One of my favorite saints is Monica, a north-African woman and the mother of Augustine. She’s one of those saints who fades a little into the mist, since she lived so long ago – she died before the fifth century, in 387. But her son wrote vividly about her, in a way uncommon at the time: in our own literary era we are surrounded by countless biographies and memoirs, but Augustine arguably invented the genre of autobiography himself, in his Confessions, and in that work he writes about his mother.
Augustine writes that when Monica was much younger, she was caught drinking more than her share of the community’s wine. (This explains why she is appreciated by many as the patron of alcoholics.) But she went on to lead a life of sobriety and powerful Christian piety, and she sustained a vigorous, collaborative relationship with her son. She was an assertive, determined mother who had found his early life of youthful misadventure gravely disappointing; but later on, as he matured, she passionately supported his vocation as a Christian theologian.
When I read about Monica, I think I recognize the person behind the icon. She is driven, successfully overcoming her personal demons and building a virtuous life. She watches and follows her son closely, perhaps comically so. But she takes faith – both hers and her son’s – quite seriously. If she does a thing, she does it fully. She wept bitter tears when Augustine, early on, told her he was not Christian but Manichaean. Nevertheless, she persisted, following him to Rome and then Milan, enlisting the help of Bishop Ambrose. And finally, after seventeen years of resistance, Augustine submitted to his mother’s influence, and to Holy Baptism. His grief in the wake of her death helped inspire his great autobiographical and theological work, the Confessions. Augustine had a powerful mother.
And now I hope I can hold your attention, if (I fear) not all of your respect, as I confess to you that another Monica also captures my imagination. She is a character in a 1990s television situation comedy. This Monica famously has five friends, and her role in this gang of six is the overachiever. When one of them worries desperately that he and Monica will lose a contest with the others, she says, “You’re on my team. And my team always wins.” In my imagination, this Monica believes that she will be loved only when she succeeds. She sets extremely high standards for herself, and she is not sorry about that. Her personal drive is central to her identity, her understanding of how the world works, even her spiritual life. Her driven nature solves many of her personal problems, much like Saint Monica, who overcame an excessive love of wine seemingly with the sheer force of will.
So yes, if you haven’t yet guessed, I have some of both Monicas inside me. I love to work hard, and succeed in that work, and this drive to succeed is haunted more than a little by my own personal history. I enjoy my life, but I take my work – and my faith – quite seriously. I can sometimes even slip into what our Lutheran friends like to call works righteousness, the spiritual belief that I only get what I earn. This isn’t true, I know. As we just heard, Paul firmly says in his letter to the Philippians that he has no righteousness of his own, but can only claim his belonging with God through faith in Christ.
In fact, Augustine himself argued against Pelagius that humans cannot achieve their own salvation, and beat him so soundly that only Augustine’s side of that story survived antiquity. (History is written by the winners – by the Monicas.) But Augustine is right: My inner Monica needs to hear from other dimensions of my identity, to check and relieve her. “Yes, Monica,” I might mumble to myself, “we could have handled that better. But we still learned something, it’s not about perfection, and others have to do their part, too.”
Yet I appreciate Monica’s role in my life, in my psyche, as much as I appreciate other parts who have wisdom that is foreign to Monica. Like you, I have different psychological parts, with different strengths and weaknesses.
And so I must watch my inner Monica carefully when she hears today’s Parable of the Wicked Tenants. Monica hears this parable and immediately says, “Yes! I was right! The landowner likes good tenants; and the landowner rejects the bad ones. I can earn love!”
But of course that is not the point of the parable. And before we get to the parable’s actual point, we should pause and note well that the parable is also not about one other thing: this is not a story about Christians replacing Jews in God’s sight. This has been a tragic misinterpretation of the parable down the ages, that the wicked tenants of the vineyard are the Jewish people, who are then judged and cast out of God’s merciful presence, replaced by Christians. We say a firm No to this lazy and anti-semitic interpretation.
The parable is actually about faith and love. More on that in a moment. But first, let’s be sure we understand what God’s “vineyard” actually is. What is, in this parable, God’s vineyard? Well, in the book of the prophet Isaiah, chapter five – the text that the first hearers of the parable would immediately have recalled – in that text, the vineyard was the house of Israel and the people of Judah. This is why the religious leaders, when they were puzzling out what Jesus meant, drew the correct conclusion that he was attacking them: they were the caretakers of – the tenants of – the vineyard of Israel. We, in turn, can appreciate in this parable that we have inherited, along with our Jewish cousins, the vineyard of God’s blessings first given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
But we are also free to expand our understanding of the vineyard as God’s merciful presence in this good yet troubled faith community, this good yet troubled neighborhood, our good yet troubled households, our good yet troubled friendships, even our good yet troubled inner selves. All of these can be part of the vineyard as we understand it.
And again, the parable is about faith and love, in God’s vineyard. The wicked tenants are not incompetent, or at least that’s not the sin that leads to a damaged vineyard and their own ruin. And so my inner Monica must be corrected: God does not call us into God’s vineyard because we’re good at everything we do. I don’t have to be the perfect son, the perfect husband, the perfect recovering alcoholic, the perfect priest. Saint Monica’s own son disabuses me of that self-centered heresy.
I need only say Yes to God’s call that I practice the faith, and do the hard but joyful work of love, here in God’s vineyard. God wants justice in God’s vineyard, and justice is present in communities of faith and love. God wants justice, not perfection: we will mess up, but God is in the repairs we make after we readily admit our mistakes. God wants justice, not strict rectitude: we can not only mess up, we can be irreverent, we can play, we can even be silly and frivolous at times, and God is in the deepening bonds of friendship we form as we work alongside one another in the vineyard. God wants justice, not a narrow, anxious sorting of good guys and bad guys: we’re all good and successful; we’re all corrupt and prone to failure; and God is in the efforts we make to learn and grow, to repent and reform, to acknowledge our eternal dependence on God for all the good things we share freely around this Table.
This month at St. Paul’s, we are taking up once again the financial stewardship of this vineyard, our parish home. It is time to set a budget for the new year, judging as wisely as we can how best to manage God’s blessings for the life and health of all people whose lives we touch in our ministries here – whose lives we change, whose lives we save, with God’s help. And so I want to hurry to get ahead of any Monicas out there who assume that this is a test or a contest, that it’s about performance and perfection. Financial stewardship is never, ever about that.
It is only about faith and love, faith and love, faith and love. Now, we want to do a lot of things in the new year: we’d like to welcome an assisting priest onto our staff; we’d like to fully fund our music ministry, particularly our four choir section leaders; and we’d like more administrative support in a busy time when we’re undergoing major renovation while doing the usual hard work of our urban mission. Running a vineyard like this in 2024 is just generally a costly endeavor.
But none of this is ever about being the best giver, the best volunteer, the best staff member, the best lay leader. Pledge an annual gift of ten cents if you like: that’s lovely, as long as you do this with faith and love. Volunteer just an hour a month if you like: that’s great, as long as you spend that hour in a labor of faith and love. Come to church to say your prayers just two or three times all year if you like: that’s profound, as long as your prayers are from your good heart, informed by your sharp mind, and sung to God on behalf of your neighbor.
When we work together in faith and love, God’s vineyard will flourish, and the harvest will yield abundant food for all who hunger.
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Preached on the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 22A), October 8, 2023, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Psalm 19
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46