Good Morning Church! I’m Steve Godfrey and I’m the Diocesan Minister for the Diocese of North Dakota. That greeting was a favorite of Bishop Bud Cederholm, who was the Bishop Suffragan of the Diocese of Massachusetts and ordained me to the priesthood many years ago. He died recently and at his funeral his son used that greeting at the beginning of his tribute to his father, which reminded me how much Bishop Bud loved the church and how much I love the church. Bud had been a great and successful parish priest and he brought his commitment to congregational ministry to the rest of the diocese. He was one of the people who inspired me to appreciate both congregational development and diocesan community.
Here in North Dakota I work with all 19 churches across North Dakota and Clay County, Minnesota, where we have a predominantly Sudanese congregation in Moorhead. I do a lot of congregational development and encouragement, especially with many of our very small and rural churches, as well as St. John’s in Moorhead, churches that by conventional standards are not particularly “successful” or “great.” If you arranged our churches in order of membership or average Sunday attendance or income or endowment value they would be the last on the list. It’s unusual for me to get invited to preach at one of our big churches – those at the top of the list – so I’m grateful to Dean Strobel for this invitation, especially on a day when Jesus particularly challenges conventional ideas about greatness!
I also provide a lot of support for our diocesan community and its various committees and efforts, like Diocesan Council, the Finance Committee, Reconciliation Committee, and Commission on Ministry. For the last year and a half that has meant supporting the work of the New Season of Ministry Task Force, which was charged with discerning goals, priorities, and recommendations for the future of the diocese in the coming years. Sean Burt from Gethsemane is a member of the NSMTF and I’m grateful for his service – it’s been fun to get to know him. The Task Force’s report with their recommendations is now posted on our diocesan website (ndepiscopal.org) and is highlighted in The Sheaf diocesan newsletter that was mailed out late last week and is also posted online. This report and recommendations will form the most important business at our diocesan convention next month.
The task force’s report identifies several goals, focuses, priorities & investments for the new season of ministry in the diocese that is in front of us:
• Staying together as a diocesan community
• Youth and young adult ministry
• Native American ministry
• Congregational ministry and leadership, especially for sustaining small congregations
• Reconciliation and creation care ministries
As I watched these goals and priorities for investment take shape I became increasingly excited and proud of our diocese, and especially of the large, mostly white congregations that might be considered particularly successful, secure, and sustainable. Congregations like Gethsemane.
Those who toil to make ends meet here, with stewardship drives and fundraisers and budgeting, may not feel like things are all that secure or sustainable, but from my perspective, spending most of my time in very small, vulnerable congregations, in small, struggling communities, rural areas, and Native American reservations, this all looks pretty fancy!
What makes me proud is that, at least as embodied in the New Season of Ministry Task Force, the people of Gethsemane and St. Stephens here in Fargo, St. Paul’s in Grand Forks and St. Georges in Bismarck, are more concerned about helping the small, rural churches thrive than preserving wealth for your own needs, more concerned about honoring the spiritual yearnings and gifts of young people and Native American communities than prioritizing established white, middle-aged culture, more concerned about reconciliation across differences and with the earth than maintaining genteel social clubs – and I’m afraid I have seen a lot of interest in genteel social clubs among people in my own demographic throughout the church in my experience in ministry!
I’m sure it’s a balancing act, but the recognition of the importance of the presence and vitality of the least among us in the diocese makes us a diocese that is worth maintaining and sustaining. One might ask why our great churches don’t just join up with the great Diocese of Minnesota, with their 93 congregations and big cities, or the great Diocese of South Dakota? We want to stay together as this little Diocese of North Dakota, one of the least of the whole Episcopal Church. And that means letting go of striving for status and focusing on the needs of the least among us, who make up the majority of our points of presence throughout this vast land we cover.
Human societies often measure health and vitality by wealth and status. The greatest people are the ones who have acquired the most possessions and power. Those who have less are less. Those who have the least are the least. Some people inherit wealth and power and others earn it. In America we often especially celebrate those who have worked hard to amass wealth and power – going from rags to riches, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. So this story about day laborers in a vineyard can seem especially perplexing. Shouldn’t the landowner be rewarding – and Jesus be honoring – the people who have worked the hardest? Why do those who have worked the least, perhaps been lazy, more likely unlucky, most of the day – receive the same wage?
A big part of the confusion comes from the way that we read this story in isolation and separated from what comes before it. In fact, the first word of the first sentence of our Gospel reading has been omitted and it is a small, just 3 letters – one of the least – but very important word in both Greek and in translation. In our translation the full sentence reads “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.” We need that little conjunction, “for,” for it connects this story to Jesus’s broader point and it links it with last phrase of the previous sentence, “Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first,” echoed at the conclusion of our passage: “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
The whole conversation had started with a question some religious leaders asked Jesus about divorce which he used as an opportunity to talk about the marginalization of women that happened through divorce in that culture and that single people experienced, and then little children being shooed away and Jesus gathering them and blessing them, and then a rich young man asking Jesus what he must do to have eternal life and Jesus responding that, in addition to keeping the basic commandments, he must sell his many possessions and give to the poor, which made the man very sad. Then Jesus talks about how hard it is for rich people to enter the kingdom of heaven and Peter points out that the disciples had left everything to follow him and Jesus affirms that those who leave behind wealth and status and the security of families will receive a hundredfold in eternal life. “Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”
For the kingdom of heaven is like a vineyard where people are not focused on working hard to amass wealth and security and sustainability for themselves and their families and congregations, but rather they are celebrating that all are worthy of abundant and eternal life, no matter how well they have done in the measures of the world. The last will be first. Those on the margins whom the world often forgets Jesus especially welcomes into God’s fold, and those who pride themselves on how great and powerful they and their stuff are will be last because God does not care about stuff and status.
This is why I am feeling so proud of the Diocese of North Dakota in this moment and grateful to the people like the members of the New Season of Ministry Task Force who have been identifying and articulating our priority on the least among us, and why I am hopeful that we will come out of our diocesan convention next month truly celebrating that we really care as Jesus cares for the welfare of all in our diocesan community.
It is a joy to watch our “first” congregations measured by wealth and status get behind our “last” congregations by those measures, let go of the need to compete for resources to achieve security and sustainability, and instead celebrate the value of our diverse community and of all the members of our diocesan family, and how God makes a point of challenging those who are “great” or “first” to let go of the focus on wealth and status, and of inviting the “least” among us to take their places at the helm.
When the few who are first let go of the primacy of wealth and status, share the power and privilege of leadership, and honor diversity, reconciliation, and wholeness as human family and with all creation, then the gifts the many who have been last can shine brightly and lead the way into the eternally abundant community of God, on earth and in heaven. That’s church!
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