Slideshow image

This Sunday we have a special treat!  We get to hear the participants in this last summer’s Appalachia Service Project trip share their experiences.  Over 20 teens and adults from St. Paul’s and St. Matthew’s went on this year’s trip to Greenbriar county in West Virginia.  It was an incredibly rewarding experience, even if it was difficult—sleeping on air mattresses in classrooms with not-so-great A/C, taking showers in out-side plywood stalls, eating school cafeteria food, AND best yet… crawling under houses to make repairs! 

            Despite the discomforts of what we were doing, the work was truly rewarding.  We’ll hear stories of young people (and older people) getting out of their comfort zones in lots of different ways in order to help homeowners in need and—as an added benefit, the most important one—to experience the Holy Spirit’s presence in, through, and around them.  Those benefits of God’s grace aren’t automatic and aren’t necessarily a consequence of our work and effort—but are there when we trust God’s call and follow it, whenever we might hear it.  To be clear, the emphasis is on the Spirit’s benefits—that sense of “reward” that comes when we heed the call and follow.  The odd thing about the Spirit’s benefits, even though I used the word “reward,” is that they are gifts, that at their deepest, we cannot earn.

            That’s the scandal in this Sunday’s Gospel reading:  Matthew 20:1-16.  All the laborers get the same heavenly reward whether they work all day or just one hour.  WE want to make our “spiritual lives” about us and the effort we put into it.  GOD makes it about God’s Love Freely Given—which is “grace”—and that is poured out equally on all the “laborers” who respond to God’s call.  God’s generosity is not dependent on our notions of fairness.  Sure, you’ll hear stories about the hard work our ASP laborers put in, but I hope you’ll hear even louder God’s “spiritual blessings” poured out on them.  In other words, hear loudest the most important thing—God’s grace and love freely given.

Peace,

Pr. Christian