Between Sundays for the Week of September 28, 2026
After throwing their rules out the window with his so-called cleansing of the temple and turning their well-ordered world upside down, the chief priests and elders ask Jesus: “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”
In response, Jesus tells a parable. Jesus is not interested in keeping the rules when we miss the point of why those rules exist in the first place. Jesus is less interested in whether or not we say the right thing and much more interested in what we do. Jesus is less interested in issuing strict rules and appointing gatekeepers who judge whether someone measures up and more interested in lives that reflect love for God and love for the people God loves, our neighbors. As the age-old platitude says, “actions speak louder than words.”
Today’s parable reminds us of God’s power to work a new thing in us. The first brother is praised because he did not remain bound to his initial “no” and ultimately chose to work in his father’s vineyard. Likewise, we may become bound – to our own ideas, to our own interests, to our own vision of the way things ought to be – but God loves us too much to leave us there and persistently invites us to turn towards him and become workers in his vineyard.
And more than that, God grants us the power to do so. Because God doesn’t want us to remain trapped by all that keeps us from the full and abundant life God intends for us and for the world. Instead, God consistently invites us to “Turn, then, and live.” (Ezekiel 18:32) And God will keep working in and through us until we do. Thanks be to God.
P.S. Listen to the full worship service (including Pastor Hoffman’s sermon that starts around 19:52) here. As always, share your presence with us or prayer concerns by completing a contact form on our website! Links to previous worship videos are available on our website.
Faith Connection at Home
Ponderings
From the Theologian’s Almanac published by the SALT project:
September 30 is the day in 1452 the first section of the Gutenberg Bible was finished in Mainz, Germany. Johannes Gutenberg was the youngest son of a wealthy merchant, and his innovations in developing what became the modern printing press — capturing the moves of Medieval calligraphy in separable, movable type — transformed religion, literature, and politics.
Before the printing press, a book like the Bible would take years to produce by hand; Gutenberg’s press made 185 copies in relatively short order, about 50 of which still survive today. The consequent printing revolution reshaped human culture, changing forever how (and how far) knowledge was disseminated, democratizing learning, and making new art forms possible. Known in its day as “the art of multiplying books,” modern printing was catalytic for the European Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the Protestant Reformations. His legacy is carried on today by Project Gutenberg, a group of volunteers digitizing cultural and literary works, making them open and free to the public.