God's Vineyard - Rev. Jonathan Warren

Our Lord invites us to share our burdens with him, saying, Come to me, all who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, and you will find rest for your souls.

Let us ask God to forgive us our sins saying together.

Loving God, through Jesus Christ you taught us, where your treasure is, there your heart will offer also.

Yet we continue to put our faith in earthly treasures, hoarding up possessions that moth and rust will destroy, clinging to power and privilege whenever we can.

Set us free from greed and fear.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our dolls.

Teach us to trust in you alone, through Jesus Christ, our true Redeemer.

Amen.

Let us silently confess our sins.

To prepare our hearts for Scripture, let us pray for illumination together.

Faithful God, how blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Sanctify us by your word and spirit, so that we may glorify you in the company of the faithful through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The scripture reading is from Philippians 3, 4b through 14.

Let us listen to the word of God.

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more.

Circumcised on the eighth day a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews, as to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as a loss because of Christ.

More than that I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.

If somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached this goal, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus had made me his own.

Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but this one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.

I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

This is the word of the Lord.

I'm gonna sit at the welcome table, one of these days, hallelujah.

I'm gonna sit at the welcome table.

One of these days, one of the feast on the bread of feast on the bread of beast, hallelujah, on a free standard, the well, my cut.

Well, that was a nice arrangement.

Thank you, choir.

I'm gonna eat at the welcome table.

You sang it so nicely.

It we have it in our hymnal.

Not this arrangement, um, but it's hymn number 770 if you want to look at some of the words.

It's it's welcoming, folks, and just and and being just and righteous and I think it goes well with our text.

Let's listen to the words from Isaiah chapter 5, beginning with the first verse.

Isaiah 5 · chapter mention

Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard.

My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.

He dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines.

He built a watchtower in the midst of it, and he hewed out a wine bat in it.

He expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.

And now inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah judge between me and my vineyard.

What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?

And I expected it to yield grapes.

Why did it yield wild grapes?

And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard.

I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured, I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down, I will make it a waste, it shall be pruned or hoed, it shall be overgrown with grears and thorns.

I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.

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.

This is the word of the Lord.

In my backyard, we have a pretty big rocky area in one of the corners, and right in the middle of it was this huge, giant tree.

It was like four trees in one with this massive giant trunk.

And then it died.

And when the tree was removed, it left a rocky area graveyard.

And over the years, parts of the rocks have been washed away, and it was this terrible eyesore, especially after the tree was gone.

So Siobhan and I had this idea of how to fix the landscaping.

And I I recently watched comedian Dudad's Every Couple doing a project video, which somehow he knew exactly what went into fixing our landscape.

The idea part, he says, is the first stage.

This was our plan.

We'd consolidate the rock into one smaller area around the shed, and Siobhan said, Who can we hire to move some rock?

But I'm thinking, I'm not gonna go hire someone to move rock from one area just to 10, 15, 30 feet over.

That's silly.

Luckily, I'm not alone in this thinking.

Just as Dude's dad's wife is ready to get bids for a summer yard project, he cuts her off saying, whoa, I don't need to get some bids.

I'll do it.

And dang we're on to the next stage.

Called He Overpromises.

And all of a sudden, this simple little landscaping project in the front yard turns into this epic yard masterpiece with a paper patio here and a fire pit, shrubs, aspen, aspen, aspen.

Perfect.

A couple of loads of mulch, a couple loads of rock, and he ends it all with saying, Bing bang boom, that's it.

And then his wife, who's almost funnier than do dad, says, Can you do all that?

And he's already set, he's ready, he's going.

He finally tells her, it'll be fun.

It'll be fun, alright.

And while I knew our yard project wouldn't be fun, I was thinking, I need the exercise.

So every day I'll just move a little rock, and by the end of a week or two, 450 square feet of rock, done.

Bing, bang, boom, that's it.

And bonus, I'll be in shape at the end of it.

So I get out a tarp and I start the furth from the furthest edge of the rock garden, and I'm gonna rake the rock onto the tarp, and then I'll drag it all the way to the shed.

So I do this a few times, and by the fifth or sixth time, my heart's racing.

I'm sweating, and I quickly discover I'm so not in shape.

I finish a decent sized area and I go inside to get a drink to cool down.

I come back out and discover it barely looks like I did anything.

Instead of sticking to my plan of doing a little bit every day, I hit pause, pull stop, and then about a month later, I get back to the rocky area.

But this time I decide instead of starting at the furthest away area, I pick a spot much closer.

So this time I go six or seven or eight times until my heart starts racing and I'm absolutely exhausted.

Now in Doodad's sketch, they called this stage Project Delays.

Which is exactly what I did.

I abandoned the rock for the whole summer, and by the end of the summer, giant weeds start growing, and there's piles of rock and two empty patches.

And it all looked way worse than if I had just left it alone.

Now let's get to the Bible story, which I love how Isaiah's passage begins.

Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard.

And the song tells us about a vineyard that was planted on a fertile hill.

It was dug and cleared of stones and planted with choice vines.

A watchtower was built in the middle, and he expected it to yield grapes.

Which is like how all yard projects start out as a great idea with amazing and lovely plans and hopes and dreams.

If only it could just be bing, bang, boom, that's it.

It would be awesome.

And we hope and anticipate it to yield these bountiful grapes, but somehow it doesn't go that way.

And this is when the vineyard love song takes a turn, much like most projects.

When the world starts crashing around us and our big aspirations are much more than we bargain for.

They start getting pushed to the side because it's hard to live in this world.

Reality sets in, and while we thought things could just go smoothly, they don't.

A world's full of corruption and enticements, and we get lazy or we get tired.

The world starts pulling us away little by little, and we hit the project delay stage.

By the end of the season, God's beautiful vineyard ends up producing nothing but wild grapes.

According to scholars, wild grapes are useless, except perhaps for scavenger birds.

They are sour, unsuitable for wine, and belong only on a scrap heap.

This is where God's love song takes a pretty dark turn.

And we just prefer to stop listening because God's quite aggravated.

It's not very pleasant.

God's just ready to scorch the whole thing.

Restart everything.

Which, according to Dudad's sketch, it's right on track.

Instead of an eyesore of a yard project, it's the end of the summer.

And their marriage is on the rocks, and now they have a death trap of a yard.

So after couples therapy, they get to the final stage called outsourcing.

And this contractor, who's actually doodad with a mustache and an accent, starts telling them how much everything's gonna cost.

A thousand here.

A thousand, a thousand, thousand, thousand.

In fact, doodad's summer project actually made things way worse.

And they have to fix everything he broke, making it cost even more.

At the very end, Dodad relents.

Just as long as it gets done this summer.

Oh no.

We're not gonna get to her this summer.

You're looking at two years from now.

We're all booked up.

It sounds like God's wrath is at full force in the scripture, but if God and Isaiah were working with doodad, the passage would seem a little bit funnier.

And we'd think this is exactly how vineyards work.

It's quite a clever metaphor because it describes it perfectly.

The watchtowers, the temple.

They had all the right pieces.

And all they had to do was share fruit.

By loving the least, by helping the widows, by giving generously to all.

They had everything they needed.

They let the wild world have its way, and it turned all that was good into being sour and useless.

And I wish it wasn't so, but this isn't just their story.

It's mine and yours.

It's our human story.

Yet luckily, God never stopped singing his love song.

And hundreds of years later, a new verse changes the entire tune.

And God sends his own son into the world.

And Jesus Christ sings.

And he shows his disciples and he shows us the way to produce and share good fruit.

And he not only tells us to give good food to the hungry, he not only tells us to love everyone, including our enemies, but he does it.

And Jesus shows us how to feed and to love and to serve one another.

And he not only tells us to forgive others, but he gives everything that he has.

Even his own life.

And he forgives us.

He adopts us and grafts us into God's kingdom.

In John 15, 5, Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the branches, those who abide in me, and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me, you can do nothing.

And today, as we celebrate World Communion Sunday, we have a chance to renew our commitment to God in our community.

Because as we eat this bread and as we drink from the vine, we can let all that corruption and greed and the wild world fade away and remember that Jesus adopts us and grafts us just as we are.

So that we can become part of the melody of God's vineyard love song.

For Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, and as branches we are blessed to follow Christ's way.

So as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we can go out into this wild world sharing Christ's fruit with everyone, sharing food with the hungry, helping the sick, helping a neighbor with their yard project.

Loving everyone.