Putting the Script Back into Scripture

The 19th Sunday after Pentecost, Year A Sermon for October 4, 2026

Grace to you and peace from God of the Covenant Promise and Christ Jesus, who provides for us a path to live out and make incarnate that gospel promise. Amen.

Last Sunday, we heard Jesus tell the temple authorities a parable, suggesting that they weren't actually following God's instruction. They promised to go work in the vineyard, but in practice, they did not.

In today's gospel, he tells them a second parable, drawing on imagery from Isaiah chapter 5 and ratcheting up the critique. This time, the charge isn't simply that the protagonists had not worked in the vineyard, but rather that they were hoarding the vineyard's produce and ignoring, indeed, killing the householder's servants who came to collect it. The temple authorities rightly perceive that Jesus is critically speaking about them. And they continue to prepare for his arrest and trial.

Now our lectionary wonderfully pairs Matthew's telling of these parables of Jesus with today's Exodus text in Hebrew scripture: the story of the law, the Ten Commandments given at Mount Sinai, a key step in Israel's covenantal journey with their God through the wilderness. The Ten Commandments iconically represent the law as covenant, two-sided promise, a framework for Israel's relationship with God.

And many of us need to reflect on the nuance of that understanding. We need to transform how we hear these Ten Words, these Ten Commandments. Friends in Christ, we are not to hear the Ten Commandments as prohibitions, which is a simplistic synthesis of the “thou shalt not” directives.

These aren't arbitrary prohibitions, offering the whims of a controlling deity. Rather, they are meant to be loving limits that guide human beings toward living with justice and with grace and with dignity, vis-a-vis God and neighbor. If we have ears to hear, it is through the gift of the law that Israel's relationship with God becomes a tangible, everyday sort of listening, a steady practice.

Now, the temple authorities proudly proclaimed that they were the keepers of the law, that they were doing the right thing. But in effect, the law transforms doing the right thing into a calling, a vocation, something done not only for its own sake, but also as a responsive act of devoted, attentive companionship with God and with neighbor. That calling, that vocation, embraces much the same script that Jesus authored to help his followers live out and make incarnate the covenant promise of God.

My sisters and brothers, if we have ears to hear, the gift of covenant law revealed in the Ten Commandments and in Jesus' summary of the law, in his teaching, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength and everything else. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The gift of covenant law guides us to live with justice, to live with grace, to live with dignity as transformational principles, as a way of following and a way of relationship.

One who most certainly had ears to hear that invitation was known as Il Poverello, the little poor man, best known to us as St. Francis of Assisi. Il Poverello. Francis was born in 1182, nearly 850 years ago. And October 4th, today, is his feast day. St. Francis of Assisi is considered the patron saint of Italy and the patron saint of animals and nature… and campy lawn ornaments. Not to mention being the namesake of the former pope.

Francis is remembered for his care of the impoverished in his time, and he lived as one. He founded a movement of monks who lived lives of simple poverty out and about in the world. Like our beloved St. Rosie, whom a number of us gathered to commend to God yesterday, his was a just and humble lifestyle, and it included care for animals and birds and flowers and the whole of creation. Francis wrote songs and preached to both birds and people, and he modeled a way of transformative discipleship.

Now, over eight centuries since his death, many have said of Francis that in no other human being has the life of Jesus come more vividly, more tangibly alive.

As we consider the heart of Old Testament law this day, it is certainly to be said that St. Francis of Assisi perceived the law as a framework for his relationship with God, a living with justice, grace and dignity relationship with God and neighbor and the whole of creation. Citing the influence of St. Francis, the theologian Matthew Meyer Bolton coined the phrase, putting the script back into scripture. That scripture is something we should perform. Scripture is something that we should live out. And that's more than taking scripture literally. Francis, Bolton suggested, took scripture as script, something to be done, something to be incarnated, something to be enfleshed.

So, on this feast day of St. Francis, we celebrate him by blessing animals. Thanks be to God, this is always fun. By the way, barking is another form of singing. We celebrate Francis by blessing animals. We yoke our sacramental sense of blessing to the wider creation, to pets and livestock and wild animals of the natural order, blessing all of creation and its creatures.

And in tribute to Francis, we lift up creation's biodiversity in a time of great extinction. The likes of which hasn't been seen on earth since the dinosaurs took their leave. We need to ponder that. In the spirit of Francis, we may seek to hear voices of conservation biologists with their strategies of rewilding, to protect both animals and entire ecosystems. Francis understood in the opening pages of the Book of Genesis, God as creative host who loves and cares for all of creation. And he understood humanity as the creatures made in God's image.

In that affirmation, the church should be made of communities of care and action on behalf of all creation. Yes, blessing pets and all creatures, and raising alarm in an age of extinction. We should raise the alarm and get involved in rewilding initiatives to restore wilderness areas and large-scale migration corridors in ways that protect the natural order of creation. We're invited to read of creation in the first chapters of Genesis with the eyes of St. Francis, with the eyes of St. Rosie.

Finally, on St. Francis Day, continue to ponder with me the concept of receiving scripture as script, something we should perform, something we should live out. A key moment of conversion came for Francis when he heard Matthew 10:10 read aloud in a little stone chapel in the Tuscan countryside, the passage where Jesus instructs his followers to take no bag for your journey or to tunics or sandals or a staff. And Francis decided then and there to actually follow these instructions to receive scripture as script. And from then on, he went barefoot and lived in profound simplicity. He sought to bring the story of scripture vividly alive to help people engage the gospel with all of their senses.

Scripture as script.

It is remembered that Francis invented the live nativity scene that some places observe at Christmas time. That was his idea. Complete with actual farm animals and a real manger, so that people would not just hear about a stable in Bethlehem, but be present in a stable with a real manger sitting right there between an ox and a horse. A wonderful footnote to his story.

So we are to ask, what would it look like for our faith community to receive scripture as something to be lived out tangibly in our lives? And on this feast day of St. Francis, how could our receiving scripture as script exemplify the life of the one named Il Poverello, the little poor one, the little poor man from Assisi? The beautiful answer to such questions transforms our reception of this week's text from Exodus.

For God gives Israel the gift of law as a mode of covenantal instruction, as an opportunity for the people of God to listen to God and to live out that listening every day in virtually everything we do. Once these commandments are heard in this loving relational way, they become less a list of imperatives and more a collection of indicatives, declarations of what a graceful, dignified human life looks like.

In this way, the famous refrain, “thou shalt not,” may be heard not as an imperious injunction demanding obedience, but rather as a vivid portrait of a fruitful garden. As if God is saying, when you humbly walk with me in justice and kindness, you shall not murder, you shall not lie, you shall not steal, and more.

Friends in Christ, we are invited to walk with our Creator in the garden of life's blessing, accepting the call to receive scripture as script, and embracing the way of St. Francis, a Christ-like way.

In our Lord's name, Amen.