Isaiah 5:1-7
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; 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? When 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 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!
Sermon
COULD
WE BE MISSING OUR BIG CHANCE?
Pleasant, that’s the tone of this scripture lesson right from the
beginning; also disheartening. Let
me sing a love song, a love song to my beloved; concerning his vineyard.
The voice of the speaker paints a beautiful picture of someone
who lovingly plants a vineyard, and cares for it and shelters and
protects it and wants it to produce grapes.
But then, it starts immediately being an unpleasant scripture
lesson; and it moves intimately into unpleasant places with an abrupt
change in the speaker’s voice. Suddenly
it’s the beloved speaking and not the narrator who started.
Talking about how “my people” have forsaken their purpose;
“my people
Israel
” have not provided wine grapes, but rather wild grapes.
They have not provided justice and mercy; instead they have
oppressed their own people. They
have provided bloodshed instead of peace; they have provided a cry
instead of joy. And
then the voice of the beloved said more hard things about how the wall
was going to come down, and the sun was not going to shine and the
clouds are not going to rain, and the vineyard will not be able to
prosper from that point forward. Because it has missed its big chance;
it has missed its opportunity to produce grapes; and instead has
produced something else worthless.
From a pleasant beginning, this scripture passage zooms into a
very somber place, and confronts us with an idea we would rather flinch
and turn away from; the idea of God giving up on his people.
This idea was not foreign to earlier generations of Christians.
I had us sing “A Charge to Keep I Have” because that last phrase in the fourth
verse: “if I my trust
betray, I shall forever die” was very much a part of the spirituality
of the 1700’s; but now in the 21st century, that idea that
God might give up on us if we don’t do what God expects us to do, that
idea is not an idea that many people entertain; many people talk about,
or many people make the center of their Christian faith.
Surely God will never give up on us; surely God will always give
us another chance; surely, surely, no matter how badly we fail, God will
somehow make grapes come out of the wild grapes that we are still busy
producing with our lives. That’s
the spirit of our time.
I don’t disagree with the view that God gives us a number of
extra chances that are beyond counting.
The best I know of God indicates that yes there are all kinds of
chances; the best I know of God indicates that yes, when we mess up, God
allows us to reconstruct something new, something unexpected.
I do believe this; I do think we don’t need to go around being
afraid that God is going to “zap” us the first chance he gets
because we haven’t succeeded in pleasing him completely.
So I, like many of us in this room, find that sort of Charles
Wesley spirituality – being afraid that I’m going to forever go to
hell if I don’t fulfill my charge perfectly – that kind of
spirituality is not my cup of tea; it’s not my best way of
understanding God. And yet,
and yet, there’s something to it.
It’s there in the Bible. It’s
part of our sacred story. Yes,
God does make new beginnings; God does give extra chances.
And yet there also needs to be in our language, I think, a place
for the story of this vineyard that the vineyard owner gave up on; the
story of a missed chance, a missed opportunity that won’t come back
again.
Israel
was coming to terms with its own history; because at the time of
Isaiah
,
Israel
was experiencing exactly what this parable talks about, this story
of the vineyard. Israel was
experiencing the destruction of its own political independence; the
destruction, literally, of its city, the burning of its temple;
everything that Israel believed that God had given them as a part of his
plan for his chosen people was now being taken away by the Babylonian
empire. By pagan foreigners
that did not worship the True God and the Israelites that had worshipped
the True God were losing all that to this foreign power.
Israelites were experiencing this kind of loss, the kind of loss
that’s hard for us to imagine, I think.
In a way it would be like the destruction of one’s own country
and the destruction of one’s own church in the exact same moment.
Israel
was experiencing that, and they didn’t know that later there
would be fresh hope, new beginnings, and new chances.
So as they confronted that reality, I think they were also coming
into touch with something important, which is that there are
opportunities that people miss and what they think is, even though that
doesn’t mean all hope is gone, it means that opportunity is gone.
Israel
was going to have a new beginning, several new beginnings in fact;
but it would never be the same as the kingdom founded by David and made
glorious by Solomon; the
kingdom
of
Jerusalem
and the temple. All of those things would have to be reinterpreted
for new beginnings, what they’d had in the days of David and Solomon
was lost, forever. A missed
opportunity because they did not behave justly, because the rich
oppressed the poor, and in doing this they were missing the whole spirit
of God’s choice of them as his people, of God’s law they had to live
by, of God’s desire for them to thrive and prosper and show the world
what he was truly like. They
missed that opportunity; and the sorry expressions, the desolation of
that feeling, the feeling of having missed it, and now realizing that
the future that would have happened if they had met that opportunity
rightly is never going to come about.
I think the possibility of missing your opportunity and thereby
missing some kind of wonderful future that God had in store for you
through that specific opportunity, this possibility is part of the life
of faith. It’s a part of
the world where mistakes are possible, and a part of the world where
goodness is possible. Goodness depends on taking those opportunities and
moving them in the right direction, or doing your best at least to stand
into those opportunities and live up to them.
I think our church faces those kinds of opportunities, and has
faced that kind of opportunity down through the years.
I’ve thought of different ways to talk about our opportunities,
I’ve thought of different ways of coming to terms with what I think
our present opportunity is.
I think this church is unique in that we have an opportunity to
open our doors for younger people. A
lot of churches like ours, churches where a sizable portion of the
congregation is older, and by older I mean my age and up, a lot of
churches like ours that have been in the same place for over one hundred
years that have a nice old building and an organ and like traditional
worship; a lot of churches like ours don’t seem to get a chance that
has been coming to the Borodino United Methodist Church over the past
few years – of younger people giving us a try, younger people finding
a place for themselves, younger people wishing to make this their church
home. This opportunity has
been simply given to us by circumstances that we could analyze and maybe
name – like our location and the demographics of people moving out
here and they way people prefer to go to a nearby church than a far away
church.
But whatever you like to explain it by, I like to think of it as
a God-given opportunity to reach young people.
The opportunity is there, but then it’s up to us to do
something with it. And that,
I think, is what we need to face up to; get involved in the life of this
church. If we miss this
opportunity, that doesn’t mean that God completely gives up on us, but
it might mean that God will give up on this opportunity and move onto
others who might be able to carry the ball further than we can.
So that’s what I want to think about right now, the opportunity
of reaching young people. Churches
love to have young people in them; we love to see teen-agers taking
their first steps in leadership, reading the scripture lesson, and maybe
even giving their first sermon. I
know that’s happened here just recently a couple of times.
We like to see teen-agers giving reports on mission projects they
get involved in. We
like to know that there’s an active youth group that’s out doing
things. Churches like that
because it gives them a sense of the future, of vitality.
Churches like to have young adults, because young adults take on
committee leadership jobs and they may teach Sunday School and they
start new programs; and again we like to see that vitality and that kind
of energy in the life of our church.
It makes us feel good to know that there’s a future beyond,
perhaps, our own time here. And
churches love to have children. We
just like them on so many different levels.
Children are such a pleasant presence; they say funny things
during the children’s message; they give that feeling of excitement at
the beginning of the lesson; and gratifying a teacher by showing that
they really understand. They
sing so sweetly and they look so cute up there in their costumes.
We just love children.
These are the church’s reasons for wanting young people.
All those reasons that make us feel good about ourselves.
But I think God’s way of looking at it is different from that.
In the first place, God doesn’t think younger necessarily means
being cuter. God thinks that
all of us are equally delightful; because God sees in each of us the
infant, the young child, the teen-ager, the young adult, the middle
years adult, the older adult. He
sees all those things in one unit, in each of us.
Knowing the present, past, and future God experiences us, I
think, that way. So the ages
to God are not what they seem to be to us.
He’s delighted in the most senior member of his congregation in
the same way that we are delighted in the newest newborn baby.
So God is equally delighted with us.
What God sees, I think, is that young people have needs; young
people are making their way in a world in which they are vulnerable.
Their family income may be just getting underway and they have
debts from college and so there’s a need for some sort of security and
stable work habits and they need encouragement and support as they work
in the first years of their professional lives.
Teen-agers are surrounded by really negative influences in a
culture that is attempting to reach into their pocketbooks and is
plucking at their sleeves on every side.
Children, even, are being bombarded constantly electronic images
and other kinds of experiences that are maybe not so positive in their
future. And there’s this
need out there.
And God, perhaps, is ready to meet that need with a variety of
different kinds of church. And
our church, which is a particular kind – it’s a multi-generational
church for one thing; and our church is in touch with its past, for
another thing – our church might be just the environment that needed
for some particular young people. Not
all young people prefer this kind of church, but some do; some may even
be touched by a church like this that wouldn’t be touched by any other
kind of church. And God is
caring for the needs of each individual out there.
And for that reason, this might be an opportunity that God is
giving us right now, because the need is here and we are here; and God
in his wisdom can match the need and capability.
We are a church that is capable of reaching young people in our
own way; and providing them with a nurturing, sustaining, caring,
multi-generational environment that would add dimension and depth and
beauty to the lives of the young. And
young people, whether you’re talking about children, youth, young
adults; young people have the same sorts of needs that humans have
always had. But in our world
today, sometimes those needs can be confused because of circumstances,
and so that might be the opportunity God is giving us.
Now, I’m not telling you that you have missed or are missing
that opportunity. I’m not
telling you that you’re like the place where the rich were oppressing
the poor, and thereby being judged by God negatively.
That kind of oppression doesn’t really take place within the
scope of the church family, and things are slightly different in the
times of the new covenant anyway. Jesus
Christ has come, taking care of some of the dynamic that was present in
the time of
Israel
, like providing a new footing for our relationship with God, a
relationship based on Christ’s death on the cross for our sins.
So, that part of the plan has changed, our situation is
different; I’m not pretending to be a prophet, pronouncing God’s
judgment on
Borodino
Church
; it’s not that way at all. I’m
simply saying that these opportunities themselves stand or fall based on
how we respond to them and if we don’t respond in a way that takes
advantage of this opportunity we’ll still have a future.
God will still make good things happen for us, but it won’t be
the good things that would have happened if we had met that opportunity.
That’s all I’m saying, you seem like a wonderful church to
me; I’m very much enjoying the way you’ve embraced me, and taken me
into your hearts into your lives, the way that you’ve welcomed my
family, I think of you as my church, and we are in this together.
All I’m saying is that God is giving us, right now, this
opportunity to connect with young people, and if we take that
opportunity, who knows where the adventure will lead us.
But certainly, it’s going to lead to a very good place.
Other good places are possible out there, but right now, this is
the opportunity we have, and I suggest that we pay careful attention to
taking it. The main thing I
think this means, in a practical sense, is first of all we need to start
praying for our church to address the needs of young people.
Yes, the needs of all ages, but let’s also be specific on this
particular calling that might be presented to us at this moment.
Let’s pray for our church to address the needs of young people,
and pray that we meet them, and pray that being in prayer makes a
difference because in that spirit it does and let’s make sure we
volunteer, let’s be sure we find out good things, let’s be sure we
figure out ways to invest our lives in that opportunity.
And then let’s sit back and allow God to lead us to each
specific moment as we live out our faith in him in this opportunity;
responding in whatever way seems to be right from one moment to the
next. When we do that, then
we can know that we are acting like the vineyard of the Lord, then we
can know that God, who is our beloved, calls us his beloved, then we can
know that this opportunity and our lives are working together and the
future we are moving into is beautiful and glorious and is going to make
who we are for all eternity into one particularly special, concrete
form. We will be the
Borodino United Methodist Church that is here in the year 2005, taking
the opportunity that is offered to us at this time, we are going to be
that church forever. Amen.
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