Sermon for 8.15.10 - 12th Lord's Day After Pentecost
Intro Series:
- God’s gracious character: it’s who God is.
- What it means to be fruitful people of God.
Isaiah’s Parable:
- Last week we read from Isaiah 1, in which he introduced God’s case against the people of Judah and Jerusalem: they had turned away from God and turned away from being who they were called to be – those who seek righteousness and justice.
o In the space between chapter one and today’s reading in chapter five, Isaiah continues to proclaim God’s word of judgment against the people for their sinfulness.
o Those listening to Isaiah through these four chapters have heard a lot of bad news about the destruction of their homes and their lives.
o Isaiah must have known that it’s difficult for people to hear bad news upon bad news, so he begins in what seems to be a different tone. In chapter five, Isaiah begins a parable – a story told to convey truth.
- “Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard….”
o This is a traditional line familiar to Isaiah’s audience.
§ At the wine harvest, there’d be a “Song of the Vineyard” in which a woman, speaking of herself, would sing of her love for her beloved, the vineyard owner.
o Isaiah takes this familiar line to help show the people the relationship between God and the people of God.
§ “Let me tell you a story to show you what I mean…” so to speak...
- There once was a vineyard owner, my beloved.
o He did everything that an excellent vineyard owner could do to insure an excellent harvest.
§ Fertile hill
§ Cleared of stones and tilled
§ Choice vines – the best, from seeds or cuttings of great plants.
§ Watchtower in the center for protection and overseeing, as well a hedge for protection.
§ A wine vat in its midst, to use for the harvest.
o He expected and made every preparation to receive an excellent harvest. What does that look like?
- An Excellent Harvest is a time of celebration, joy, and blessing.
o Grape Stomping.
o It was a party. That’s the way they once did it all over the world (7,000 yrs), until 20th Century laws outlawed it due to sanitary concerns.
- “He expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes” (v2c).
o It’s like the vineyard owner comes out to inspect the crop, expecting to find that all his hard work has paid off, only to find these wild grapes growing from the choice vines he planted.
§ He says, I expected great grapes, and I got these stinking things (another translation of the term used).
o Do you see the difference?
§ Tightly bunched grapes that look full and ripe, versus…
§ Vines of loose, separated grapes.
The Vineyard Owner’s Case: Voice Shift – It’s the Vineyard Owner Speaking
- “And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard” (Is.5:3).
o What more could I have done?
o Why did it yield these stinking things, wild grapes?
- “And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard” (v.5).
o I’ve had it.
o No more hedge or wall for protection.
o It will fend for itself and be overgrown.
Isaiah Interprets the Parable
- “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!” (v.7).
- Justice and Righteousness is always God’s expectation of the people, and it’s always what prophets preach.
o Injustice here:
§ Greed and Selfishness
§ 5:8 – Criticizes the people for joining “house to house” and “field to field,” thereby crowding out smaller farmers and peasants. This made them little more than slaves with no legal recourse, since the ones who controlled the courts were the very same land owners.
§ They increased poverty, rather than caring for the poor.
The Church is God’s Vineyard Too
- God’s case against the vineyard, whether the people of Judah or the Church, is that they were planted for Fruitfulness, but they bore “Wild Grapes” instead of an excellent harvest.
- How has the Church produced “wild grapes” instead of an excellent harvest?
- What fruit does God expect of the Church?
- United Methodist Church – Bearing Good or Wild Grapes?
o Membership and worship decline (for 50 yrs)
§ Membership peaked between the 1960s and 1970s.
§ Average weekly worship attendance has dropped every year since 1968.
§ The percentage of the US population that is United Methodist has dropped every year since the 1960s from 6.5% to 2.6%.
§ We’re closing more churches than we’re opening.
§ And we receive fewer and fewer members by profession of faith.
§ These statistics point to the fact that we are much more like wild grapes than tightly bunched good grapes.
- What God Expects of the Church: Disciples
- UMC Mission: “Make Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World”
o It doesn’t say, “Make members of churches…”
o Yet, those with long memories in Grand Island know about churches with HUGELY inflated membership numbers through the years.
§ If you met the pastor in the street and gave him your name, you were a member.
§ But how does that make disciples?
o Making members is easy, at least in terms of names on rolls.
o Making disciples is harder and takes more time and energy.
§ It’s the difference between…Teaching about God and following God, and focusing on journeying together in a way of life.
· Membership Focus: “A member supports Christ’s ministry by her prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness” and
· Discipleship Focus: “Follow me as I follow Christ. We’ll become like Christ in the process, and God will transform the world through me and you.”
How Do We Bear Good Fruit? The Way Back to Fruitfulness:
- The prophets of the Bible had one basic message: You’ve gone the wrong way away from God and the ways of God. Turn back to God and God will receive you!
- How do we turn back to God? How do we become fruitful again?
o Look at the grapes again.
§ Grapes can’t change from wild to good, but by God’s grace, we can be transformed.
o The way?
§ It’s in the difference between the grapes. To be fruitful is to be tightly clumped together for a specific purpose.
§ For the grapes, that purpose is being awesome to eat and make juice and wine from.
§ For we Christians in the Church, God’s purpose is that we are formed together in a community that spreads God’s love, grace, and justice to others.
- How to become Fruitful: We Draw Together.
o Part of this is drawing together around a common sense of mission.
§ The work of the Discipleship Plan Team.
§ This church needs a clear, articulate Discipleship Plan that we can all look at and agree to.
§ We’ll see it, we’ll read it, and we’ll grow to each be able to say, “This is what we at Faith United Methodist are about: we’re about Radical Hospitality, Passionate Worship, Intentional Faith Development, Risk-Taking Mission and Justice, and Extravagant Generosity.”
§ And then we’ll each be able to say to the grocery store clerk, “And this is what that means…Come and see for yourself.”
- Part of this drawing together is changing the way we live, about having a changed heart and mind about what it means to be the Church.
o It goes against the culture of thinking that being a Christian is a Sunday thing.
§ That’s like wild grapes: decent grapes for critters but separated and too sparse to make anything of.
o Instead, we embrace and live into the reality that following Christ is something we do every day of our lives alongside others by the grace of God.
§ To be fruitful is to be together with one another. The good grapes are bunched together, and together, they’re able to be made into wine, juice, and jam. Bunched together, we can be a blessing to others.
God Welcomes Us Back and Transforms Us into Fruitful People
- I know that in Isaiah 5 the prophet bears God’s exasperated word to the people: I’ve had it with these wild grapes and unfruitful vines! I’m done with them.
- Yet, this is still a love song. That God leads Isaiah to sing it and proclaim this message of judgment to the people shows that God is far from giving up on the people.
- Further, we have seen in recent weeks that God is like a parent who is always ready to receive God’s children, even when they’ve chosen to live estranged from God.
- Further still, in last week’s reading, which Isaiah’s hearers would have remembered, God promises to transform their sinfulness into holiness, to make their sin-filled, crimson lives holy and clean like snow.
- The parable of God’s vineyard shows us, without a doubt that God expects the Church, and all God’s people, to be fruitful, yet it also shows us that God is always ready to receive us and transform us into that which God created us to be.
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