You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Jesus' parables often end with a tag line; this one's is: "For many are called, but few are chosen.”
I guess this refers to the banquet hall being full of people who were invited without regard to their suitability, to be evaluated and sorted out later. It’s not much comfort, is it, the idea that just being in the room doesn’t guarantee inclusion in the household of God.
Are we “in?” Do we want to be? Are we actually at the party, or just hanging out on the sidelines? Put another way, are we lukewarm church-goers or passionate Christ-followers? I've heard this verse adapted to describe Episcopalians: “Many are cold, but few are frozen.” What is our temperature at this feast?
Try to imagine yourself at a feast, a celebration, whatever that looks like for you. Bring the details to mind. The room is crowded. Where are you? Near the table, hugging a wall somewhere, or in between? Why are you where you are? Where is Jesus in that room? Can you have a chat with him?
I’d like to believe we are both called and chosen; I’ve never held to doctrines like predestination or election. At the very least, we are all invited, and we all have a choice to be present to the feast or pass it by. I hope you pull up a chair and pick up a fork – a sentiment conveyed much more eloquently in the 17th century by the priest and poet George Herbert:
Love (III)
Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
- George Herbert, 1593-1633
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
10-8-26 - Fashion Police
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Some years ago I attended my goddaughter’s wedding in England, and faced a big question: Did I have to wear a hat? My airport driver said yes; the mother of the bride said most would not. Whew! Heaven forbid the godmother from America be unsuitably attired. Had I been in Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet, the consequences might have been severe. As Matthew tells it, the tale takes an odd turn after the influx of late arrivals from the streets and lanes:
“Those servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’"
Wow! Why does correct attire matter so much to this king in Jesus’ story? This part of the tale seems particularly unjust. This man didn’t know he was coming to a wedding, right? How could he have been expected to wear a “wedding robe,” whatever that is? And isn’t Jesus the one who said, “Don’t judge a book by its cover?” Actually no… but close - Jesus did say to judge what’s inside a person, not externals. What the heck is going on here?
No one fully knows, of course. Some scholars think there were certain items of clothing people wore to weddings. Here’s my guess: that even those who don’t have much advance invitation to God’s feast have the opportunity to turn, to repent, to “clean up,” as it were. Is that what is meant by the “wedding robe?” Maybe this person was wandering around, clueless, unconscious, unrepentant and unresponsive.
There are verses in the New Testament that speak of being “clothed in righteousness,” and “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.”
And in Revelation 19:7-8 we have this promise: “...for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride [the church] has made herself ready; to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure — for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.”
Do you feel “clothed in righteousness” today, or in some other attire? How well does it fit? How does it look on you? Might you try on another "emotional outfit" that better expresses how you want to be seen at God’s table?
Martin Luther wrote of God’s grace in Christ as the “Great Exchange,” by which Christ took on our filthy beggars’ rags and gives us his royal robes to wear. Christ has clothed us in HIS holiness. He covers even the most shameful parts of us, the parts we think are unlovable. He loves us into love.
In his righteousness, his holiness, his glory, we can stand unashamed, unhidden. We can allow our true selves to be seen, knowing that we are loved beyond measure by the God who made us, redeemed us, and loves us to the end of time. We are princes and princesses at a royal wedding – let’s dress like we know it, hats and all.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Some years ago I attended my goddaughter’s wedding in England, and faced a big question: Did I have to wear a hat? My airport driver said yes; the mother of the bride said most would not. Whew! Heaven forbid the godmother from America be unsuitably attired. Had I been in Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet, the consequences might have been severe. As Matthew tells it, the tale takes an odd turn after the influx of late arrivals from the streets and lanes:
“Those servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’"
Wow! Why does correct attire matter so much to this king in Jesus’ story? This part of the tale seems particularly unjust. This man didn’t know he was coming to a wedding, right? How could he have been expected to wear a “wedding robe,” whatever that is? And isn’t Jesus the one who said, “Don’t judge a book by its cover?” Actually no… but close - Jesus did say to judge what’s inside a person, not externals. What the heck is going on here?
No one fully knows, of course. Some scholars think there were certain items of clothing people wore to weddings. Here’s my guess: that even those who don’t have much advance invitation to God’s feast have the opportunity to turn, to repent, to “clean up,” as it were. Is that what is meant by the “wedding robe?” Maybe this person was wandering around, clueless, unconscious, unrepentant and unresponsive.
There are verses in the New Testament that speak of being “clothed in righteousness,” and “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.”
And in Revelation 19:7-8 we have this promise: “...for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride [the church] has made herself ready; to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure — for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.”
Do you feel “clothed in righteousness” today, or in some other attire? How well does it fit? How does it look on you? Might you try on another "emotional outfit" that better expresses how you want to be seen at God’s table?
Martin Luther wrote of God’s grace in Christ as the “Great Exchange,” by which Christ took on our filthy beggars’ rags and gives us his royal robes to wear. Christ has clothed us in HIS holiness. He covers even the most shameful parts of us, the parts we think are unlovable. He loves us into love.
In his righteousness, his holiness, his glory, we can stand unashamed, unhidden. We can allow our true selves to be seen, knowing that we are loved beyond measure by the God who made us, redeemed us, and loves us to the end of time. We are princes and princesses at a royal wedding – let’s dress like we know it, hats and all.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
10-7-26 - Get Me Some Guests!
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
It is hard to read this parable of the wedding banquet and not think of the many mostly-empty churches all over North America and Europe on Sunday mornings. In the story, the King has prepared a beautiful wedding feast for his son and invited all the people who used to come to his house… and now none of them will. Enraged, he says to his servants, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” Those servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
Given how Jesus has been lambasting the religious leaders for their unmerciful self-righteousness, and how he’s been known to interact with the not-good-enough of his society – the lame, lepers, extortioners, “loose women” – it seems obvious that, in this story, these are who the folks on the streets represent. These outsiders are found, herded onto the king’s buses and brought back to populate his banquet hall. The servants aren’t choosy – they bring everybody in.
What would it look like if we sent buses around shelters and parks – and tony brunch places – on Sunday mornings and invited people to come to our feasts? Would we be prepared to deal with strangers, people’s disappointments and addictions, the chips on their shoulders? Would we be prepared to see them not as wounded strangers but as gifts, with assets and strengths we need in our congregations?
What would it look like if we took church out to them instead of asking them into our buildings? For a time, my church in Stamford did this in a “tougher” section of town. We started just bringing sandwiches to the curb as people sat in their lawn chairs with their bottles, then began offering healing prayer, and before long I was telling “Jesus stories,” preaching on the street. It was amazing - until gentrification struck and the people who hung out there were dispersed, and that ministry faded away. But we had the muscle memory of doing it, a vivid reminder of what church can be outside our walls.
The poor and the lame are not the only people God wants at the feast. God also wants the stressed over-achievers, the multi-tasking moms, the doubters and questioners. This parable suggests that God wants everybody at God’s table. Who are we not inviting?
That is the spiritual task I suggest today: make a list of the sorts of people to whom your congregation does not seem to be extending an invitation. Who is calling to you?
Many of the ones who are being invited are not coming. Who else are we to invite?
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
It is hard to read this parable of the wedding banquet and not think of the many mostly-empty churches all over North America and Europe on Sunday mornings. In the story, the King has prepared a beautiful wedding feast for his son and invited all the people who used to come to his house… and now none of them will. Enraged, he says to his servants, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” Those servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
Given how Jesus has been lambasting the religious leaders for their unmerciful self-righteousness, and how he’s been known to interact with the not-good-enough of his society – the lame, lepers, extortioners, “loose women” – it seems obvious that, in this story, these are who the folks on the streets represent. These outsiders are found, herded onto the king’s buses and brought back to populate his banquet hall. The servants aren’t choosy – they bring everybody in.
What would it look like if we sent buses around shelters and parks – and tony brunch places – on Sunday mornings and invited people to come to our feasts? Would we be prepared to deal with strangers, people’s disappointments and addictions, the chips on their shoulders? Would we be prepared to see them not as wounded strangers but as gifts, with assets and strengths we need in our congregations?
What would it look like if we took church out to them instead of asking them into our buildings? For a time, my church in Stamford did this in a “tougher” section of town. We started just bringing sandwiches to the curb as people sat in their lawn chairs with their bottles, then began offering healing prayer, and before long I was telling “Jesus stories,” preaching on the street. It was amazing - until gentrification struck and the people who hung out there were dispersed, and that ministry faded away. But we had the muscle memory of doing it, a vivid reminder of what church can be outside our walls.
The poor and the lame are not the only people God wants at the feast. God also wants the stressed over-achievers, the multi-tasking moms, the doubters and questioners. This parable suggests that God wants everybody at God’s table. Who are we not inviting?
That is the spiritual task I suggest today: make a list of the sorts of people to whom your congregation does not seem to be extending an invitation. Who is calling to you?
Many of the ones who are being invited are not coming. Who else are we to invite?
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
10-6-26 - No Thanks
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
I once had a friend who would decline to do things with me if she received other offers she preferred, even if she’d already accepted my invitation. While I admired her honesty, it was clear I didn’t rate very high on her list. Not that I was about to burn down her village or anything…
The invited guests in Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet have no qualms about turning down the king’s invitation to his feast – in fact, they seem to have no respect for this king at all. The first group just say, “No.” Then the king sends out other servants and says, “'Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.' But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, maltreated them, and killed them."
One to his farm, another to his business. In Luke’s version the excuses are more creative – one just got married and didn’t want to leave his new wife just yet. Who are these people who so little value God's invitations?
On any given day it can be you or me or anyone we know. There can be no end to other priorities when it comes to engaging the spiritual life. Connecting with God has to be on our schedule, and not when the coach has called a practice, or the boss a new deadline, or there’s anything else we’d rather do. Just think of all the reasons people give for not coming to church.
And yet, if you’re reading this you have put engaging with God-Life above quite a few other demands on your time. Something about spending time and energy in the presence of God or God’s people, in praise and worship, in acts of mercy and justice, has been compelling enough that you’ve actually said yes to God's invitation to the banquet, not once but many times.
What made the difference for you? If we can identify that, we might be able to better frame the invitation so that other people can respond to it. Are there ways that we practice our faith that can obscure the life at its heart? Inviting people in needn't mean lowest-common-denominator consumer Christianity – some of the highest-commitment faith communities are the most robust. But the banquet does have to be lively, full of life, real, true life. That’s what people are hungry for.
Make a list today of all the reasons you have said yes to God’s invitation, and why you stay at God’s table. If there is a list of excuses you’ve made or continue to make, list those too. Look at both lists and see what common threads emerge. Where in these gifts and obstacles might you find the seeds of an invitation to a friend or acquaintance?
God’s banquet is waiting. In this life, we only experience the feast in parts – but oh, how rich even those morsels can be. Who is God sending you out to invite?
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
I once had a friend who would decline to do things with me if she received other offers she preferred, even if she’d already accepted my invitation. While I admired her honesty, it was clear I didn’t rate very high on her list. Not that I was about to burn down her village or anything…
The invited guests in Jesus’ parable of the wedding banquet have no qualms about turning down the king’s invitation to his feast – in fact, they seem to have no respect for this king at all. The first group just say, “No.” Then the king sends out other servants and says, “'Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.' But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, maltreated them, and killed them."
One to his farm, another to his business. In Luke’s version the excuses are more creative – one just got married and didn’t want to leave his new wife just yet. Who are these people who so little value God's invitations?
On any given day it can be you or me or anyone we know. There can be no end to other priorities when it comes to engaging the spiritual life. Connecting with God has to be on our schedule, and not when the coach has called a practice, or the boss a new deadline, or there’s anything else we’d rather do. Just think of all the reasons people give for not coming to church.
And yet, if you’re reading this you have put engaging with God-Life above quite a few other demands on your time. Something about spending time and energy in the presence of God or God’s people, in praise and worship, in acts of mercy and justice, has been compelling enough that you’ve actually said yes to God's invitation to the banquet, not once but many times.
What made the difference for you? If we can identify that, we might be able to better frame the invitation so that other people can respond to it. Are there ways that we practice our faith that can obscure the life at its heart? Inviting people in needn't mean lowest-common-denominator consumer Christianity – some of the highest-commitment faith communities are the most robust. But the banquet does have to be lively, full of life, real, true life. That’s what people are hungry for.
Make a list today of all the reasons you have said yes to God’s invitation, and why you stay at God’s table. If there is a list of excuses you’ve made or continue to make, list those too. Look at both lists and see what common threads emerge. Where in these gifts and obstacles might you find the seeds of an invitation to a friend or acquaintance?
God’s banquet is waiting. In this life, we only experience the feast in parts – but oh, how rich even those morsels can be. Who is God sending you out to invite?
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
10-5-26 - Who Doesn't Love a Wedding?
You can listen to this reflection here. This Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Oh, a nice story about a wedding; what a relief after the violence of last week’s vineyard parable. Who doesn’t love a wedding? Except that this wedding looks more like a Quentin Tarantino flick, with an enraged host, slaughtered guests and a bewildered party crasher. Granted, this is how Matthew relates Jesus’ story, and he seems often to ratchet up the violence; in Luke’s telling it is a lot milder.
This parable is not actually about a wedding – it is a story about invitation, an invitation spurned by indifferent guests. It’s a story about a host who won’t take “no” for an answer.
The nutshell version: A king gives a wedding banquet for his son. He sends servants to gather the invited guests, but they won’t come to the feast. He sends other servants with the message that the feast is ready, but these are mocked and given excuses, and then molested and killed. The enraged king retaliates, killing the offenders and burning their city, and then sends his servants out to the streets to invite everyone they find, “both good and bad,” to fill his wedding hall. One, who is not appropriately dressed, gets thrown out. Nice story, huh? (It makes a LOT more sense in Luke…)
What is this parable actually about? Like many of Jesus’ tales, it illustrates his claim that the leading religious figures have ignored God’s invitation offered through the prophets, and ultimately through Jesus, to come to the feast prepared for them. Since the “holy people” have not been faithful to the Lord their God, God will send representatives to the “highways and byways,” gathering up the good and the not-so-good – and sort out later who gets to stick around. If the King in Jesus’ story represents God, it’s not a lovely depiction of God – especially the part about killing the would-be guests and burning down their city.
On another level, this is a story about how easy it can be to put aside the claims and gifts of God and lose ourselves in the mundane and the worldly. We’ll explore that aspect more tomorrow.
Today, try reading the story aloud to yourself, and notice where you get snagged. Give it some thought and read it again… what questions arise? What invitations do you hear? What warnings?
It can be hard to find the Good News in this story. It is very bad news for the people who have ignored God’s call to be his people, and so-so news for the ones scooped up on the streets, who may get to stay at the feast, or may be tossed into outer darkness. Where is the Good News for you?
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Oh, a nice story about a wedding; what a relief after the violence of last week’s vineyard parable. Who doesn’t love a wedding? Except that this wedding looks more like a Quentin Tarantino flick, with an enraged host, slaughtered guests and a bewildered party crasher. Granted, this is how Matthew relates Jesus’ story, and he seems often to ratchet up the violence; in Luke’s telling it is a lot milder.
This parable is not actually about a wedding – it is a story about invitation, an invitation spurned by indifferent guests. It’s a story about a host who won’t take “no” for an answer.
The nutshell version: A king gives a wedding banquet for his son. He sends servants to gather the invited guests, but they won’t come to the feast. He sends other servants with the message that the feast is ready, but these are mocked and given excuses, and then molested and killed. The enraged king retaliates, killing the offenders and burning their city, and then sends his servants out to the streets to invite everyone they find, “both good and bad,” to fill his wedding hall. One, who is not appropriately dressed, gets thrown out. Nice story, huh? (It makes a LOT more sense in Luke…)
What is this parable actually about? Like many of Jesus’ tales, it illustrates his claim that the leading religious figures have ignored God’s invitation offered through the prophets, and ultimately through Jesus, to come to the feast prepared for them. Since the “holy people” have not been faithful to the Lord their God, God will send representatives to the “highways and byways,” gathering up the good and the not-so-good – and sort out later who gets to stick around. If the King in Jesus’ story represents God, it’s not a lovely depiction of God – especially the part about killing the would-be guests and burning down their city.
On another level, this is a story about how easy it can be to put aside the claims and gifts of God and lose ourselves in the mundane and the worldly. We’ll explore that aspect more tomorrow.
Today, try reading the story aloud to yourself, and notice where you get snagged. Give it some thought and read it again… what questions arise? What invitations do you hear? What warnings?
It can be hard to find the Good News in this story. It is very bad news for the people who have ignored God’s call to be his people, and so-so news for the ones scooped up on the streets, who may get to stay at the feast, or may be tossed into outer darkness. Where is the Good News for you?
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
10-2-26 - Fruits of the Kingdom
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
As we read the Gospels and even the book of Acts, it seems clear that neither Jesus nor his followers had any intention of starting a new religious system. They sought to reform the tradition they’d inherited, a temple-based Judaism that had become leadership-heavy and legalistic.
Yet, as Jesus interprets this parable he's just told, it also seems clear that he expected the reform to involve a total change of leadership and operation: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”
So, what exactly are the “fruits of the Kingdom,” the markers and outcomes of Life in the realm of God? We can glean what Jesus meant by the way he taught and the way he interacted with people:
Chief among the fruits is repentance – that is often where we start in our relationship with God, by seeing ourselves honestly and clearly and finding out that God loves us as we are – and too much to leave us that way.
Repentance is related to another prime Kingdom fruit – healing, the manifestation in this world of the transforming love and power of God’s realm.
Generosity is another major fruit of the kingdom – an ability to loosen our grip on what is “ours” and share with all as any have need. We can really only do this as we truly start to love our neighbors as ourselves.
So we’d have to put love of neighbor as self on our list. From that flows all kinds of other fruits.
A desire for justice and peace-making are fruits of the Kingdom, as is a commitment to community in the Body of Christ.
What would you add to this list?
What fruits do you see most often in your life?
What do you wish you saw more of, in yourself and in the church around you?
If the Realm of Good has been entrusted to us, are we helping to bring forth transformed lives and a transformed world? That is the ultimate fruit Jesus looks for.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
As we read the Gospels and even the book of Acts, it seems clear that neither Jesus nor his followers had any intention of starting a new religious system. They sought to reform the tradition they’d inherited, a temple-based Judaism that had become leadership-heavy and legalistic.
Yet, as Jesus interprets this parable he's just told, it also seems clear that he expected the reform to involve a total change of leadership and operation: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”
So, what exactly are the “fruits of the Kingdom,” the markers and outcomes of Life in the realm of God? We can glean what Jesus meant by the way he taught and the way he interacted with people:
Chief among the fruits is repentance – that is often where we start in our relationship with God, by seeing ourselves honestly and clearly and finding out that God loves us as we are – and too much to leave us that way.
Repentance is related to another prime Kingdom fruit – healing, the manifestation in this world of the transforming love and power of God’s realm.
Generosity is another major fruit of the kingdom – an ability to loosen our grip on what is “ours” and share with all as any have need. We can really only do this as we truly start to love our neighbors as ourselves.
So we’d have to put love of neighbor as self on our list. From that flows all kinds of other fruits.
A desire for justice and peace-making are fruits of the Kingdom, as is a commitment to community in the Body of Christ.
What would you add to this list?
What fruits do you see most often in your life?
What do you wish you saw more of, in yourself and in the church around you?
If the Realm of Good has been entrusted to us, are we helping to bring forth transformed lives and a transformed world? That is the ultimate fruit Jesus looks for.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
10-1-26 - Gotcha
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
These parables Jesus told his “frenemies,” the scribes and Pharisees, have a pattern: story, question, gotcha. Jesus would describe a situation of obvious injustice and then ask how they would resolve it. They would give an answer that, once they realized who in the parable represented them, indicted them. It’s amazing how often they fell for it.
So it is here. Jesus tells the story of the vineyard and the wicked tenants, and then asks, “’Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’ They said to him, ‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.’”
“Gotcha,” Jesus says – “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”
God will take the leadership away from you, he says, and give it to others, outsiders, outcasts, outliers, who will produce the fruit at harvest time, the fruit of repentance, the fruit of good works, the fruit of worship. Jesus uses an image from Psalm 118:22, of a stone, once rejected as unsuitable, now become the cornerstone of a new building. This theme is oft-repeated in salvation history, as God chooses unlikely candidates on which to build his community, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David. We see this pattern fulfilled in Jesus.
Jesus takes this familiar verse and turns it against the leaders: "The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”
Now the Pharisees and scribes realize he’s been talking about them, and the gloves are off. They begin to actively seek his arrest, but are afraid to offend the crowds, who see Jesus as a prophet. They might have taken what Jesus said to heart and examined their leadership, or welcomed the “unworthy" as full members of the religious community. But they were too stuck in their own pride and self-righteousness to choose a different course of action.
In prayer today, let’s remember leaders, religious or secular, who seem stuck or blind to the big picture. Let’s pray especially for those leaders whom we don’t trust – they need God’s blessing the most. And let’s pray for those who appear to be outsiders, whom we don’t want to welcome in.
It seems to be a principle that as soon as we start to think we’re insiders, God upsets the apple cart and invites outsiders to our party, challenging our notions of what should be. We may as well try to get there first, and invite those outliers in ourselves. Or better yet, go out and join them, so we can be invited in.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
These parables Jesus told his “frenemies,” the scribes and Pharisees, have a pattern: story, question, gotcha. Jesus would describe a situation of obvious injustice and then ask how they would resolve it. They would give an answer that, once they realized who in the parable represented them, indicted them. It’s amazing how often they fell for it.
So it is here. Jesus tells the story of the vineyard and the wicked tenants, and then asks, “’Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’ They said to him, ‘He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.’”
“Gotcha,” Jesus says – “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”
God will take the leadership away from you, he says, and give it to others, outsiders, outcasts, outliers, who will produce the fruit at harvest time, the fruit of repentance, the fruit of good works, the fruit of worship. Jesus uses an image from Psalm 118:22, of a stone, once rejected as unsuitable, now become the cornerstone of a new building. This theme is oft-repeated in salvation history, as God chooses unlikely candidates on which to build his community, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David. We see this pattern fulfilled in Jesus.
Jesus takes this familiar verse and turns it against the leaders: "The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”
Now the Pharisees and scribes realize he’s been talking about them, and the gloves are off. They begin to actively seek his arrest, but are afraid to offend the crowds, who see Jesus as a prophet. They might have taken what Jesus said to heart and examined their leadership, or welcomed the “unworthy" as full members of the religious community. But they were too stuck in their own pride and self-righteousness to choose a different course of action.
In prayer today, let’s remember leaders, religious or secular, who seem stuck or blind to the big picture. Let’s pray especially for those leaders whom we don’t trust – they need God’s blessing the most. And let’s pray for those who appear to be outsiders, whom we don’t want to welcome in.
It seems to be a principle that as soon as we start to think we’re insiders, God upsets the apple cart and invites outsiders to our party, challenging our notions of what should be. We may as well try to get there first, and invite those outliers in ourselves. Or better yet, go out and join them, so we can be invited in.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-30-26 - The Son
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Many religious traditions revere figures who received a revelation which inspired that expression of spiritual life. Some have prophets, some gurus, some gods or goddesses, some martyrs. The Christian tradition goes further, claiming that, in addition to prophetic and angelic messengers, God sent his own son to reveal his truth and to set people free from the consequences of sin and death.
If an important person sends her daughter or son to represent her, it carries more weight than if an aide or staffer shows up. A daughter or son is more like that person, bearing her very DNA. The claim that Jesus of Nazareth was not only a good and holy man chosen by God as Messiah, but actually the embodied son of God is a pretty big claim.
Why does it matter that we consider Jesus the fully human, fully divine Son of God? Jesus' incarnation is a gift for many reasons, an indication of how far God was willing to go to bridge the chasm to humankind. But perhaps it is in his sacrifice on the cross that the son-ship of Jesus matters most. As a friend once said, trying to explain the Cross – “You can’t get a bigger sacrificial victim than the Son of God.” Further, in this sacrifice to end the whole bloody system of sacrifice, the father and son each make a sacrifice – to allow their bond to be severed on the altar of human vengeance.
We can discuss another day whether Jesus had to die and how his sacrifice set us free… traditional Christian understanding says he did and it does; we each find our way into that mystery. Today, let’s explore a smaller mystery – that in this parable, this very Son of God tells a story about a fictional son who will be beaten and killed by those appointed to nurture the harvest with which they’d been entrusted. Once again, Jesus is predicting his own death – and charging his listeners with murder. If they hadn’t already wanted to kill him, now they surely did.
In Jesus’ story, the wicked tenants seize the son, throw him out of the vineyard and kill him. Jesus was himself cast out by the temple leadership who could not swallow his claims of divinity – or his growing influence. They told themselves they were just getting rid of yet another troublemaker, not the Son of God. And yet Jesus’ son-ship remained a fact they had to deal with – even more after his death.
How does Jesus’ “son-ship” affect your faith?
Do you feel closer to God through knowing Jesus, however imperfectly we may know him in this life?
These are questions worth exploring as we live into a relationship with God through the Son whom we meet in Y’shua of Nazareth. They are worth exploring in prayer – we can say simply, “Jesus, I want to know God more fully. Let me see you," and see what unfolds.
How does knowing Jesus help us draw nearer the mystery of God? Jesus told his followers that if they’d seen him, they’d seen the Father. The best way to find out is to invite the Holy Spirit to dwell with us. It is the Spirit who brings us the presence of Christ, every time.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
If an important person sends her daughter or son to represent her, it carries more weight than if an aide or staffer shows up. A daughter or son is more like that person, bearing her very DNA. The claim that Jesus of Nazareth was not only a good and holy man chosen by God as Messiah, but actually the embodied son of God is a pretty big claim.
Why does it matter that we consider Jesus the fully human, fully divine Son of God? Jesus' incarnation is a gift for many reasons, an indication of how far God was willing to go to bridge the chasm to humankind. But perhaps it is in his sacrifice on the cross that the son-ship of Jesus matters most. As a friend once said, trying to explain the Cross – “You can’t get a bigger sacrificial victim than the Son of God.” Further, in this sacrifice to end the whole bloody system of sacrifice, the father and son each make a sacrifice – to allow their bond to be severed on the altar of human vengeance.
We can discuss another day whether Jesus had to die and how his sacrifice set us free… traditional Christian understanding says he did and it does; we each find our way into that mystery. Today, let’s explore a smaller mystery – that in this parable, this very Son of God tells a story about a fictional son who will be beaten and killed by those appointed to nurture the harvest with which they’d been entrusted. Once again, Jesus is predicting his own death – and charging his listeners with murder. If they hadn’t already wanted to kill him, now they surely did.
In Jesus’ story, the wicked tenants seize the son, throw him out of the vineyard and kill him. Jesus was himself cast out by the temple leadership who could not swallow his claims of divinity – or his growing influence. They told themselves they were just getting rid of yet another troublemaker, not the Son of God. And yet Jesus’ son-ship remained a fact they had to deal with – even more after his death.
How does Jesus’ “son-ship” affect your faith?
Do you feel closer to God through knowing Jesus, however imperfectly we may know him in this life?
These are questions worth exploring as we live into a relationship with God through the Son whom we meet in Y’shua of Nazareth. They are worth exploring in prayer – we can say simply, “Jesus, I want to know God more fully. Let me see you," and see what unfolds.
How does knowing Jesus help us draw nearer the mystery of God? Jesus told his followers that if they’d seen him, they’d seen the Father. The best way to find out is to invite the Holy Spirit to dwell with us. It is the Spirit who brings us the presence of Christ, every time.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-29-26 - Tenants
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Many landlords can tell horror stories about bad tenants – people who never clean bathrooms, who damage walls in riotous parties, allow animals to roam the basement, or cart off appliances when they leave in the middle of the night, six months’ rent unpaid. But the tenants in Jesus’ parable about the leased vineyard? This is like renting your property to a drug cartel.
What does the landlord desire in letting out his vineyard? He wants it to be well tended, to bear good fruit, of which he is due a portion as income. These are the terms which allow the tenants to live on the beautiful land and produce good grapes and fine wine. But these tenants don’t honor their agreement, and they communicate their refusal violently. They want to seize the vineyard and own it outright.
Jesus was suggesting to the religious leaders hearing this that they, as stewards of Israel’s religious life, were like those tenants. They had not heeded the prophets. They perpetuated a highly remunerative system of temple sacrifice, and left ordinary people thinking they could never be right in the sight of God. They had set themselves as arbiters of right and wrong instead of seeing themselves as stewards of God’s power and mercy.
Yesterday I said it was human nature to ignore warnings. It is also human nature to appropriate what has been freely loaned to us. Religious communities in particular can fall prey to this danger, to focus their energy and resources on perpetuating their own life at the expense of fostering a living relationship with the God of surprises.
If we assess ourselves as tenants of God’s vineyard, how do we measure up? Compared to the larcenous, murderous lot in Jesus’ story, we’re golden. But let’s look at ourselves straight on. God has entrusted us with the care of the earth, of our families, our money and income, our gifts, our neighbors… how are we doing? Is there good fruit? Are we returning to God a portion of what we have received?
Take an inventory of all the areas of life in which God has entrusted you with resources or ministry. Name the fruit. For instance, if you think of your family, what good is discernible in and through the people with whom you share a home or a name? If the gift is your body, what good fruit do you see from how well you care for it? If the gift is your work, what fruit do you see? Let’s name the fruits, and also the stagnant, unfruitful things connected to those areas. More prayer fodder.
Everything we have is a gift from God – a gift not to be seized but to be invested, nurtured, grown, and returned, at least in part. And always ready to be shared.
What kind of tenant on this earth do you want to be? What kind of steward of God's love can you become?
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Many landlords can tell horror stories about bad tenants – people who never clean bathrooms, who damage walls in riotous parties, allow animals to roam the basement, or cart off appliances when they leave in the middle of the night, six months’ rent unpaid. But the tenants in Jesus’ parable about the leased vineyard? This is like renting your property to a drug cartel.
What does the landlord desire in letting out his vineyard? He wants it to be well tended, to bear good fruit, of which he is due a portion as income. These are the terms which allow the tenants to live on the beautiful land and produce good grapes and fine wine. But these tenants don’t honor their agreement, and they communicate their refusal violently. They want to seize the vineyard and own it outright.
Jesus was suggesting to the religious leaders hearing this that they, as stewards of Israel’s religious life, were like those tenants. They had not heeded the prophets. They perpetuated a highly remunerative system of temple sacrifice, and left ordinary people thinking they could never be right in the sight of God. They had set themselves as arbiters of right and wrong instead of seeing themselves as stewards of God’s power and mercy.
Yesterday I said it was human nature to ignore warnings. It is also human nature to appropriate what has been freely loaned to us. Religious communities in particular can fall prey to this danger, to focus their energy and resources on perpetuating their own life at the expense of fostering a living relationship with the God of surprises.
If we assess ourselves as tenants of God’s vineyard, how do we measure up? Compared to the larcenous, murderous lot in Jesus’ story, we’re golden. But let’s look at ourselves straight on. God has entrusted us with the care of the earth, of our families, our money and income, our gifts, our neighbors… how are we doing? Is there good fruit? Are we returning to God a portion of what we have received?
Take an inventory of all the areas of life in which God has entrusted you with resources or ministry. Name the fruit. For instance, if you think of your family, what good is discernible in and through the people with whom you share a home or a name? If the gift is your body, what good fruit do you see from how well you care for it? If the gift is your work, what fruit do you see? Let’s name the fruits, and also the stagnant, unfruitful things connected to those areas. More prayer fodder.
Everything we have is a gift from God – a gift not to be seized but to be invested, nurtured, grown, and returned, at least in part. And always ready to be shared.
What kind of tenant on this earth do you want to be? What kind of steward of God's love can you become?
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-28-26 - Kill the Messenger?
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Another week, another vineyard. In this week’s parable, Jesus continues the conversation he was having with the priests and Pharisees we looked at last week. After putting them in their place with the tale of the two sons, he says, “Listen to another parable.” This time, he borrows from Isaiah 5:1-7, starting his story almost the same way as the prophet did.
A landowner plants, fences and equips a vineyard, and then leases it to others to run. As rent they owe a portion of the harvest. At picking time, he sends collectors – but the tenants won’t pay: “But the tenants seized his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.” They do the same to the next delegation, so the owner decides to send his son to collect the rent, “…saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
Jesus is laying another trap for the religious leaders. In not-so-thinly-veiled language, he alludes to the reception which Israel’s leaders had traditionally given God’s prophets. Most often, when they didn’t like what the prophets had to say, they tried to silence or even kill them. And what were the prophets usually saying? “God doesn’t want your sacrifices and your legalistic rituals. God doesn’t want your lip-service about holiness while you cheat the orphan and the widow and dishonor God’s Sabbath. God wants your heart, your repentance, your compassion.” Or, as Isaiah says of the vineyard, “When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?”
It is human nature to turn away from messages that challenge us to change. As we observe unprecedented devastation from climate change we are reminded of the failure over the past sixty years to take seriously the risks to human, plant and animal life of a rapidly warming planet. On a smaller scale, think how hard it can be for an addict to take that first step in recovery, or for people to begin a weight-loss program. Often we wait until we see the effects of what we’ve been warned about – and then it can be too late. And sometimes, seeing the danger we’ve feared come to pass drives our heads further into the sands of denial and over-consumption.
Are there messages you have you been trying to ignore? Messages from God, from the Bible, from friends, from your own gut? Take some time in quiet today and ask that question of yourself and the Spirit, and see what emerges. “What am I pretending not to know?”
Are there issues on which you feel called to speak prophetically – messages that you believe God wants you to deliver? Are you offering them? How are they being received? Is there another way to communicate them?
This parable was a direct condemnation of Israel’s religious leaders in Jesus’ time. But its imagery resonates for us in many ways today, as citizens of the world and citizens of God’s realm. Isaiah tells us, "For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!"
God’s call to us to be people of justice and righteousness still sounds. May we not leave those cries unheard.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Another week, another vineyard. In this week’s parable, Jesus continues the conversation he was having with the priests and Pharisees we looked at last week. After putting them in their place with the tale of the two sons, he says, “Listen to another parable.” This time, he borrows from Isaiah 5:1-7, starting his story almost the same way as the prophet did.
A landowner plants, fences and equips a vineyard, and then leases it to others to run. As rent they owe a portion of the harvest. At picking time, he sends collectors – but the tenants won’t pay: “But the tenants seized his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.” They do the same to the next delegation, so the owner decides to send his son to collect the rent, “…saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
Jesus is laying another trap for the religious leaders. In not-so-thinly-veiled language, he alludes to the reception which Israel’s leaders had traditionally given God’s prophets. Most often, when they didn’t like what the prophets had to say, they tried to silence or even kill them. And what were the prophets usually saying? “God doesn’t want your sacrifices and your legalistic rituals. God doesn’t want your lip-service about holiness while you cheat the orphan and the widow and dishonor God’s Sabbath. God wants your heart, your repentance, your compassion.” Or, as Isaiah says of the vineyard, “When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?”
It is human nature to turn away from messages that challenge us to change. As we observe unprecedented devastation from climate change we are reminded of the failure over the past sixty years to take seriously the risks to human, plant and animal life of a rapidly warming planet. On a smaller scale, think how hard it can be for an addict to take that first step in recovery, or for people to begin a weight-loss program. Often we wait until we see the effects of what we’ve been warned about – and then it can be too late. And sometimes, seeing the danger we’ve feared come to pass drives our heads further into the sands of denial and over-consumption.
Are there messages you have you been trying to ignore? Messages from God, from the Bible, from friends, from your own gut? Take some time in quiet today and ask that question of yourself and the Spirit, and see what emerges. “What am I pretending not to know?”
Are there issues on which you feel called to speak prophetically – messages that you believe God wants you to deliver? Are you offering them? How are they being received? Is there another way to communicate them?
This parable was a direct condemnation of Israel’s religious leaders in Jesus’ time. But its imagery resonates for us in many ways today, as citizens of the world and citizens of God’s realm. Isaiah tells us, "For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!"
God’s call to us to be people of justice and righteousness still sounds. May we not leave those cries unheard.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-25-26 - Get In Line
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Nobody likes waiting in a line, especially not when people cut in ahead of you at the invitation of someone further up. So imagine how thrilled the Jewish religious leaders were to hear, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.”
This was how Jesus summed up the parable of the two sons. The tax collectors and prostitutes presumably represented that first son, who said he wouldn’t work for his father, but then changed his mind and did. Sinners who repent, Jesus suggested, are closer to God’s heart than do-gooding, self-righteous holy people who feel they have nothing to repent for. As he saw it, the scribes and Pharisees were more like that second son, who mouthed the right words but didn’t give his heart to the father’s vineyard.
The leaders saw their fidelity to keeping the Torah, the Law, as evidence that they were more righteous than anyone. But Jesus had a different angle – for him what mattered most was how they responded to the revelation he brought, which he said was in line with what John the Baptist taught, and what the prophets for centuries before him had foretold. “For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.”
He knocked the religious leaders for their refusal to recognize that God offered righteousness through his Son, a redemption of the heart much deeper and longer-lasting than mere law-keeping could ever bring. They thought they’d be first in line by virtue of how well they stood in line! Jesus suggested that God was more interested in those who genuinely recognize their faults and need for God’s mercy.
Our culture is filled with people who have not been raised with church or a knowledge of Jesus or God’s transforming love. In our age, churches are often seen as smug, rigid, prejudiced, oppressive, not to mention dull and irrelevant.
Yet the Church, flawed as it can be, is God's primary tool for mission. We need to help turn our churches inside out, making them incubators for new life, spiritual growth, transformation and healing. We need to make it easy for people with no church background whatsoever to find meaning and life in our midst. That means rethinking the way we worship, give, govern, preach – everything. What might you do differently at church to make it more comfortable for the non-churched to encounter God's love?
I’ve always been amazed at the Iftars I attended during Ramadan. (Iftar is the meal at each day's end in that season of fasting.) Though most of the Muslims present had had no food or water since daybreak, and had provided most of the food, the leader always tells his congregants to go last in the food line, to let us non-fasters fill our plates first. This is the kind of grace to which we are called.
As far as we know, everyone who wants to be a part of God’s worldwide, time-and-space-encompassing community of love, is welcome. We’ll know we’re steeped in God's love when, no matter how long we’ve been in line, no matter how hungry we are, we’re delighted to let someone get to that feast ahead of us. There will be plenty, and to spare.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Nobody likes waiting in a line, especially not when people cut in ahead of you at the invitation of someone further up. So imagine how thrilled the Jewish religious leaders were to hear, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.”
This was how Jesus summed up the parable of the two sons. The tax collectors and prostitutes presumably represented that first son, who said he wouldn’t work for his father, but then changed his mind and did. Sinners who repent, Jesus suggested, are closer to God’s heart than do-gooding, self-righteous holy people who feel they have nothing to repent for. As he saw it, the scribes and Pharisees were more like that second son, who mouthed the right words but didn’t give his heart to the father’s vineyard.
The leaders saw their fidelity to keeping the Torah, the Law, as evidence that they were more righteous than anyone. But Jesus had a different angle – for him what mattered most was how they responded to the revelation he brought, which he said was in line with what John the Baptist taught, and what the prophets for centuries before him had foretold. “For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.”
He knocked the religious leaders for their refusal to recognize that God offered righteousness through his Son, a redemption of the heart much deeper and longer-lasting than mere law-keeping could ever bring. They thought they’d be first in line by virtue of how well they stood in line! Jesus suggested that God was more interested in those who genuinely recognize their faults and need for God’s mercy.
Our culture is filled with people who have not been raised with church or a knowledge of Jesus or God’s transforming love. In our age, churches are often seen as smug, rigid, prejudiced, oppressive, not to mention dull and irrelevant.
Yet the Church, flawed as it can be, is God's primary tool for mission. We need to help turn our churches inside out, making them incubators for new life, spiritual growth, transformation and healing. We need to make it easy for people with no church background whatsoever to find meaning and life in our midst. That means rethinking the way we worship, give, govern, preach – everything. What might you do differently at church to make it more comfortable for the non-churched to encounter God's love?
I’ve always been amazed at the Iftars I attended during Ramadan. (Iftar is the meal at each day's end in that season of fasting.) Though most of the Muslims present had had no food or water since daybreak, and had provided most of the food, the leader always tells his congregants to go last in the food line, to let us non-fasters fill our plates first. This is the kind of grace to which we are called.
As far as we know, everyone who wants to be a part of God’s worldwide, time-and-space-encompassing community of love, is welcome. We’ll know we’re steeped in God's love when, no matter how long we’ve been in line, no matter how hungry we are, we’re delighted to let someone get to that feast ahead of us. There will be plenty, and to spare.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-24-26 - Religious, Not Spiritual
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Jesus often told simple stories to make complex points. The parable we explore this week, about a man and his two sons, is no exception. This one is bare bones. We're told who’s involved and what happened. No characterization, dialogue, insights into motivation; just the facts, ma’am.
They’re easy to tell: a man has two sons. He asks each one to go work in his vineyard. One says, “No way,” but then he goes and does it. The other says, “Sure, Dad,” and doesn’t go. Jesus asks, “Which did his father’s will?” The religious leaders answer, “The first.” Easy A. Seeing the work get done matters more than the intentions of the would-be workers. Isn’t that obvious?
Snap! They walked right into Jesus’ second trap. For they operated as the second son did; they built their reputations and their power base on being the “right people,” and on judging who else was a “right person.” For them, the “who” mattered much more than the “work.” The scruffy, the poor, the sick, the lame, the divorced, the sinful need not apply. These guardians of Israel’s purity kept temple life shut against the unrighteous.
But they couldn’t keep Jesus out – his ideas flowed under the doors and through the walls, empowering all those spiritual “have-nots” to repent and be healed, to call God himself their “Abba.” And these, Jesus goes on to say, will enter the Kingdom ahead of the professionally holy who know how to say the right thing but not do it. Even tax collectors and prostitutes, he says. Look out!
In real life, people are not so easily reduced to one kind or another. We’re both of those sons, ready to commit at one moment, distracted and derailed the next. Some people's detours away from God’s vineyard are decades long, through other religious explorations, deep into consumerism, to the worship of other goods and gods – or simply into dells of doubt or despair.
Others of us hew closely to the way of Jesus and his church – and find our enthusiasm siphoned off to managing buildings and accounts, worrying over empty pews, and lining up cooks for the next church supper. Is one more “right” than another? Many of us mourn the lack of interest in church and faith in our culture, shaking our heads about those who consider themselves “spiritual, but not religious.” But many of our churches contain folks who are religious but not spiritual – that saps our vitality.
Is there room in the Life of God for both types – and for us, when we are both types? For these two sons are really two parts of one person, two ends of a continuum. Some of us are closer to one end than another; some hug the middle. If you’re more an over-promiser or an over-deliverer, are you able to love those on the other end of the spectrum? Might you bring to mind someone who irritates you because they don’t come through, and someone else who refuses to commit, but gets it done anyway… and pray for each to be fully blessed? Even if that person is you?
Jesus leaned toward the under-achievers in his parables – maybe because the over-achievers didn’t need as much encouragement, or because he knew how easy it is for the righteous to judge others. He needed to remind them that God loves whom God chooses. Jesus doesn't suggest that the father in the story loves one son more than the other – one just helps him out more. That’s the one I want to be.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Jesus often told simple stories to make complex points. The parable we explore this week, about a man and his two sons, is no exception. This one is bare bones. We're told who’s involved and what happened. No characterization, dialogue, insights into motivation; just the facts, ma’am.
They’re easy to tell: a man has two sons. He asks each one to go work in his vineyard. One says, “No way,” but then he goes and does it. The other says, “Sure, Dad,” and doesn’t go. Jesus asks, “Which did his father’s will?” The religious leaders answer, “The first.” Easy A. Seeing the work get done matters more than the intentions of the would-be workers. Isn’t that obvious?
Snap! They walked right into Jesus’ second trap. For they operated as the second son did; they built their reputations and their power base on being the “right people,” and on judging who else was a “right person.” For them, the “who” mattered much more than the “work.” The scruffy, the poor, the sick, the lame, the divorced, the sinful need not apply. These guardians of Israel’s purity kept temple life shut against the unrighteous.
But they couldn’t keep Jesus out – his ideas flowed under the doors and through the walls, empowering all those spiritual “have-nots” to repent and be healed, to call God himself their “Abba.” And these, Jesus goes on to say, will enter the Kingdom ahead of the professionally holy who know how to say the right thing but not do it. Even tax collectors and prostitutes, he says. Look out!
In real life, people are not so easily reduced to one kind or another. We’re both of those sons, ready to commit at one moment, distracted and derailed the next. Some people's detours away from God’s vineyard are decades long, through other religious explorations, deep into consumerism, to the worship of other goods and gods – or simply into dells of doubt or despair.
Others of us hew closely to the way of Jesus and his church – and find our enthusiasm siphoned off to managing buildings and accounts, worrying over empty pews, and lining up cooks for the next church supper. Is one more “right” than another? Many of us mourn the lack of interest in church and faith in our culture, shaking our heads about those who consider themselves “spiritual, but not religious.” But many of our churches contain folks who are religious but not spiritual – that saps our vitality.
Is there room in the Life of God for both types – and for us, when we are both types? For these two sons are really two parts of one person, two ends of a continuum. Some of us are closer to one end than another; some hug the middle. If you’re more an over-promiser or an over-deliverer, are you able to love those on the other end of the spectrum? Might you bring to mind someone who irritates you because they don’t come through, and someone else who refuses to commit, but gets it done anyway… and pray for each to be fully blessed? Even if that person is you?
Jesus leaned toward the under-achievers in his parables – maybe because the over-achievers didn’t need as much encouragement, or because he knew how easy it is for the righteous to judge others. He needed to remind them that God loves whom God chooses. Jesus doesn't suggest that the father in the story loves one son more than the other – one just helps him out more. That’s the one I want to be.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-23-26 - Promises, Promises
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
The men interrogating Jesus about the source of his authority – “Who you working for?” – were good and righteous religious leaders. They were sure, as are most righteous folks, that they knew what God did and did not approve of, and were not keen on the way Jesus represented the Almighty. So they questioned him, thinking they could entrap him into saying something blasphemous.
But Jesus is two steps ahead of them. In response to their question, Jesus asks them one they cannot answer without getting in trouble with the people: “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” The people revered John, and as the leaders relied on the crowd's approval, they are unable to answer one way or the other. Check and mate.
Jesus does not give a straight answer to their question, but he does respond in his sly, elliptical way – with a parable. This one is about a man and his two sons – no, not the one about the Prodigal Son; this is shorter and far less complex: “What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?”
Before we look at how the Pharisees and Jesus interpret this little story, let’s explore it for ourselves. Many of us have teenaged children or have been teenaged children. It is easy to imagine either scenario – the one who, when asked to unload the dishwasher, refuses… and then, when no one is looking, cleans up the whole kitchen. And another, who, when asked to mow the lawn, says, “Sure, sure,” and never looks up from his video game till evening.
But why am I picking on teenagers? A social media meme reads, “Ladies, if a man says he’s going to fix it, he will. You don’t have to remind him every six months.” Promising more than we deliver and delivering more than we promise are pretty basic human behaviors. Is one more godly? Is one more fruitful than another?
Which of these two sons do you relate to? Put another way, which better describes you in your faith journey? Were you raised a Christian and have been half-hearted in your practice? Or did you come to it as a convert, now eager to participate in a life you’d either spurned or not known about before?
And how do we react toward people who fit either of these categories? A favorite charge leveled at churches is that they are full of hypocrites. Have we said or heard that? My answer to that is, “There’s always room for one more...”
None of us gets it quite right, and none of us gets it all wrong. Thanks be to God, we are all sons and daughters of a God who judges with mercy and corrects with love. When we fully integrate that truth, we usually want to get out to that vineyard and get to work.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
The men interrogating Jesus about the source of his authority – “Who you working for?” – were good and righteous religious leaders. They were sure, as are most righteous folks, that they knew what God did and did not approve of, and were not keen on the way Jesus represented the Almighty. So they questioned him, thinking they could entrap him into saying something blasphemous.
But Jesus is two steps ahead of them. In response to their question, Jesus asks them one they cannot answer without getting in trouble with the people: “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” The people revered John, and as the leaders relied on the crowd's approval, they are unable to answer one way or the other. Check and mate.
Jesus does not give a straight answer to their question, but he does respond in his sly, elliptical way – with a parable. This one is about a man and his two sons – no, not the one about the Prodigal Son; this is shorter and far less complex: “What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir’; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?”
Before we look at how the Pharisees and Jesus interpret this little story, let’s explore it for ourselves. Many of us have teenaged children or have been teenaged children. It is easy to imagine either scenario – the one who, when asked to unload the dishwasher, refuses… and then, when no one is looking, cleans up the whole kitchen. And another, who, when asked to mow the lawn, says, “Sure, sure,” and never looks up from his video game till evening.
But why am I picking on teenagers? A social media meme reads, “Ladies, if a man says he’s going to fix it, he will. You don’t have to remind him every six months.” Promising more than we deliver and delivering more than we promise are pretty basic human behaviors. Is one more godly? Is one more fruitful than another?
Which of these two sons do you relate to? Put another way, which better describes you in your faith journey? Were you raised a Christian and have been half-hearted in your practice? Or did you come to it as a convert, now eager to participate in a life you’d either spurned or not known about before?
And how do we react toward people who fit either of these categories? A favorite charge leveled at churches is that they are full of hypocrites. Have we said or heard that? My answer to that is, “There’s always room for one more...”
None of us gets it quite right, and none of us gets it all wrong. Thanks be to God, we are all sons and daughters of a God who judges with mercy and corrects with love. When we fully integrate that truth, we usually want to get out to that vineyard and get to work.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-22-26 - Who's In Your Wallet?
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
In yesterday’s reflection I wandered into one aspect of the word “authority,” the “Who’s in charge?” sense. But the temple leaders interrogating Jesus in our Gospel passage meant more, “Who’s backing you? Who is ultimately responsible for what you’re saying and doing?”
We all carry paper and plastic and electronics around with us, which we use to buy things. These derive their value from what backs them up. Currency is only “worth the paper it’s printed on” because a national treasury has issued it. A letter of introduction to someone who might give you a job has value because of the person who signed it.
Jesus’ teaching and miracles had value because they were evidence of the power of the God who backed him. Those who believed that he represented the Living God were fine with that. Those who thought they knew God better had their doubts. Hence their question, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”
It’s a good question for us as we seek to offer love, peace, healing and justice in God’s name. We know our world is full of people doing all kinds of things, often things we abhor, in the name of God as they understand God. How do we justify our ministries in the name of a force no one can see or prove?
Well, the first answer is – we can’t. Not fully. Not to someone who is sure there is no God, no creator who interacts with his or her creation. And we don’t have to try to “prove God.” We are only to bear witness to what we see and know, and to help generate evidence for others to respond to – and then be around when their questions burble up.
Beyond that, we should speak and act in the name of God often – that’s what it means to bear witness to the Jesus we know. So when we serve a meal at a shelter or spend time with a sad friend because we feel called by God to do so, let’s say so. When we hear of a situation over which we are powerless, let’s offer to pray, and say it’s because we believe God’s power is at work in the world.
How do we evaluate actions that are justified as reflecting God’s authority? Christians have been given criteria: Do we see evidence of the Holy Spirit? Do we see good fruit? That’s a mark of the Spirit. Is there more peace? That’s a mark of the Spirit. A religious organization that sends out hate-filled communications is not moving in the Spirit and authority of God. What spiritual fruit is being borne?
Another criterion: Is a given action consistent with the revelation we received from Jesus, or in Scripture? This last is a pretty wide field – our scriptures contain all kinds of things that don't look to me like fruit of the Spirit. So I’d lean toward the Jesus side of that equation – is it consistent with what he did and taught? If you’re unsure, ask a brother or sister in community to help you discern.
By whose authority do we do the things we do? If it’s by the authority of God in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, let people know it. We have been given access to an incredible inheritance already, here and now – immense spiritual power. God didn’t mean for that to stay in a bank vault. We carry the cards, the cash, the PINs to spread that spiritual wealth around, backed by our all-powerful, all merciful, omnipotent God. Let’s use it. Who’s in your wallet?
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
In yesterday’s reflection I wandered into one aspect of the word “authority,” the “Who’s in charge?” sense. But the temple leaders interrogating Jesus in our Gospel passage meant more, “Who’s backing you? Who is ultimately responsible for what you’re saying and doing?”
We all carry paper and plastic and electronics around with us, which we use to buy things. These derive their value from what backs them up. Currency is only “worth the paper it’s printed on” because a national treasury has issued it. A letter of introduction to someone who might give you a job has value because of the person who signed it.
Jesus’ teaching and miracles had value because they were evidence of the power of the God who backed him. Those who believed that he represented the Living God were fine with that. Those who thought they knew God better had their doubts. Hence their question, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”
It’s a good question for us as we seek to offer love, peace, healing and justice in God’s name. We know our world is full of people doing all kinds of things, often things we abhor, in the name of God as they understand God. How do we justify our ministries in the name of a force no one can see or prove?
Well, the first answer is – we can’t. Not fully. Not to someone who is sure there is no God, no creator who interacts with his or her creation. And we don’t have to try to “prove God.” We are only to bear witness to what we see and know, and to help generate evidence for others to respond to – and then be around when their questions burble up.
Beyond that, we should speak and act in the name of God often – that’s what it means to bear witness to the Jesus we know. So when we serve a meal at a shelter or spend time with a sad friend because we feel called by God to do so, let’s say so. When we hear of a situation over which we are powerless, let’s offer to pray, and say it’s because we believe God’s power is at work in the world.
How do we evaluate actions that are justified as reflecting God’s authority? Christians have been given criteria: Do we see evidence of the Holy Spirit? Do we see good fruit? That’s a mark of the Spirit. Is there more peace? That’s a mark of the Spirit. A religious organization that sends out hate-filled communications is not moving in the Spirit and authority of God. What spiritual fruit is being borne?
Another criterion: Is a given action consistent with the revelation we received from Jesus, or in Scripture? This last is a pretty wide field – our scriptures contain all kinds of things that don't look to me like fruit of the Spirit. So I’d lean toward the Jesus side of that equation – is it consistent with what he did and taught? If you’re unsure, ask a brother or sister in community to help you discern.
By whose authority do we do the things we do? If it’s by the authority of God in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, let people know it. We have been given access to an incredible inheritance already, here and now – immense spiritual power. God didn’t mean for that to stay in a bank vault. We carry the cards, the cash, the PINs to spread that spiritual wealth around, backed by our all-powerful, all merciful, omnipotent God. Let’s use it. Who’s in your wallet?
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-21-26 - Authority
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Last week we explored a subversive story Jesus told about laborers, in which those hired late got paid the same as those who worked all day. After telling this tale, Jesus heals two blind men. This is all a bit much for the religious leaders whom he was always skewering; they had to confront him. “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” they ask him.
Authority. We order our lives by it. Sometimes we expend considerable energy flouting it. Often, the less of it we have, the more we want to wield it over others – witness some mall cops or bureaucrats.
The religious leaders of Jesus’ day held authority by virtue of their positions in the temple, or were given it for their reputation as teachers. But their authority was limited. The occupying Romans allowed a nominal Jewish king and religious structure to exercise power, but only under their close and watchful eye. Any affront to the temple council’s oversight of Jewish life threatened to undermine the whole system. That is one reason they were so antagonistic toward Jesus and his followers. Their question really was: “Who said you could come in here to our temple, teach and preach and flout our Sabbath laws and heal people right and left? Who do you think you are?”
Jesus doesn’t answer them directly in this instance, but his answer usually came down to one thing: "My authority was given me by God." Which is fine, if you believe Jesus is intimately connected to God. It is not so fine if you believe he’s a deluded fool, at best, and a master manipulator at worst. What Jesus cited as evidence for his claim was his miracles. (John 10:36-38) But they had trouble seeing his authority because of the packaging – Jesus was an itinerant preacher and healer, not an official clergyperson.
And this was God’s big idea – to send his Son, in whom God was fully realized, into this world as a mere human person, so we could come to know God. The passage from Philippians this Sunday expresses this in the words of an ancient hymn. “And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” Jesus’s authority was not visible until he’d completely given himself away.
Does God have authority in your life? Though I do believe Jesus is in some way my friend, I do not imagine myself on equal footing with God. The whole revelation Jesus unfolded, which we have tried to grasp ever since, assumes that we honor God’s authority over us, over life itself. How does that sit with you? Is it a relief or a burden not to be God's equal?
In our current age, nothing is considered true just because the church says so, even for church-goers. But Christ-followers are not called to promote a set of ideas – we are invited to make known a risen Jesus who said he was Truth, Truth made personal, Truth made knowable. As we keep getting to know him and making him known, we will find just how free we can be under his authority.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Last week we explored a subversive story Jesus told about laborers, in which those hired late got paid the same as those who worked all day. After telling this tale, Jesus heals two blind men. This is all a bit much for the religious leaders whom he was always skewering; they had to confront him. “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” they ask him.
Authority. We order our lives by it. Sometimes we expend considerable energy flouting it. Often, the less of it we have, the more we want to wield it over others – witness some mall cops or bureaucrats.
The religious leaders of Jesus’ day held authority by virtue of their positions in the temple, or were given it for their reputation as teachers. But their authority was limited. The occupying Romans allowed a nominal Jewish king and religious structure to exercise power, but only under their close and watchful eye. Any affront to the temple council’s oversight of Jewish life threatened to undermine the whole system. That is one reason they were so antagonistic toward Jesus and his followers. Their question really was: “Who said you could come in here to our temple, teach and preach and flout our Sabbath laws and heal people right and left? Who do you think you are?”
Jesus doesn’t answer them directly in this instance, but his answer usually came down to one thing: "My authority was given me by God." Which is fine, if you believe Jesus is intimately connected to God. It is not so fine if you believe he’s a deluded fool, at best, and a master manipulator at worst. What Jesus cited as evidence for his claim was his miracles. (John 10:36-38) But they had trouble seeing his authority because of the packaging – Jesus was an itinerant preacher and healer, not an official clergyperson.
And this was God’s big idea – to send his Son, in whom God was fully realized, into this world as a mere human person, so we could come to know God. The passage from Philippians this Sunday expresses this in the words of an ancient hymn. “And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” Jesus’s authority was not visible until he’d completely given himself away.
Does God have authority in your life? Though I do believe Jesus is in some way my friend, I do not imagine myself on equal footing with God. The whole revelation Jesus unfolded, which we have tried to grasp ever since, assumes that we honor God’s authority over us, over life itself. How does that sit with you? Is it a relief or a burden not to be God's equal?
In our current age, nothing is considered true just because the church says so, even for church-goers. But Christ-followers are not called to promote a set of ideas – we are invited to make known a risen Jesus who said he was Truth, Truth made personal, Truth made knowable. As we keep getting to know him and making him known, we will find just how free we can be under his authority.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-18-26 - The Owner
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
This week we’ve been hearing how the different characters in Jesus’ story might have experienced the event. I thought we’d hear from the Landowner last – and I’m pretty sure the Landowner in this story is God. Parables are open to multiple interpretations, but it’s hard for me to conceive of this character as representing anyone but the Almighty. After all, it is God’s Kingdom that Jesus is trying to convey in his parables, a realm that cannot be depicted or even described except through story and symbol.
Does God come out to the marketplaces of this world and call those who are willing to work in his vineyard? Does God keep at it, knowing there’s more than enough work for everyone? Does God go after even those whom no one else has wanted to hire, or those who got there late? Does God compensate everyone at the same rate, knowing there is no “more” or “less” when you dwell in abundance?
If this is who God is, we’re in good shape. We can be frustrated, not fully comprehending the ways of God, but we are also in line for more blessings than we can fathom. Above all, this story Jesus told is about blessing, blessing beyond what makes sense, blessing that doesn’t quit.
Around the year 400, St. John Chrysostom wrote a beautiful Easter Vigil sermon, drawing on this parable to convey that, no matter what kind of Lenten fast people have kept, no matter what sin, they are welcome at God’s table. I’d like to give him the last word this week, in an excerpt:
If any have toiled from the first hour, let them receive their due reward;
If any have come after the third hour, let him with gratitude join in the Feast!
And he that arrived after the sixth hour, let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss.
And if any delayed until the ninth hour, let him not hesitate; but let him come too.
And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour, let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.
For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.
He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, as well as to him that toiled from the first.
To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows.
He accepts the works as He greets the endeavor.
The deed He honors and the intention He commends.
Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!
First and last alike receive your reward;
rich and poor, rejoice together!
Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!
You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,
rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!
I pray you feast richly this weekend – it’s always Easter around God’s house, and the table is always richly laden.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
This week we’ve been hearing how the different characters in Jesus’ story might have experienced the event. I thought we’d hear from the Landowner last – and I’m pretty sure the Landowner in this story is God. Parables are open to multiple interpretations, but it’s hard for me to conceive of this character as representing anyone but the Almighty. After all, it is God’s Kingdom that Jesus is trying to convey in his parables, a realm that cannot be depicted or even described except through story and symbol.
Does God come out to the marketplaces of this world and call those who are willing to work in his vineyard? Does God keep at it, knowing there’s more than enough work for everyone? Does God go after even those whom no one else has wanted to hire, or those who got there late? Does God compensate everyone at the same rate, knowing there is no “more” or “less” when you dwell in abundance?
If this is who God is, we’re in good shape. We can be frustrated, not fully comprehending the ways of God, but we are also in line for more blessings than we can fathom. Above all, this story Jesus told is about blessing, blessing beyond what makes sense, blessing that doesn’t quit.
Around the year 400, St. John Chrysostom wrote a beautiful Easter Vigil sermon, drawing on this parable to convey that, no matter what kind of Lenten fast people have kept, no matter what sin, they are welcome at God’s table. I’d like to give him the last word this week, in an excerpt:
If any have toiled from the first hour, let them receive their due reward;
If any have come after the third hour, let him with gratitude join in the Feast!
And he that arrived after the sixth hour, let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss.
And if any delayed until the ninth hour, let him not hesitate; but let him come too.
And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour, let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.
For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.
He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, as well as to him that toiled from the first.
To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows.
He accepts the works as He greets the endeavor.
The deed He honors and the intention He commends.
Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!
First and last alike receive your reward;
rich and poor, rejoice together!
Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!
You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,
rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!
I pray you feast richly this weekend – it’s always Easter around God’s house, and the table is always richly laden.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-17-26 - The Idle Poor?
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
Today we’ll let one of those “one-hour workers” in Jesus’ story tell his tale:
I hope you don’t think I’m lazy. I tried all day to get work, but whenever someone came in hiring, other guys got to him first. I’m not as fast as some, but I’m not lazy. It’s hard to stand there all day hoping for a job. I’d rather be working.
Not sure why I was still there at 5 in the afternoon – certainly didn’t expect a job then. But this manager guy came along hiring for the big vineyard. “Why you standing around here doing nothing all day?” he asked us. “No one has hired us,” we said. Hey, it’s not like we're just guzzling beer. He said they could still use some help to meet the day’s quotas, so come on. I figured a few bucks is better than none.
Felt a little bad getting out there with these guys who’d worked all day, so we threw ourselves into it. Barely broke a sweat, though, before they called quitting time. The manager tells us to line up first – that seemed odd, but we did it. Figured we’d get our hour’s pay, and move on. But that’s not what happened. We each got a full day’s pay. Couldn’t believe it.
I don’t know why this owner wanted to treat us like that – half the time these guys are cheating you out of what they actually owe you, looking to take as much as they can from you. But this guy? He treated us like we’d worked a full day, even coming in at the 11th hour like that. I don't think I've ever been treated so well. It actually made me want to get there earlier tomorrow, so I can work a full day.
In telling this story, Jesus gives no reason for why these last workers were hired so late in the day. He doesn’t suggest there was anything wrong with them. In the world of the parable, they stand in for the outsiders, maybe Gentiles or Samaritans; maybe the poor or the physically impaired, ritually “blemished”; or people too busy getting by in life to pay much attention to their spiritual lives. They represent the sort that the religious leaders disdained. And these, Jesus suggests, will not only receive the same reward as the “righteous" – they will be first in the kingdom.
Who do you relate to most in this story? The all-day workers? The manager? The one-hour folks? The boss? When have you been rewarded for what felt like insufficient effort on your part? How did it make you feel?
Do you ever extend that kind of generosity to another? Maybe praise someone who needs the affirmation? Help someone accomplish something? Continue to offer friendship when you are giving more than you receive back? It only works if we ask God to give that grace through us. If it’s us “being nice,” it can become manipulative. If we step out of the way, allow God to love through us, we get as filled as the other person.
Let’s pray today that God send someone our way who needs the gift of grace we can offer – of love and affirmation, of acceptance based on their identity as a child of God, not their resume or to-do list.
And if we’re the one in need, let’s pray we meet someone who treats us that way. Let grace abound!
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
Today we’ll let one of those “one-hour workers” in Jesus’ story tell his tale:
I hope you don’t think I’m lazy. I tried all day to get work, but whenever someone came in hiring, other guys got to him first. I’m not as fast as some, but I’m not lazy. It’s hard to stand there all day hoping for a job. I’d rather be working.
Not sure why I was still there at 5 in the afternoon – certainly didn’t expect a job then. But this manager guy came along hiring for the big vineyard. “Why you standing around here doing nothing all day?” he asked us. “No one has hired us,” we said. Hey, it’s not like we're just guzzling beer. He said they could still use some help to meet the day’s quotas, so come on. I figured a few bucks is better than none.
Felt a little bad getting out there with these guys who’d worked all day, so we threw ourselves into it. Barely broke a sweat, though, before they called quitting time. The manager tells us to line up first – that seemed odd, but we did it. Figured we’d get our hour’s pay, and move on. But that’s not what happened. We each got a full day’s pay. Couldn’t believe it.
I don’t know why this owner wanted to treat us like that – half the time these guys are cheating you out of what they actually owe you, looking to take as much as they can from you. But this guy? He treated us like we’d worked a full day, even coming in at the 11th hour like that. I don't think I've ever been treated so well. It actually made me want to get there earlier tomorrow, so I can work a full day.
In telling this story, Jesus gives no reason for why these last workers were hired so late in the day. He doesn’t suggest there was anything wrong with them. In the world of the parable, they stand in for the outsiders, maybe Gentiles or Samaritans; maybe the poor or the physically impaired, ritually “blemished”; or people too busy getting by in life to pay much attention to their spiritual lives. They represent the sort that the religious leaders disdained. And these, Jesus suggests, will not only receive the same reward as the “righteous" – they will be first in the kingdom.
Who do you relate to most in this story? The all-day workers? The manager? The one-hour folks? The boss? When have you been rewarded for what felt like insufficient effort on your part? How did it make you feel?
Do you ever extend that kind of generosity to another? Maybe praise someone who needs the affirmation? Help someone accomplish something? Continue to offer friendship when you are giving more than you receive back? It only works if we ask God to give that grace through us. If it’s us “being nice,” it can become manipulative. If we step out of the way, allow God to love through us, we get as filled as the other person.
Let’s pray today that God send someone our way who needs the gift of grace we can offer – of love and affirmation, of acceptance based on their identity as a child of God, not their resume or to-do list.
And if we’re the one in need, let’s pray we meet someone who treats us that way. Let grace abound!
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-16-26 - Not the Boss
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
As we move through this Sunday's parable, let’s hear how the vineyard manager might tell the story:
Let’s get this straight right off: It was not my decision to pay everyone the same. That was the way the boss wanted it, and I follow orders. To tell you the truth, I felt weird about it. I watched how hard those guys hired at dawn worked. The ones who came later worked hard too, but there’s a big difference between working twelve hours and one.
When the boss told me to give out the full daily pay for everybody, I was surprised. I thought maybe he’d add a bonus for the ones who picked all day. But no. It was like his generosity went toward the ones who got hired late. More for them than expected; the amount agreed-upon for everyone else. He even paid them first. Fair…and not quite fair. Depends on how you look at it. Depends on who you’re looking at.
I don’t blame the all-day folks for being mad. But here’s what they don’t know: they were already at the top of the pay scale. The boss was paying out everything he was making off that vineyard. The only way to pay those workers more was to pay others less.. and that’s not how he rolls. Not how he thinks. He’s quirky, the boss… hard to understand at times. But I’ll tell you this: he knows what he’s doing.
Who might the manager in Jesus’ story represent? Maybe he stands for all who consider ourselves servants of God, who participate in what God is doing, carry out God’s mercy and God’s justice, speak God’s peace; those who forgive and heal and love and tend. God’s ways don’t always make sense to us – we take a big leap of faith whenever we walk into the works God has prepared for us.
It can be hard to be God’s rep in the face of grief or crisis, to sit with someone who feels God is not blessing her as God blesses others. It is a challenge to proclaim God’s love to someone who insists they have never known it, cannot feel it. I have to resist the impulse to defend God when someone is disappointed or accusing, when something in the Bible or the church causes offense. Then I remember that God doesn’t need my defense. God only needs me to be true to what I believe God is telling or showing or leading.
And God needs us to be true to ourselves. We don’t leave ourselves at the door when we work with God – the Spirit of God works with and through us, through our will, intellect, emotions, history, moods, our circumstances on any given day. God doesn’t want robots – God wants us.
Are you willing to be God’s “managing agent” today? What vineyard have you been called to tend? Are there difficult “orders” to carry out? We don’t have to worry about doing it ourselves. We can simply pray, “Lord, if you want me to do this thing, or have that conversation, please work in me and through me.” And then pay attention to what happens.
I stand on the reminder I once received that God already loves me the most. There is nothing I can do or have to do to make God love me more, because God is already as delighted in me as can be. I could quit accomplishing and producing right now, and my God-salary would not decrease. I’m already at the top of a really generous pay scale. And so are you.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
As we move through this Sunday's parable, let’s hear how the vineyard manager might tell the story:
Let’s get this straight right off: It was not my decision to pay everyone the same. That was the way the boss wanted it, and I follow orders. To tell you the truth, I felt weird about it. I watched how hard those guys hired at dawn worked. The ones who came later worked hard too, but there’s a big difference between working twelve hours and one.
When the boss told me to give out the full daily pay for everybody, I was surprised. I thought maybe he’d add a bonus for the ones who picked all day. But no. It was like his generosity went toward the ones who got hired late. More for them than expected; the amount agreed-upon for everyone else. He even paid them first. Fair…and not quite fair. Depends on how you look at it. Depends on who you’re looking at.
I don’t blame the all-day folks for being mad. But here’s what they don’t know: they were already at the top of the pay scale. The boss was paying out everything he was making off that vineyard. The only way to pay those workers more was to pay others less.. and that’s not how he rolls. Not how he thinks. He’s quirky, the boss… hard to understand at times. But I’ll tell you this: he knows what he’s doing.
Who might the manager in Jesus’ story represent? Maybe he stands for all who consider ourselves servants of God, who participate in what God is doing, carry out God’s mercy and God’s justice, speak God’s peace; those who forgive and heal and love and tend. God’s ways don’t always make sense to us – we take a big leap of faith whenever we walk into the works God has prepared for us.
It can be hard to be God’s rep in the face of grief or crisis, to sit with someone who feels God is not blessing her as God blesses others. It is a challenge to proclaim God’s love to someone who insists they have never known it, cannot feel it. I have to resist the impulse to defend God when someone is disappointed or accusing, when something in the Bible or the church causes offense. Then I remember that God doesn’t need my defense. God only needs me to be true to what I believe God is telling or showing or leading.
And God needs us to be true to ourselves. We don’t leave ourselves at the door when we work with God – the Spirit of God works with and through us, through our will, intellect, emotions, history, moods, our circumstances on any given day. God doesn’t want robots – God wants us.
Are you willing to be God’s “managing agent” today? What vineyard have you been called to tend? Are there difficult “orders” to carry out? We don’t have to worry about doing it ourselves. We can simply pray, “Lord, if you want me to do this thing, or have that conversation, please work in me and through me.” And then pay attention to what happens.
I stand on the reminder I once received that God already loves me the most. There is nothing I can do or have to do to make God love me more, because God is already as delighted in me as can be. I could quit accomplishing and producing right now, and my God-salary would not decrease. I’m already at the top of a really generous pay scale. And so are you.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-15-26 - I Was Robbed!
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
One way to “hear” parables afresh is to look at them from different angles. Today, let’s see what one of those “all day” workers in Jesus’ story might have to say:
You think I’m wrong to be resentful? I was up and at the marketplace by 5 o’clock this morning, ready to work. This guy hired me and a bunch of others, told us we’d receive a good day’s pay. It was good pay, better than some. I didn’t mind working all day, knowing I was going to get paid well.
Every few hours, a few more joined us – Good, I thought, There’s plenty of work. I was a little surprised when a few more came in at nearly quitting time. Oh well, they’ll get paid for an hour. Enough for a beer. Why not? Even with the extra hands, though, it was a long day, and the sun was hot.
When the foreman finally called time, I was ready. But the boss said those who worked fewer hours should get in front of the line; us all-day guys to the back. Okay, I thought, maybe he doesn’t want them to know how much we’re getting. Then I saw they were getting the full day’s pay, even the one-hour folks. Wow, this guy is generous! I couldn’t wait to see what kind of bonus I was going to get.
But when I finally got up to the front of the line, and got my pay… it was exactly the same as everybody else. Exactly the same as we’d been promised at the start. Seemed okay at 5 o’clock this morning, but now, with the sun going down, knowing what everybody else got, I feel stiffed. You bet I do. I worked like a dog today, never looked up, never sat down. Why did I bother, if others get more for doing less?
A few of us spoke up, but the boss, he just said, “Can’t I do what I like with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’” I don’t want his stinking generosity – I want things fair. You work, you get paid. You work longer, you get paid more. Tell you this, it’s the last time I agree to a daily wage. You can just pay me hourly from now on. Then I'm in control.
This guy represents the religious rulers that Jesus was always tussling with, the ones who thought God’s rewards were only for those who kept the law like they did. They show up in a lot of Jesus’ parables – the older brother in the Prodigal Son story is another example. They want to control the terms. And Jesus keeps saying, “God controls the terms. And God can welcome whomever God wants.”
Do you know anyone like this? Have you ever been someone like this, resentful when someone else gets rewarded? How are you at asking for help? Do you prefer to give gifts or receive them? These are some of the ways we know how open we are to the generosity of God.
A prayer for today: Lord, open my spirit to receive your gifts. Open my heart to rejoice in the blessings given to the people around me, whether or not they’ve earned them. Open my eyes to see who wants to give me time or help today. Open my ears to those who want to share themselves with me. Open my hands to give and receive, in love and humility and gratitude. Amen.
There’s a lot to be said for getting paid hourly… but what Jesus offers is daily bread. Enough for the day. Take it.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
One way to “hear” parables afresh is to look at them from different angles. Today, let’s see what one of those “all day” workers in Jesus’ story might have to say:
You think I’m wrong to be resentful? I was up and at the marketplace by 5 o’clock this morning, ready to work. This guy hired me and a bunch of others, told us we’d receive a good day’s pay. It was good pay, better than some. I didn’t mind working all day, knowing I was going to get paid well.
Every few hours, a few more joined us – Good, I thought, There’s plenty of work. I was a little surprised when a few more came in at nearly quitting time. Oh well, they’ll get paid for an hour. Enough for a beer. Why not? Even with the extra hands, though, it was a long day, and the sun was hot.
When the foreman finally called time, I was ready. But the boss said those who worked fewer hours should get in front of the line; us all-day guys to the back. Okay, I thought, maybe he doesn’t want them to know how much we’re getting. Then I saw they were getting the full day’s pay, even the one-hour folks. Wow, this guy is generous! I couldn’t wait to see what kind of bonus I was going to get.
But when I finally got up to the front of the line, and got my pay… it was exactly the same as everybody else. Exactly the same as we’d been promised at the start. Seemed okay at 5 o’clock this morning, but now, with the sun going down, knowing what everybody else got, I feel stiffed. You bet I do. I worked like a dog today, never looked up, never sat down. Why did I bother, if others get more for doing less?
A few of us spoke up, but the boss, he just said, “Can’t I do what I like with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’” I don’t want his stinking generosity – I want things fair. You work, you get paid. You work longer, you get paid more. Tell you this, it’s the last time I agree to a daily wage. You can just pay me hourly from now on. Then I'm in control.
This guy represents the religious rulers that Jesus was always tussling with, the ones who thought God’s rewards were only for those who kept the law like they did. They show up in a lot of Jesus’ parables – the older brother in the Prodigal Son story is another example. They want to control the terms. And Jesus keeps saying, “God controls the terms. And God can welcome whomever God wants.”
Do you know anyone like this? Have you ever been someone like this, resentful when someone else gets rewarded? How are you at asking for help? Do you prefer to give gifts or receive them? These are some of the ways we know how open we are to the generosity of God.
A prayer for today: Lord, open my spirit to receive your gifts. Open my heart to rejoice in the blessings given to the people around me, whether or not they’ve earned them. Open my eyes to see who wants to give me time or help today. Open my ears to those who want to share themselves with me. Open my hands to give and receive, in love and humility and gratitude. Amen.
There’s a lot to be said for getting paid hourly… but what Jesus offers is daily bread. Enough for the day. Take it.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
9-14-26 - Unfair!
You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
This week we come to one of my favorite parables – Jesus’ story about workers in a vineyard. No blood or violence in this one, just grace beyond measure. And boy, does that make some people mad!
You can read the whole story for yourself – here’s the “nutshell” version: A landowner hires day laborers for his vineyard, agreeing to a standard wage. They’re happy, he’s happy. As the day progresses, he goes back out to the marketplace at intervals and hires more workers, even at 5 in the afternoon, when the workday is nearly done. At quitting time, he instructs his manager to pay everyone a full day’s wage. Everyone gets the same – what could be more fair than that? But the ones who worked the whole day feel they should get more than those who worked less time.
"And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’"
Now, maybe their workload grew lighter as more workers were added to the vineyard… but even so, they have a point. We almost always have a legitimate grievance when we compare ourselves to other people. But when we stand before God’s grace alone, we are confronted with the abundance of mercy extended to us.
Like many of Jesus’ parables, this one is aimed at those who believe they are “in” in God’s realm by virtue of their hard work and righteousness. If we all get the same reward no matter how hard we work, what’s the point of working hard?
Precisely! The Kingdom of Heaven is not for strivers – it is for what we become when we’ve finally reached the end of our striving and give up. Give in.
The currency of God's kingdom is grace, unmerited love, and forgiveness in abundance. Grace goes beyond contract. By its very nature it is “unfair.” We cannot earn it. It is totally up to God to give, to whomever God wants, no matter how much or how little we try to please God.
How does that sit with you? On our best days, we say, “Whew!” because we know we get a pass. On our worse days, we say, “Hey! How come that one got a break?” Are you having a “thank God for grace” day or a “I want them to get what’s comin’ to them” day? If you’re in the former position, amen! You are in in the Life of God. Spend some time today giving thanks for all the ways you see and pass along God's grace.
If the idea of mercy for another – especially a heinous monster – is troubling you, that’s fine too. We feel what we feel. With those feelings we can pray for those undeserving people. Pray that they might come within reach of God’s true blessing. That’s the only force I know of that can transform the blackest heart.
Some years ago, I-Tunes users received a free gift of a new U2 album appearing in their playlists, whether or not they wanted it. Many in fact resented it. But In honor of that gift, let’s end with an old song of theirs, “Grace,” especially these lyrics: What once was hurt / What once was friction /
What left a mark / No longer stings /
Because Grace makes beauty out of ugly things.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
This week we come to one of my favorite parables – Jesus’ story about workers in a vineyard. No blood or violence in this one, just grace beyond measure. And boy, does that make some people mad!
You can read the whole story for yourself – here’s the “nutshell” version: A landowner hires day laborers for his vineyard, agreeing to a standard wage. They’re happy, he’s happy. As the day progresses, he goes back out to the marketplace at intervals and hires more workers, even at 5 in the afternoon, when the workday is nearly done. At quitting time, he instructs his manager to pay everyone a full day’s wage. Everyone gets the same – what could be more fair than that? But the ones who worked the whole day feel they should get more than those who worked less time.
"And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’"
Now, maybe their workload grew lighter as more workers were added to the vineyard… but even so, they have a point. We almost always have a legitimate grievance when we compare ourselves to other people. But when we stand before God’s grace alone, we are confronted with the abundance of mercy extended to us.
Like many of Jesus’ parables, this one is aimed at those who believe they are “in” in God’s realm by virtue of their hard work and righteousness. If we all get the same reward no matter how hard we work, what’s the point of working hard?
Precisely! The Kingdom of Heaven is not for strivers – it is for what we become when we’ve finally reached the end of our striving and give up. Give in.
The currency of God's kingdom is grace, unmerited love, and forgiveness in abundance. Grace goes beyond contract. By its very nature it is “unfair.” We cannot earn it. It is totally up to God to give, to whomever God wants, no matter how much or how little we try to please God.
How does that sit with you? On our best days, we say, “Whew!” because we know we get a pass. On our worse days, we say, “Hey! How come that one got a break?” Are you having a “thank God for grace” day or a “I want them to get what’s comin’ to them” day? If you’re in the former position, amen! You are in in the Life of God. Spend some time today giving thanks for all the ways you see and pass along God's grace.
If the idea of mercy for another – especially a heinous monster – is troubling you, that’s fine too. We feel what we feel. With those feelings we can pray for those undeserving people. Pray that they might come within reach of God’s true blessing. That’s the only force I know of that can transform the blackest heart.
Some years ago, I-Tunes users received a free gift of a new U2 album appearing in their playlists, whether or not they wanted it. Many in fact resented it. But In honor of that gift, let’s end with an old song of theirs, “Grace,” especially these lyrics: What once was hurt / What once was friction /
What left a mark / No longer stings /
Because Grace makes beauty out of ugly things.
© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.
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