Sermon Preached on Sunday 20th September 2026 – ISAIAH 55:6-7 , PSALM 145, PHILIP. 1 20-24, 27. MATT 20: 1-16.
Deacon Chris Saccali – St Paul’s Athens
CREATIONTIDE – AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
May we look with our eyes , listen with our ears, comprehend with our mind and turn and be healed, O God our Creator and Redeemer and sustainer AMEN
It has been quite the summer this year across Europe, hasn’t it? We may not have had the heatwaves here that we have become used to until late August but boy did Northern Europe experience them and the drought and fires that accompany them. I have been told by friends in the uk that the scorched grass has turned quickly green again after the first rains. We have been warned for years about global warming, climate change and their devastating effects but still people deny them.
Farmers are directly affected but also so are we as we rely on crops for food and good harvests and have become used to expect choice and relatively cheap options. And what about farm workers, they are often the marginalised behind the scenes foreign workers drafted in to do jobs that the locals do not want to carry out?
I remember back in the early nineties when we were building in the village and the Albanian border had opened for the first time in years since Communism and young men mainly waited in the village square and on corners of main roads for a day’s work – merokamato. You don’t tend to see that nowadays with the dominance of social media and mobile phones; I suspect and see that they gather outside the coffee shops now.
Today in our gospel reading we have yet another agricultural parable and a puzzling one at that, unique to Matthew. Probably from Jesus ands not made up by Matthew. We all have a strong sense of fairness – ‘it’s not fair’ is a cry we learn, make and hear from childhood but also whenever we feel we have been treated unjustly , it can stir deep frustration whatever our age and circumstances.
Likewise, when we witness injustice in our world, our instinct is to put things right. It is this natural human instinct that makes today’s parable so challenging. Isn’t it so easy to sympathise with the labourers who worked all day and felt aggrieved when those who had worked only for one hour received exactly the same wage? Yet the heart of the parable is not about fairness as we understand it. The landowner oikodespotis in Greek – householder, does not break any agreement with those who started at dawn he pays them exactly what he had promised. What surprises us is not His justice but his generosity then. Jesus is pointing out that God’s ways are not our ways to quote Isaiah , they cannot be measured by human calculations. His mercy and justice overflow the limits of what we think humans deserve. And here is the punchline -everyone is equally valued. Forgiveness and eternal life is on offer to all not based on righteousness or anything we can do. The same for everyone, we are equal.
This is both comforting and humbling because we realise that we are no better than anyone or anything else in the created order. We are not entitled to lord it over others or creation in fact we have a responsibility to tend and care for them. This is an uncomfortable and inconvenient truth – we can’t simply push the blame on others or turn our backs to all that is happening on our doorstep, further away on planet Earth and beyond.
Creationtide is a season in our Anglican cycle and also in Catholic and Protestant churches especially in Orthodox church. It runs from 1st September until 4th October St Francis day. Living Water is the title of this year’s Season of Creation based on Ezekiel 47:1-12 and the prophet’s vision of living streams flowing from God’s temple transforming desolate places.
What a contrast to the scenes of destruction flowing out of Nepal and Tibet recently and in the face of El Nino we are warned of more climate emergencies and disasters to come especially in vulnerable places where the Earth’s resources are being exploited by the wealthy with no heed to warnings or guidelines. That is neither fair nor just in the face of plenty and abundance for all.
Our hearts and spirits have dried up like the land. The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew said on 1st September World Environment Day: ‘Humanity must stop pretending it does not know what it is doing to the Earth.’ In July General Synod decreed first Sunday in September as the Feast Of Creation – actually everyday should be a celebration of Creation and a reckoning of and with it acknowledging its generosity and our abuse of it.
This may feel all too much to bear and listen to and we can be tempted to bury our heads once again .
So let us listen to the late Wendell Berry’s response in this poem:
When despair for the world grows in me
And I wake in the night at the least sound
In fear of what my life and my children’s life may be
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water
And the great heron feeds
I come into the peace of wild things
Who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief
I come into the presence of still water
And I feel above me the day blind stars
Waiting with their light
For a time I rest in the Grace of the world and am free.
And I would like to end on a positive note especially since the world seems to think that joy and hope are species that are becoming extinct. This year we saw a monk seal at our nearest beach , on the Euboean Gulf and others saw a pod of dolphins. In our area there were devastating fires two years ago destroying neighbours’ olive groves their crops and livelihoods handed on from generation to generation. But a former student of mine trained in horticulture is teaching farmers how to restore the trees from the inside out and bring new life. My neighbours who has 60 years experience tells me that is what nature does renews itself of its own accord in time.
Christ is our new life and Creation Son of a generous God whose abundance knows no limits if we share and share alike as is intended.
AMEN
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