What God Gives – And How We Respond October 5, 2008 Pentecost 21 Lectionary 27

(First, read the texts for this sermon: Isaiah 5:1-7; Matthew 21:33-46)

God has created you and me. “Why?” (as I ask the pre-school children in our chapel services). “Because God loves us!” That’s why God created us. That’s why God has given you and me this day of life. Indeed, God gives us everything we need for life – because God loves us. It is pure grace.

Is that it? There’s one thing more. God desires us to respond, by the way we live our lives.

The Old Testament is full of that dynamic of God’s grace first, and then human response to that grace. For instance, you may remember how the author of the book of Exodus moves into the Ten Commandments. We read: Then God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “I have rescued you,” God tells the people. “I give you everything you need for life. Therefore, you must respond in this way: You shall have no other gods before me.” (And then follow the rest of the Commandments.)

Every time, in the Bible, God’s grace comes first. It is undeserved. It is God’s initiative. And God desires our response. It matters that we respond in God-pleasing ways! That is the point of the two vineyard parables we read this morning.
The prophet Isaiah begins with the words of a love song.

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 hewed out a wine vat in it;

What more could the Creator have done? The Creator has given everything necessary for a harvest of sweet grapes! But then we read:

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

According to the prophet, this response brings consequences:

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 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.

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!

As we read this, “the house of Israel and the people of Judah” are you and me. God has created us, purely because God loves us. What does God give? Everything we need for life. And God desires us to respond, by the way we live our lives – responding by working for justice, and against violence; responding with righteousness; responding by bringing relief to those crying in pain.

How do we learn that response? How do we stay strong in that response? God forms us in the community of the church, as we practice the faith together, through weekly worship and daily reading of the Bible and prayer, through servanthood to those in need. Over the months and years, through these practices, God gives us the wisdom and courage that we need to act in the face of violence, with love and compassion towards those who are suffering.

The second vineyard parable this morning is a little different. In the passage from Matthew, it’s not that we are the vineyard, but that we are stewards of the vineyard.

Again, God gives everything that is necessary: "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.” Everything is in place. And there is a harvest. And the landowner sends people to receive his share of the harvest from the tenants. But you remember what happened to them.

What is the origin of that violence? The tenants respond as if the vineyard is theirs! As if the harvest is their property! As if it is not all gift from God!

Instead, here is the witness of the stories in the Bible. “I am the Lord your God. I not only give you freedom from slavery in Egypt, I give you freedom from any kind of slavery. I give you grace and forgiveness and salvation. I give you life! Therefore: You shall have no other gods before me. I desire for you to respond by producing the fruits of the kingdom.”

Are the “fruits of the kingdom” in Matthew’s story the same as what Paul calls “the fruit of the Spirit” in Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?

How does God the Holy Spirit form us to bear such fruit? How do we stay strong in that response to everything that God has given us? God forms us in the community of the church, as we practice the faith together, through weekly worship and daily reading of the Bible and prayer, through servanthood to those in need. Over the months and years, through these practices, God gives us the wisdom and courage that we need to confront selfishness with love and compassion – because we own nothing ourselves! What freedom and release there is in the good news that are only stewards. We are only caretakers of what God has given us – which is, in fact, everything we need for life.

Our response to this good news is to resist sin. When our response to God’s gifts are not God-pleasing, there are consequences! Here’s a large scale example: we are suffering the consequences of the sin of greed in our financial markets. We are suffering because greed corrupted the stewardship of some who were entrusted with our tremendous affluence. It would be good for our leaders to act according to clear-eyed theology as they debate financial regulations, taking into account human greed.

It’s a matter of what God gives – and how we respond. On the small scale, as well, we suffer consequences when our responses are not God-pleasing. For instance, God gives us identity in community when we are baptized. It is pure grace! But what about those who do not respond positively? When crisis comes, those who reject that community suffer. When there is illness, a death, a lost job, they are dis-connected from that baptized community of support. How sad!

God has created you and me because God loves us! God has given you and me this very day of life even though we do not deserve a single minute of this day. God gives us everything we need for life, out of pure grace.

It’s a matter of what God gives (which is everything!), and how we respond.

In the name of God, who creates us, who saves us, and who makes us holy. Amen.

Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia