Septuagesima

Text: Matthew 20:1-16

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

The season we begin today, “The Gesima Sundays,” has, for many churches, disappeared.

This brief three-week season that was a fixture of The Lutheran Hymnal (or TLH) has faded from many of your childhood memories due to the increased popularity of the newer three-year lectionary that came into existence in the late 1960s. You see, the Roman Catholic Church held a gathering called the Second Vatican Council. One goal of the council was to prepare a series of documents to direct the life of the Church into the twentieth century and beyond. 

One of the results and products of this Council was the development of what is known as a Three-Year lectionary. While there can be arguments for this innovation, it also left many of the sermons and teachings of the Church Fathers, such as Augustine or Chrysostom, or even Luther, behind. It also left centuries of pedagogy and the repetitious teaching of the faith to the children of God in the past.

And yet, as our society and world are now more than ever in a state of information overload, there is no greater time for us to slow down, take our time, and place our focus on a yearly repetition of hearing the familiar stories of Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection – the story of eternal life.

And this is a key feature of the lectionary we use at Good Shepherd today, the One Year lectionary; it causes us to slow down and gives us Sundays and seasons with funny names, but still, funny names that not only teach but will stick with you in a way that one might even start to look forward to the yearly repetition of these Sundays. I mean, don’t they just roll off the tongue?

Let’s dig in!

This Sunday is Septuagesima, the first of three Gesimas Sundays. Septuagesima means 70 days, Sexagesima means 60 days, and Quinquagesima means 50 days (or thereabouts). These Sundays serve as our preparation for Lent’s journey to the cross.

Sure, these may seem a little weird to us today, but they serve a vital purpose in slowing us down and preparing Christians for the serious and often challenging days of the approaching season of Lent.

Think of it this way: Baseball players do not begin a season without first attending spring training. An Olympic athlete does not compete without first training. Nor could I, as a soldier, enter the battlefield without first receiving the appropriate training.

Thus, the next three Sundays are preparation for us. They prepare us, get us in shape, and train us for the rigors of Lent. And they do so by constantly pointing us to God’s grace.

So, while some aspects of the liturgy have already grown silent, there remains joy in our preparation that we have a gracious God in heaven. God’s grace, Word, and faith are the focus of these Sundays before Lent; what better gift could we hear before we begin our journey and travel to the cross?

Now, Lent can be seen as a race. It’s long, and it has valleys and hills as we navigate the readings that go with each Sunday. But the finish line is Easter. In our Epistle today, Paul refers to the whole Christian life as a race. However, death is the finish line, and the prize is eternal life with Christ Jesus.

But life, contrary to many of your schedules, is not a sprint but rather a marathon.

Marathons take time to train for; they take commitment. Much like a diet, it can be easy to take your eye off the prize. The rigors and length, the commitment, and the discipline it takes to diet are similar to what it might take to run a marathon. One day off, one lapse can lead to a second day off and then a third, and then you find yourself in a state of simply being lazy. This is the same for the Christian faith.

The Christian life is like a marathon. It demands discipline and calls you to read God’s Word regularly, daily, so that you exercise your faith and prepare for the present and future.

So, Paul’s words today call us to approach the Christian life as an athlete approaches their training for the Super Bowl and Lombardi’s trophy or how an Olympian prepares to compete for gold. “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we [run this race to receive a prize that is] imperishable.” So, Paul says, “I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control.” 

Alright, so the time for training has arrived. Lent is coming. It’s time for us to go back to the fundamentals of the Christian life, to rehearse and relearn them, as a ball player entering Spring Training.

Now, as I mentioned before, today is Septuagesima Sunday. The focus of this Sunday is the doctrine of Grace Alone. To illustrate this beautiful doctrine, we heard the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard. This parable speaks of a landowner’s generosity. A landowner gives laborers, whether they worked in the vineyard for one hour or eleven hours, a generous wage for their labor. The landowner represents God in this parable, and the generosity of the landowner reveals how God’s grace is generous and given freely among the laborers.

The Gospel began with an invitation to labor in His vineyard to those standing in the marketplace. These individuals are viewed as those not doing anything with their lives; they spend their lives being lazy. This is a reminder that the Christian faith is not without good works. Good works flow out of faith; they flow out of the generous and gracious forgiveness we receive from our heavenly Father.

But then, when the end of the day arrives, which represents the end of our lives and the day of judgment, everyone laboring in the Lord’s Vineyard receives a denarius, everyone. The denarius represents eternal life.

Yet, there remains a laborer who is not happy and grumbles at how the wages were given out. He doesn’t care for the generosity of the landowner. This Laborer contests that he bore the heat of the day, burdened most of the work. In other words, he looked to his own accomplishments, he reflected on how he kept the law, and how long he was a Christian. But contrary to this view, we are not saved by works; we are not saved by our keeping of the law, nor by how long we’ve been a Christian. No, we are saved by the graciousness of the Lord.

When you drill down into the grumbling laborer’s complaints, he was asking for fairness, for justice. The only thing he deserved was death. And that’s the only thing we deserve. For we are all sinners and the wages of sin is death. This consequence is a result of our first father, Adam, falling into sin; it’s a result of our individual sins and our collective sins as the whole human race.

In today’s collect, we did not pray or ask for justice because that would mean death. Instead, we prayed, “May we who justly suffer the consequence of our sin be mercifully delivered,” delivered by the goodness and mercy of Jesus.

So, our pleas should not be to God for justice but for mercy. Mercy is seen first and foremost in the death of Jesus on the cross. When His hands outstretched carried the burden of the heat of the day, the burden of our sin, suffered our persecution, so that we may not receive justice, but rather the gracious mercy of the Lord.

However, today’s Gospel is also a warning for us. We stand in great danger of being like the grumbling laborer, the laborer whom the Lord dismisses at the end of the day, the end of the world, the day of judgment.

The reality is that there has never been a promise of an easy or fair life. The Christian life encounters challenges and tribulations. These events can shake your focus away from God's graciousness when things don’t turn out as you had hoped, planned, or been led to believe. In turn, you might find yourself becoming discontent, but when this occurs, do not look to God to be fair; look to Him to be merciful.

The cross helps us remain focused on this point.

The cross also focuses our eyes throughout Lent and the remaining days of our lives on Jesus – the source and substance of mercy. Reminding us that no matter the hour of this life, we have a gracious Lord, a Lord who, upon the cross, announced forgiveness to the criminal who pleaded for His mercy and, by grace, entered the Lord’s vineyard at his final hour.

So today, our preparation for Lent begins again. We are reminded how this life, the Christian faith, is not a sprint, but rather a marathon. It’s full of events and moments that can distract us or lead us away from Christ’s love.

But we come here; we come to this house of God to be called back, to be fed and nourished for the road ahead. A pathway cluttered with broken relationships, heartache, and wandering from the vineyard of the Lord. But the font reminds you of the grace your Father in heaven has given you in water and Word, that He has called you by name and made you His heir.

The Word announces Christ to you; the flesh and blood of Jesus feeds and nourishes you for the race. As a runner receives nourishment along the race course, it prepares and sustains you to labor in the vineyard with all the children of God. So, let us prepare for Lent, let our eyes focus on the grace of our heavenly Father, trusting that His mercy will bring us to the day when all His laborers will be brought to the eternal joys of heaven. +INJ+

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Rev. Noah J. Rogness