You may not think you’ve heard this kind of call, or experienced this kind of gentle “repentance.” Too often in the Church we limit the meaning “vocation” to “ordination.” You might not the things that you do in your everyday life as a ministry. Maybe you’ve always thought of your life in separate slices: work, family, hobbies, church. But if you follow the logic of the parable, it becomes clear that it doesn’t matter whether our work in the vineyard happens through the Church or outside the Church, whether we think of the ways we love and care for one another as a Christian ministry or simple humanity. We don’t need to form a committee; we don’t even need the Rector’s approval! Because it doesn’t really matter, in the end, what we say about our work or how we talk about it. What matter is whether we do it.

If you’re listening to this sermon right now, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re a “first-hour” kind of person. If you’re willing to log on to the twenty-eighth week of online church or to sit on a folding chair outside, you’re probably a pretty committed person in general. Some of you have kept the church functioning during a long, hard interim period. Some of you have been the linchpin of the office, coordinating everything while people are working from home...Even if you’re not quite so diligent as these early birds—maybe you’re a third- or a sixth-hour person—I’m guessing that you’ve all had experiences of those eleventh-hour workers.