The Justice of The New Creation

Sermon 17th Sunday After Trinity, 27 September 2026

Harvest Thanksgiving Service

Readings: Ezekiel 18. 1-4, 25-end; Philippians 2. 1-13; Matthew 21. 23-32.

Theme: The Justice Of The New Creation 

Ancient stories of the natural world often note that justice and injustice are omnipresent. The Greek thinker Anaximander, for example, in an ancient fragment speaks of an interplay of justice and reparation for injustice that permeates the entire cosmos.

The readings for the services of harvest thanksgiving provide a biblical account of justice and reparation for injustice. This is portrayed on the canvas of the history of Israel and its summons to announce the justice of the new creation that is inaugurated in the resurrection of Jesus.

The first reading from Ezekiel is written at a similar time to Anaximander’s Fragment. However, it is set in the context of exile. This is the time, just before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 586/587 BC, when some, such as the prophet Ezekiel, had already been deported. It tells of the consequences of the unjust behaviour of the Israelites and of the fact that God would prefer reparation and forgiveness to the punishment meted out through the successive Babylonian deportations.

The Christological hymn in the reading from Philippians expresses the idea of divine justice through the notion of the humility of God manifested in the humanity of Jesus. The taking on of the ‘flesh of the world’ in the incarnation is the way that God embraces the creation with a new redeeming justice. 

This justice redeems the world by paying the price of the injustice of the cross. Through the cross God initiates the redemption of humanity and of the whole of creation by inaugurating a total transformation of reality in the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection is the first fruits of the new creation in which natural and human injustice are overcome through the divine justice enacted by Jesus.

The work of subjecting the creation to this divine justice is the task given to the church: one of justly stewarding the creation to the glory of God the Father. 

It is because Jesus has been given the authority by his Father to subject the creation to his kingly rule that the matter of authority comes to the fore in the Gospel parable of the workers in the vineyard.

The religious authorities of the time, those who represent the son in the Gospel who initially promised to work but failed to go into the vineyard, did not recognize his divine authority. They preferred to live under the powers and principalities of pseudo-authorities.

However, unlike these religious authorities, the tax collectors and the prostitutes did recognize Jesus’s authority. They represent the son in the Gospel who initially refused to work but later repents and goes to labour in the vineyard. They are the ones who spread the divine justice of the new creation and enter the kingdom of God.

It is unsurprising that the religious authorities did not recognize the authority of Jesus because to do so would put at risk their own authority. They were dependent upon a system which had lost its way, and Jesus was perceived as a threat to this. Indeed, John the Baptist is the one who points this out first and prepares the way for the truly authoritative one to come.

When Jesus arrives, we see the system that the religious authorities had built crash down upon them at the message of Jesus. This is why they are left dumbfounded by his question about the authority of John the Baptist because these religious authorities recognize that in Jesus the one whom John had announced was in their midst.

So, if this authority is to be recognized in our own lives we must learn to acknowledge that Jesus is the king of the new kingdom of heaven. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus has set the clock ticking on the end times. The final justice announced throughout the Old Testament and now fulfilled in the New has arrived in Jesus. 

This means that the task given to the church by Jesus is one which we should focus our own lives upon. The building of God’s kingdom and the proclamation of the righteous justice of the Lord is our project as church. We have been gathered together by the Lord to carry on the work of his inaugurated kingdom. In each act of charity and of justice, we prepare the way of the Lord for his coming at the end of time in his second coming.

The anger we may feel at the injustices and exploitation of human and natural resources thus have a bigger picture within which to situate them. This anger when it is rightly directed is not a design fault in our humanity, but a call of the Lord to transform our world. Righteous anger, as this is sometimes called, is the prophetic spirit which we share in when we cry out in outrage about injustice and exploitation. This state of affairs is not the will of the Lord and such a deformed world is one which has been put right in the resurrection of Jesus that opens the final act of creation in the new creation.

Therefore, as we celebrate harvest thanksgiving in our worship centres this Sunday, we do so in the light of a world in which many shadows have been cast over the lives of countless people and of our fragile earth. But we face this situation in hope because we know that nothing, no power or authority can ever overcome the victory that is won for us in Jesus, our risen Lord.