All Saints’, Dorval
Proper 27, Year A
October 4, 2026
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, “The Vineyards at Cagnes,” 1908.
The theme of vineyards reaches a crescendo, today, on the last Sunday of the Season of Creation.
Two weeks ago, we heard about the labourers in the vineyard, the ones who all got paid the same despite some having worked twelve hours and others only one.
Last week we heard about a man with two sons; he told them to go work in the vineyard, and one said he would go and didn’t, while the other said he wouldn’t and did.
But today, the theme is overwhelming and unmissable: the first reading, the Psalm, and the Gospel are all about the vineyard.
Like the image of the shepherd with a flock of sheep, the metaphor of the vineyard appears over and over throughout Scripture, representing the relationship between God and God’s people. In Isaiah, we hear God’s perspective; in the Psalm, that of the people; in the Gospel, that of Jesus, asserting his claim to be the true Messiah against the false tenants who have stolen the proceeds of the vineyard.
The last time this particular readings came around was the week of October 7, 2023. And since then, it’s been almost impossibly hard to talk about the relationship between God, scripture, the people of Israel, and the land, because it seems that the violence and bloodshed have flowed off the pages of the Bible and landed on our TV screens every evening.
I could preach a predictable sermon about how both the Jewish and Palestinian peoples have been traumatized for centuries; and how Christians must repent of our own bloody hands; and where both Paul and Matthew stood relative to the Jewish communities to which they belonged; and how the Pharisees whom Jesus is rebuking are reflected in any number of greedy and murderous leaders found in the world in very recent history, some of whom might be in our own Anglican tradition, especially since this is also the week of the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation right here in Canada.
And that sermon wouldn’t be wrong. But it doesn’t feel like the right words for this moment.
As I studied the readings this week, a persistent voice kept saying in the back of my mind, simply, “The vineyard is love.”
I don’t know about you, but things feel frantic to me right now. Like everything is poised on a knife edge and could fall apart at any moment. From the daily overwhelm that we’ve gotten so accustomed to that we can hardly imagine anything different; to the skyrocketing price of everything; to the climate-changed weather; to the political chaos around the world – all of our nervous systems are amped up, all the time, and just getting through the day feels like a major achievement.
I often advocate wrestling with scripture, but sometimes you don’t want insights and interpretations and explanations. Sometimes you want to just be.
That is not to write off the challenges of these passages. It is to affirm that beneath and beyond all the complexity of scripture, all the ways it must be carefully interpreted, all the ways we need to be cautious and attentive in reading it – undergirding and enveloping all those things, is God, who is simply Love.
“I will sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard.” “This was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.” Whatever comes between, our faith begins and ends in wonder and in love.
So come with me into the vineyard.
You might want to close your eyes, adjust your body so you’re balanced and comfortable, and take a moment to pay attention to the breath coming in and out of your chest, the breath that has sustained you since the second you were born.
You are in the vineyard. The sun is just over the horizon, and the breeze is cool, though the day promises heat to come. There is dew on the grass between the rows of vines, and those vines are laden with fruit, fruit just on the edge of ripeness.
You could almost believe that you were in the garden, the brand-new bower of humanity’s primal innocence, and that the snake and the bitter fruit and the flaming sword were just a bad dream.
But this is the vineyard, and the vineyard is old. The vineyard has been through a lot; you can feel those realities hovering, right alongside this one – the realities in which the vineyard is in flames, or dried up from drought, or stinking with rotten fruit, or overrun with people with loud voices and sharp weapons, or echoing with cries of desolation.
But that is not the reality that you are in. You are in the vineyard in its truest and most enduring form, and that form is one of perfect peace, the peace of God that passes all understanding.
In this vineyard, the soil is deep and fertile, tended and cherished over generations to nourish the grapes to their fullest flavour. In this vineyard the vines are healthy, so old they have huge trunks like trees, and thick with bunches of grapes. In this vineyard, there is a nest of foxes in the roots of one tree, and a nest of rabbits in another, and they lie down together and no one shall make them afraid. In this vineyard, people of all shapes and colours sit together on the grass, sharing a simple meal and singing joyful songs.
In this vineyard, there is no landowner, no tenants, no slaves, no tax on the harvest; in this vineyard, the grapes are for the nourishment of all, and they are pressed into the chalice that is shared on the altar alongside the bread that has come down from heaven.
This vineyard is real. Just as real as all the versions that are plagued by conflict and disaster – in fact, this vineyard is the realest one of all, the truest one, and the only one that will endure for eternity when all the others fall away. This is the vineyard planted by the Love that undergirds the world.
Where will you find it? And how will it feel to be there?
Amen.
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