First fruits, Reverence & Awe
Live Audio File
13th Sun. after Pent., Sept. 3, 2023, Matt. 21: 33-42 Fr. Andrew
God has provided everything needed for us to live and prosper in His vineyard, but in today’s parable, He shows that He expects us to return to Him two things: the first fruits, and respect and reverence. We hear in today’s parable; “Now when the vintage time drew near He sent His servants to the vinedressers that that they might receive its fruit.” and “They will respect My Son.”
In the old testament there are many passages regarding the necessity of tithing first fruits. Then and now, we are told to render unto God that which is God’s. He asks that we give generously to Him, by supporting His Church and the poor and needy, as all humans are created in His image. Right from the beginning we are instructed that honouring God is not just some sort of spiritual mental exercise, but as we are very much living in a material reality we need to honour him with our material blessings. This is for our benefit, for our spiritual development. God knows how easily we get distracted and focused on the treasures of the earth, the bling and shiny things. “What good is it to gain the whole world and to lose the only thing of true importance, our soul” in the process. So God gives us this medicine of tithing and almsgiving to strike against the horrible snake of avarice which we so easily allow to bunk with us. God doesn’t need our money He created and owns all that exists, but we desperately need to give whatever we thing we own back to Him. So in today’s parable, when we see the Landowner, God, being refused His first fruits by his tenants, we are being asked to examine our attitude towards our God given wealth. May we not end up like the righteous rich man in last weeks gospel, who sadly walked away from Christ’s invitation to come and follow Him, as his wealth and the demon of avarice had possessed him.
The second requirement that God requires of us – the current vinedressers caring for His beautiful creation here on planet earth – is respect and reverence. This requires that we know our place as created creatures and recognize how completely different is God. He is the Creator of all and completely outside of our understanding and comprehension. He is God and we are not! He is not our cosmic buddy. He is certainly our loving heavenly Father who loves us beyond anything we could ever comprehend or begin to understand. But in our culture, we have largely lost an understanding of reverence and awe, with the resulting loss of basic respect for God and for godly authority.
The very best place to begin to learn reverence and respect for God and His ways is right here in the Church. Let us enter and stand in fear and awe. Christ is here, invisibly present. Upon entering the Nave, our focus is now to be upon God whom we have come to worship, not upon visiting with each other. We immediately go and venerate the icons first, out of respect for our God. We greet the saints and the image of Christ in them and in our brothers and sisters. Christ is always present in the reserve Sacrament on the Altar; therefore we cross ourselves when we pass in front of the Royal Doors, and we don’t turn our back to the Altar. We remain standing when the actual chalice is out amongst us. Christ is in our midst – literally! As the service starts, we do our best to concentrate and join in as best as we can, taking in the peace offered by the priest – not crossing ourselves when we are being blessed but receiving the blessing. If we drop our judgement mindset we can be freed to enter a thanksgiving mindset. The two don’t mix. When we are busy with our opinions of whatever, we will only be thankful for whatever fits our current opinion. Glory to God for ALL things erases our need to have opinions about everything and allows the peace of God to permeate our souls. In church at least it is good to have our judgement mindset suspended. Judgemental thoughts will still of course try to invade our minds. We will experience the blessed disturbances inevitable from our young children. See these as great blessings. If you are a parent of young children, your main ministry is to just be with them as you worship and help them to learn that this is a very special place and time. Sometimes it may seem as if you have very little opportunity to pray and concentrate, that’s ok, may God bless you for your main ministry of just being here with your children. Once they are old enough to be in school, they are old enough to start to stand during the Lord’s prayer, when the gifts are out, when the priest is blessing you. The more they participate in the responses and singing, the more they will be learning to worship, and the more they will grow in the love and worship of God. This is built into their DNA, even if they resist and test you along the way. As they get older, they can start coming for confession and begin some light fasting. These practices instill reverence and awe for God in their young receptive souls. Even in the world, at our workplace and schools we understand the need to bring our best and to respect the company or school culture. On Saturday evening or Sunday morning, if we pray some pre-communion prayers and read the gospel and epistle for the day as a family, we will be blessed to start to settle into a better mindset for praying and worshipping at church. Try to come to Vespers once a month and the occasional feast day.
The Church year started on Friday Sept. 1st. Let us all purpose to do a little more this coming church year. As we come back to the beautiful new church that we have been blessed by God to worship in, Let us be full of thanksgiving and be shown to be good & fruitful vinedressers working in the Lord’s vineyard with thanksgiving. Glory to Jesus Christ!