Wild Grapes, Pentecost 18, October 8, 2017

Eighteenth Sunday of Pentecost (Year A)

Sunday, October 8, 2017

A vineyard implies a long-term commitment to the land, to people and to generations to come. A vineyard can flourish only in times of peace, giving vines time to grow and fruit to ripen without disturbance. Here is the promise of aged wine, reflective thought, sustained projects, safety, seeing your grandchildren grow up. The wicked tenants do not value the land, or time, or peace. Blinded by short term greed over reverence, they cannot see the beauty of holiness at their own feet..

– Suzanne Guthrie, Edge of Enclosure

Theme: Wild Grapes

Reflection: Every so often, I get the wise idea that I should till the entire large space in the arbor in my backyard for a huge garden. I would grow rows of corn, beans, peppers, tomatoes, onions, as well as hills of squash and melons. I would harvest a huge crop – freeze and can and give the excess to friends and the food bank.

I envision what I remember from my childhood in Wisconsin. Rich black earth. Tender plants that soaked up the nutrients and plentiful water and produced an abundance of vegetables and fruit.

And quickly I wake up from my reverie and realize I live in Arizona. The clay soil requires breaking and supplementing. Our lack of rainfall means even a small raised bed requires considerable watering. And with my full-time job, tending and putting up a huge harvest is a sizeable commitment.

Being the gardener is hard work. Allowing others to tend what you have so carefully prepared might be rewarding; but unless they have your vision, prepare for a broken heart.

Today’s gospel could be God’s anguished garden story, told in a 60-second parable. God, the landowner, created this beautiful garden. And from the very start, the tenants, God’s people, rejected God’s attempts to bring in the harvest. They disobeyed God’s chosen leaders, killed the prophets, disrespected this beautiful vineyard. Again and again, God attempted to set things right, with the same results. Finally, the people reject God’s son and kill him.

But here’s where reality breaks from the parable. By all rights, God should have killed the tenants and started over, giving the kingdom “to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” But that’s not what happens to the people God loves so much. Instead, God opens the vineyard to even more tenants. Like the first tenants, most of them don’t produce the fruits of the kingdom. But God’s love and mercy set them right again. That’s how their story, and our story, goes.

Set right … not because God is just, but because God is merciful.

(You always are welcome to respond with your thoughts and reflections in the comments section at the bottom of this post.) 

Faith App:  Be patient, loving and generous with those who share your corner of the vineyard, even if they don’t seem to produce the fruits of the kingdom now. Remember God’s mercy with you and work to imitate it.

HYMN/SONG SUGGESTIONS

Restore in Us, O God, ELW 328

God the Sculptor of the Mountains, ELW 736

Christ Is Made the Sure Foundation, ELW 645

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, ELW 803

Be Thou My Vision, ELW 793

God of Grace and God of Glory, ELW 705

Lord, Dismiss Us with Your Blessing, ELW 545

Sent Forth By God’s Blessing, ELW 547

The Garden, Kari Jobe (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5gRgJhCue4)

I had all

But given up

Desperate for it

A sign from love

Something good

Something kind

Bringing peace to every corner of my mind

Then I saw the garden

Hope had come to me

To sweep away the ashes

And wake me from my sleep

I realized

You never left

And for this moment

You planned ahead

That I would see

Your faithfulness in all of the green

I can see the ivy

Growing through the wall

'Cause You will stop at nothing

To heal my broken soul

I can see the ivy

Reaching through the wall

'Cause You will stop at nothing

To heal my broken soul

Ohhh

Ohh, You're healing broken souls

Ohh, You're healing broken souls

Faith is rising up like ivy

Reaching for the light

Hope is stirring deep inside me

Making all things right

Love is lifting me from sorrow

Catching every tear

Dispelling every lie and torment

Crushing all my fears

You crush all my fears

You crush all my fears

With Your perfect love

Ohh-ohhh, with Your perfect love

Now I see redemption

Growing in the trees

The death and resurrection

In every single seed...

The Word Is Alive, Casting Crowns

Never Too Far Gone, Jordan Feliz

Remind Me Who I Am, Jason Gray

Stars in the Night, Tenth Avenue North

Through All of It, Colton Dixon

You Are, I Am, MercyMe

LESSONS

Isaiah 5:1-7 I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?

Psalm 80:7-15 God, have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand planted.

Philippians 3:4b-14 Whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.

Matthew 21:33-46 Jesus tells the parable of the wicked tenants of the vineyard. 

Summary:  We’ve gone rogue, turned into something God never expected. We have forgotten who we are, and whose we are and why we are here, and having done so, we’ve lost touch with “what could be.”

OPENING LITANY based on Psalm 80:7-15

L:   God, what you tended is out of control;

C:  Restore us as your pleasant plantings again.

L:  Moses and your people were the tiny snippets,

C:  Carried as tender vines through the desert.

L:  You prepared the soil so they would be rooted,

C:  And they covered the land, growing lush and full.

L:  The new growth shaded the hills and the valleys,

C:  It climbed the foothills and used the cedars as trellises,

L:  What compelled you to destroy the guarding wall,

C:  So the animals and nomads could ravage every branch?

L:  Turn to us, God, the vineyard you established;

C:  Restore us as your pleasant plantings again.

CONFESSION

L:  God, we confess we have a long way to go;

C:  We’ve been irresponsible as tenants go.

L:  We don’t share your vision of fruitful harvests;

C:  We can’t be trusted with your growing things.

L:  We’ve ravaged the land you’ve gently tilled,

C:  Devoured much more than we’ve restored,

L:  Put up walls and don’t share with our neighbors;

C:  As if the fruits of the kingdom were ours to own.

L:  We confess our desires are growing wild,

C:  Our selfish brambles we need to prune,

L:  Our soil stressed from too much bloodshed,

C:  A drought of justice and no rain of peace.

(Silent reflection)

L:  In our confession, we pray together,

C:  Most Merciful God … we confess we’ve been wicked tenants, disrespecting your beautiful vineyard. We know we haven’t upheld our responsibilities by gratefully sharing an abundant harvest of fruits of the kingdom. We’ve ignored you and locked you out of our lives. Come in now and bring new life into our ravaged places.

P:  Hear this Good News: Longing to be in relationship with us, God sent his son to the vineyard. As God brought Jesus to new life, God is patient and ready to restore new life in us with steadfast love and mercy. You are forgiven and given a fresh start, day after day. God looks forward to the abundant harvest ripening in you. In the name of…

C:  Amen

PRAYER OF THE DAY

L:  We pray together, 

C: Nurturing God … we pray for your guidance to grow a productive vineyard. Water this place with your word and shine on us with your grace, so that we can produce the fruits you expect. Remind us that all that we have, and all that we harvest is yours, so make us grateful and generous caretakers of your world – the communities and the people you love so much.  Amen.

COMMUNION BLESSING

L:  We pray together,

C:  We give you thanks, most gracious God, for the pleasant planting of justice in this bread, the sweet grapes of mercy in this cup, signs of your restoring love.  Send us into the world, filled with your vintage of compassion and love, ready to produce the fruits of your kingdom everywhere we go. Amen.

SENDING

L:  God’s beautiful vineyard is ours to tend,

C:  Planted with care, with everything we need,

L:  With harvests aplenty to feed God’s people,

C:  With people who share God’s vision of love.

L: Go now, bearing fruits of the Kingdom, to love and to serve the Lord.

C: Thanks be to God!

First Reading Isaiah 5:1-7 (NRSV)

Setting the Scene: For the first time, Isaiah refers to himself as “I,” and to God as “my beloved,” as he grows into the role of God’s prophet. In a few short verses, Isaiah says God has been more than patient with his chosen “vines.”

5 Let me sing for my beloved

    my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
    on a very fertile hill.
² He dug it and cleared it of stones,
    and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
    and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
    but it yielded wild grapes.

³ And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
    and people of Judah,
judge between me
    and my vineyard.
⁴ What more was there to do for my vineyard
    that I have not done in it?
When I expected it to yield grapes,
    why did it yield wild grapes?

⁵ 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.
⁶ I will make it a waste;
    it shall not be pruned or hoed,
    and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
    that they rain no rain upon it.

⁷ 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!

Second Reading Philippians 3:4b-14 (NRSV)

Setting the Scene: Paul, as Saul, was the consummate Jew, tracing his lineage from Benjamin, the youngest son of Jacob, as did King Saul. All of his history and bragging rights are insignificant now as a follower of Jesus, he says.

⁴ If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: ⁵ 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; ⁶ as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

⁷ Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. ⁸ 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 ⁹ 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. ¹⁰ I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

¹² Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. ¹³ 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, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Gospel Matthew 21:33-46 (NRSV)

Setting the Scene: Coming full circle from his time at age 12 when he sat in the temple with the teachers of the law, Jesus now teaches in the temple as the chief priests and elders look on. One wonders if he learned how to weave a parable from some of them two decades earlier.

³³ “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. ³⁴ When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. ³⁵ But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. ³⁶ Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. ³⁷ Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ ³⁸ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ ³⁹ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. ⁴⁰ Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” ⁴¹ 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.”

⁴² Jesus said to them, “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’?

⁴³ 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. ⁴⁴ The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”

⁴⁵ When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. ⁴⁶ They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.