Septuagesima Sunday
by the Revd Dr Robert Wilson PhD (Cantab), Old Roman Apostolate UK
Septuagesima (seventy days before Easter) marks the beginning of the pre-Lent season. The season of Lent marks the preparation of the Church for Easter, but such was the solemnity of this time that it itself acquired a pre-Lent season of preparation in both the Eastern and the Western Church. In the Western Church the Sundays are called Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima, respectively seventy, sixty and fifty days before Easter. Quadragesima marks the first Sunday in Lent, with Lent itself beginning on Ash Wednesday.
Since Lent is a season where we are called to deepen the seriousness of our Christian discipleship, it is important to view this in the right perspective. It is therefore appropriate that the Gospel for today is that of the Labourers in the vineyard.
As is often the case in the parables of the Gospels, the story is a familiar one from everyday life but it has an unexpected ending. It was by means of such parables that Jesus proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God, future in its fullness but already present in his own person and ministry, and also responded to his critics. In the parable the owner of the vineyard hires labourers for the day to work in his vineyard and promises them a denarius for the day’s labour. He returns to the market place later in the day and each time hires more labourers to work in his vineyard. At the eleventh hour he hires more labourers, for there were still some standing idle in the market place because no one had hired them. At the end of the day those who were last were each given a denarius. Those who were working longer hours naturally then expected to receive more, but instead received the same wage. They naturally protest that they have borne the burden and heat of the day and are therefore entitled to receive a higher rate of pay. The owner of the vineyard replied that he has given them exactly what they had been promised at the start of the day, and that they had therefore no reason to complain. He was simply being generous to the later hired labourers. “Must thou give me sour looks, because I am generous? So it is that they shall be first who were last, and they shall be last who were first.”
The parable is about Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God in his own ministry, and is Jesus’ response to his critics who object to him receiving those who they believed were “lesser breeds without the law” on the same terms as themselves. It is rather like the reaction of the elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son who protests about his father’s forgiveness of the Prodigal Son who has devoured his living with harlots. In the same way in the ministry of Jesus the tax collectors and the prostitutes were entering the Kingdom of God before the conventionally pious who were expecting the Kingdom as an entitlement. To them Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God to those who least deserved it seemed like the dissolution of all ethics. However, in trusting in themselves that they were righteous and despising others they had fundamentally misunderstood the nature of God as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, who came to seek and to save the lost.
None of us has any right to enter the Kingdom of God by virtue of our merits, for as St. Paul put it, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace. All of us receive the same sacraments. We are baptised, confirmed and then receive the Eucharist. Some of us may have been baptised as infants, others may not have come to faith until later in life. But the message of the Gospel is that even at the eleventh hour anyone can still repent and be forgiven. None of us can ever in this life get beyond being saved sinners. This does not mean that we should not make full use of the talents that God has given us, but it does mean that we should never presume to think that we can win God’s favour by virtue of our merits. For example, St. Paul, as he recounts in today’s Epistle, laboured more abundantly than most. Yet, it was not he, but the grace of God within him. He laboured not to win God’s favour, but to express gratitude for forgiveness experienced. There is an old saying that the entrance to Christianity is completely free, but yet it costs us all that we have got.
It was this truth that St. Augustine witnessed to against Pelagius. Pelagius was a British monk who took offence at a passage in St. Augustine’s Confessions (his spiritual autobiography) in which he wrote “Grant what thou commandest and commandest what thou wilt”. Pelagius thought that Augustine’s prayer was undermining the basic principles of morality, that God rewards virtue and punishes vice. St. Augustine replied that grace is not a reward for our merits, but is simply a reflection of the good will of the giver, that enables us to think, will and do all that is good. He knew from his own experience that it was a case of “there, but for the grace of God, go I”.
This was a difficult doctrine to accept then, and it is difficult to accept now. Today there is much talk of our rights and entitlements. People are encourages to cultivate self worth and self esteem, to believe in themselves rather than in God, who created them and redeems them by his grace in the person of Jesus Christ. As we approach the season of Lent we need to remember that whatever additional disciplines we take upon ourselves, at the last we can only say, “We are unworthy servants. We have done that which is our duty.”
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