithfulness throughout generations,

guiding and nourishing your people, the vineyard of the Lord.

Loving God, the comforter of the afflicted and hope of the hurting,

May your Church be a beacon of hope,

reaching out to those in need with compassion and understanding.

We continue to pray for victims of war, thinking especially of Ukraine and the Middle East and all involved in the ongoing conflicts. We pray for families who have been torn apart, for children whose education has been interrupted and for medical staff struggling to look after the wounded with limited resources.

Heavenly Father, we pray for those in need, asking you to heal the sick, strengthen the fearful, befriend the lonely and guide the perplexed.  We pray in particular at this time for ............