The Sure Foundation

[Below you'll find live stream video of today's worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. You'll also see the text of the message shared. The traditional service was a wild, but satisfying ride, including a baptism!]

Matthew 21:33-46

Over the past few Sundays, we’ve listened in on Jesus’ confrontation with “the chief priests and the elders.” Today, identified as “the chief priests and the Pharisees,” that confrontation continues in our Gospel lesson. These leaders of God’s people are offended by Jesus, claiming Jesus has no authority to forgive sin, perform miracles, or claim to be the King of the world.

This morning, Jesus tells another parable, a story, the beginning of which would have been familiar to everyone around Him. You can see similar stories told by the prophet in Isaiah 5 and by Asaph, a musician in the court of King David, in Psalm 80.

In all three stories, we’re told how God graciously planted His people in Israel the land He promised to them. And in all three cases, something goes terribly wrong.

According to Isaiah, when God turned to the vineyard Israel, He “looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.” (Isaiah 5:2) In other words, God saw an Israel that had turned its back on God to worship false idols, the gods of other peoples. For its idolatry and all the sins that flowed from it, God allowed His people to be conquered and turned out of their land.

Asaph sees a nation that has turned away from God, relying instead on false idols, self-sufficiency, and military and economic power. For, this Psalm 80 says God will break “down [Jerusalem’s] walls so that all who pass by pick its grapes” and, referring to enemy peoples around ancient Israel, says that “boars from the forest ravage it, and insects from the fields feed on it.” (Psalm 80:13)

In these two passages from the Old Testament, God was reminding His people that salvation and oneness with God were not the product of their behavior, goodness, or strength. They were saved solely by God Who gives forgiveness and new life as a gift to be received by faith alone.

This is why the Old Testament says of Abraham, not yet renamed by God, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6)

When God saved Israel and planted it in the world, just as when God saved you and me in Holy Baptism and gave us faith in Christ through the Word and sustained that faith in the sacrament of Holy Communion, it wasn’t because the ones saved were, in themselves or by their actions, holy and righteous, it’s because the God Who saves us from sin, death, and futility is holy and righteous. It’s because God gives His holiness and righteousness to sinners by grace through the faith in Him that His Holy Spirit creates in us.

In speaking to the religious leaders of first-century Judea, Jesus creates a different twist to the ancient story of God’s people.

In Jesus’ telling, the “landowner,” clearly God, rents out to farmers, clearly Israel, a vineyard, which He prepared and protected, then went elsewhere. When harvest time came, the landowner expected to receive fruits from his land and investment, just as God expects to see the fruit of His righteousness and His forgiveness manifested in our lives.

But, as you know, the landowner sent many different people to collect what the farmers owed and each of his servants were beaten, killed, or stoned, just like the prophets God sent to His people Israel to call them back to saving faith.

Finally, the landowner decides to send his son to collect the harvest. “They will respect my son,” he reasons. (Matthew 21:37)

You know what happens.

The farmers think that if they kill off the son of the landowner, clearly representing Jesus, they will be free of the owner; they will, to speak clearly what Jesus means here, be their own gods, free of the authority of almighty God.

And that friends, is the goal of all human-centered religion: to be the makers of our own righteousness, to be gods ourselves, without accountability to God.

Humanly-centered religion, whether secular or clothed in the pretense of piety, says with the poet, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

And it always leads to death and damnation for one simple reason: One day, we will all stand before the God we meet in Christ for judgment.

Those who try to claim a place in eternity because they think they’ve been good people or because their grandfather was involved in mission work or they gave money to the church, will stand naked in their sin and be sent to hell.

Those who can say with the saints, the forgiven sinners who trust in the God revealed in Jesus, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness,” will be welcomed to live eternally with God.

Matthew says the religious elites realize Jesus had told this parable about them, secure in their self-generated goodness and unrepentant rule-keeping as well as their descendance from Abraham.

When Jesus asks them what the landowner will do to those who killed the landowner’s son, just as they will soon join the Gentiles in killing God the Son, they say, “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end…and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.” (Matthew 21:41)

Antisemitic people over the ages have used these words to say that Gentile Christians have superseded Jews as God’s people. But this is not what Jesus says. It’s what the Jewish chief priests and elders say.

Trust, faith, in the Messiah and Lord pointed to by the entire Old Testament and revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, brings salvation to Jews and Gentiles like. The apostle Paul, himself a Jew, says “it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise [that is, the promise of justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone] who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.” (Romans 9:8)

Jesus says that the landowner–God Himself–responds to those, both Jew and Gentile whose sin put His Son on the cross to die, very differently. He shows them this through Psalm 118: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes…” (Matthew 21:42)

There are those who try to commend themselves to God for their own effort, supposed goodness, and ingenuity. Like us, such people have an inborn penchant to turning from God and doing things their own way. They turn a deaf ear to Jesus’ call to repent and believe in Him for forgiveness and life with God that never ends. Whether in this life or, absent repentance and faith, in eternity, the self-reliant will be smashed by Jesus Christ, true God and true man, who bears the full weight of a holy and mighty God.

But there are those who, like you here this morning, have heard the Gospel Word about Jesus and believe that Jesus is the cornerstone for everlasting life with God.

You know that you can build your life on Him.

You know Jesus’ promise about Himself: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life…” and so, He has become the foundation for all your hopes. Jesus has become the One Who tells you that because He died on the cross for you, all Your sins are forgiven. (John 3:36)

Jesus has become the One Who assures you that He is always with you. (Matthew 28:20)

Jesus has become the One Who tells you as He told the grieving Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die…” (John 11:25-26)

In Jesus, you and I see THE foundation of our eternal help “and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

Keep your eyes on Jesus, friends.

He brings forgiveness to sinners, hope to the repentant, life to the dead and the dying and He will never let you down.

Amen

Choosing the Right Kingdom

[This message was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, 667 Miamisburg-Centerville Road, Centerville, Ohio, yesterday. We have worship on Sundays at 8:45 and 11:00 am.]

[Here's the audio of the message.]

Matthew 21:33-46
In last Sunday’s gospel lesson, you’ll remember, Jesus told a parable about a father and his two sons. The father asked each to work in the vineyard. One son said he wouldn’t and did. The other son said that he would work in the vineyard and didn’t. Jesus asked His original hearers which of the two sons had obeyed their father. The answer, of course, was the one who obeyed despite his earlier refusal.

As mentioned last week, that parable works for us as a reminder to live out the faith we confess on Sunday mornings. But it also would have had a far more pointed meaning to Jesus’ first hearers. In case they missed it though, Jesus tells another parable on this Monday of Holy Week, which comprises the bulk of today’s gospel lesson. It has a similar pointed meaning for us.

So, let’s look at our lesson, Matthew 21:33-36: “[Jesus says] Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place.”

Every one of Jesus’ fellow Jews would have been familiar with the Old Testament scripture to which Jesus refers here. He borrows from Isaiah 5, which is where our first lesson for this morning comes from.

It starts: “I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.” (Isaiah 5:1-2)

In Isaiah’s song, the “loved one” is God, Who had called His ancient people Israel into being and showered them with grace, provision, and love, only to find that the people sinned, rebelled against God, and treated their neighbors unjustly, failing to love God or neighbor. In other words, they produced bad fruit. This all lay in the background of what Jesus is about to say.

He continues the parable at verse 34: “When the harvest time approached, [the landowner] sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.”

Just as God had sent prophets to the people of Israel to tell them to turn from their sin and turn in faith to God so that they could live, the owner of the vineyard in Jesus’ story keeps sending representatives to collect the good fruit that they should be willing to give to the owner, in simple gratitude for all that the owner provided for them.

This is not a parable about giving offerings, by the way. While it's the aim of every Christian disciples to give a percentage of their income--a tithe of 10% is the Biblical model--to God's work in the world, that's not what this parable is about. The God we know in Jesus Christ isn't interested in just 10% of any part of our lives.

And the aim of every Christian disciple is to give 100% of their lives--100% of their time at work, 100% of their time at home, 100% of their whole selves--to God.

As God the Son gave Himself unstintingly for us on the cross, the response of faith in Christ is to give ourselves back to God. God's grace in Christ, saving us from sin and death for all eternity, deserves our total surrender to God in return!

You’ve heard me tell about the couple we knew in Cincinnati who, when asked why they joined a congregation that seemed to have little to offer them, said, “We were looking for a place to serve.”

The tenants in Jesus’ parable were looking to take the whole vineyard for themselves and get the owner completely out of their lives. Like Adam and Eve, they wanted to be their own gods. That’s why they decided to kill the landowner’s son, just as the whole world, Jews and Gentiles alike, decided to kill the Son of God on the first Good Friday, just four days after Jesus told this parable.

Jesus continues in verse 40: “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

Jesus, at this point, has the chief priests and the elders right where He wants them. He wants them to make a judgment about the proper punishment for the tenants in His parable, people who represent the priests, the elders, and all of Jesus' fellow Jews in their rejection of God's authority over their lives...in their repudiation and murder of the landowner's son, who clearly represents Jesus.

The chief priests and elders respond: “He will bring those wretches [In the Greek in which Matthew writes, the word translated as “wretches” carries the meaning of “people as totally evil as is possible.Think, Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Mao Zedong, Stalin, Putin, that evil, that wretched.] to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”

To understand what comes next, we have to delve into another passage from the Old Testament, Daniel, chapter 2.

Here's the situation: It’s seven centuries before the birth of Jesus. Daniel, a Jew, is held in captivity in Babylon. Babylon had conquered God’s people, Israel, and taken some of Israel's best and brightest in chains back to Babylon. The king of Babylon has a dream. Relying not on his own cleverness, but on God, the imprisoned Daniel tells the king, Nebuchadnezzar, both the content of his dream and its meaning.

The dream, in a nutshell, was this: At the dream's outset, there was an enormous statue made of iron, silver, clay, and gold. It was spectacular. Nearby, a rock is quarried from the ground close to the statue. The rock is small at first.

Then this small rock strikes the statue and the statue crumbles into tiny particles that blow away.

The rock meanwhile, becomes a huge mountain and fills the entire earth.

The meaning, Daniel said, was simple: The great kingdom of Babylon was doomed to fail, as were later kingdoms built by human beings. Superpowers come and superpowers go.

But the kingdom of God, represented by the rock in the king’s dream, endures forever!

God will have the last say over the life of this world: not kings, not presidents, not corporations, nor the arrogant, or not even you and me.

If we set out to oppose God or His kingdom of love, we will be on the wrong side of history for all eternity! We will be fools!

All of this lay behind what Jesus says next, starting at verse 42, quoting Psalm 118:22-23: “Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”

The prophets of ancient Israel came to understand the stone in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream not just as the kingdom of God, underestimated in this world, but also the One Who would bring the kingdom of God into this world, the Messiah.

Like the son in Jesus’ parable of the landowner and the tenants, the Messiah would be “the stone the builders rejected,” Whose power and importance would be disdained and underestimated, but who was and is the King of all kings.

And, by the way, this is exactly how Jesus understood Himself. We try to turn Jesus into a wimp we can control, a kewpie doll we can pull out of our lives' back pockets when we need Him to do our bidding, but stash away when we think that we've got things under control. But the Savior Who overcame death can't be so easily manipulated or taken for granted!

You’ll remember that, after telling the teacher Nicodemus that because God so loved the world that He sent His Son so that all who believe in Him will not perish--will not be crushed by their rebellion against God--but have everlasting life, Jesus also said: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:18)

According to Mark’s gospel, Jesus brought a simple message, that with Him, the Kingdom of God, had arrived: ““The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15)

Jesus is the Rock on which eternity is to be built. 

We must either embrace Him as our God or be crushed by our own arrogance. There are no other choices.

At the end of our lesson for today, we’re told that the chief priests and the elders knew that Jesus was talking about them. (Duh!)

That’s because they had built their own kingdoms in which they reigned over the spiritual and civic life of Judea, apart from God. They worked hand-in-glove with the Romans and had cushy lives at the spiritual and economic disadvantage of the people. Jesus was warning them that their days were numbered.

They needed to receive God when He came in their midst--Jesus--or be crushed by their own insolence.

It’s at this moment that the chief priests and elders decide, not to follow Jesus, but that they have to kill Jesus.

So, what does this all have to do with you and me?

Just this. We all have a tendency to work at building our own kingdoms.

We build our careers.

We get the nice house.

We work to get stuff for our kids that they may or may not need.

We pile our 401k’s and 403b’s with reserves.

We guys build our man caves.

Intentionally or not, we find ourselves working to live in and protect our own personal “kingdoms of me.”

But, in truth, the kingdom of me, no matter how big it gets, is destined to crumble. 

Our caskets may be lined with silk and gold. Yet we'll still be just as dead when our bodies are set inside of them.

But there’s another kingdom, the kingdom into which Jesus invites us.

These days, it may seem to have been supplanted by the kingdoms of this world: nations, ideologies, religions, sports, politics, leisure activities.

We may see all of these things and think that Christianity is on its way out and that no one will ever revere Jesus again.

That would be a mistake.

None of the kings or kingdoms of this world has ever done or will ever do what Jesus has done for us.

None can do for us and in us what Jesus can.

Jesus, God and sinless, became human so that He could bear the weight of our sin and death on His humble shoulders. When He died, He took the punishment we deserve for sin. When He rose, He made it possible for us to live with God forever. All who turn from sin and trust in Him with their whole selves have life with God, now and always.

Jesus makes all who trust in Him new!

This world may grind us down. The kingdoms of this world in which we may be inclined to trust will be reduced to powder.

But Jesus, the stone which the builders rejected, is the cornerstone on which our eternal lives can be built.

Only He can make us whole.

Only He can give us life.

Only He can give us purpose.

So, today and every day, ask the Holy Spirit to help you build your life on Jesus Christ alone.

• Every single day. 
• Every time you read God’s Word. 
• Every time you receive the sacrament. 
• Every time you pray. 
• Every time you go to work.
• Every time you make a decision.
• Every time you're with your spouse or child or friends.
• Every time you go to a ballgame, a party, or a concert.

Every time you and I dare to veer away from the dead paths of the devil, the world, and our sinful selves, may we follow Jesus.

Always follow Jesus. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

'You've Been Bought' by Steve Taylor

This great song from the 80s by Steve Taylor sings the truth to which Jesus' words in this morning's Gospel lesson, Matthew 21:33-46, points. Taylor particularly has in mind words of Paul's:

"...You are not your own;  you were bought at a price." (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

A Way of Saying We Know We've Been Bought

The classic hymn, We Give Thee But Thine Own.

Caring for the Greatest Gift of All

[This was shared during worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, earlier today.]

Matthew 21:33-46
To begin, please turn to 1 Corinthians 4:1-2, page 794 in the sanctuary Bibles. It says: “This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.”

Some of you may have been trustees of the estates of loved ones or friends. You know that your responsibility is to see to it that the estate is cared for or distributed with wisdom and in accordance with the wishes of the one who conferred the responsibility of trusteeship on you. It’s a big job, not to be taken lightly.

In this passage, the apostle Paul wrote to show that his ministry was from the risen Jesus Christ. Christ had conferred it upon him.

But in writing this, Paul also taught an important truth for every baptized believer in the God revealed in Jesus Christ. It’s this: All believers are caretakers, stewards, trustees of the mysterious gifts God gives to all who trust in Christ. We’re to tend the gift of faith within us--through things like worship, Bible study, receiving the Sacrament, fellowship with other believers, and prayer--so that our faith continues to grow and continues show and to bring glory to God in lives of practical acts of service and love and witness for Christ.

Without careful stewardship of the mysteries of our relationship with Christ, Christians risk losing our own faith connection to God and fail to fulfill our life’s calling from God, which is to commend the hope that we have in Christ to other people.

When Paul wrote these words to the Corinthians about twenty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, he wasn’t presenting a new idea. It’s an idea that goes all the way back to the garden of Eden, the home of the first human beings.

Adam and Eve were given the undeserved gifts of life, relationship with God, and relationship with each other, the very gifts we receive when we are baptized into Christ and confess faith in Him. Adam’s and Eve’s task was to gratefully tend their garden, their lives, and their relationships. You’ll remember how that all turned out.

But God didn’t give up on the human race after the fall into sin!

Nor did He ever give up on the idea of having a loving partnership with us, of providing us with a “garden” or a "vineyard" in which, in response to His grace and love, we were to be good stewards of life and our relationships with God and others we were made for.

God’s passion for the human race led Him to call Israel into being, a nation that was to be “a royal priesthood, God’s own people, a holy nation,” trustees of God’s love for humanity, who by their faithful stewardship would act as “a light to the nations,” so everyone could know and have a new, eternal relationship with the God of the universe.

All of which leads us to today’s gospel lesson, Matthew 21:33-46, page 691 in the sanctuary Bibles. This passage continues a confrontation between Jesus and the leaders of the Jewish faith that we looked at last Sunday. In last Sunday’s lesson, Jesus made clear that His authority to forgive sin, perform miracles, and call His own people, the heirs of ancient Israel, to repentance and faith in Him came from God the Father. Today, Jesus talks about how essential it is to receive Him God and Savior of the world. 



It starts: “There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.”

The religious authorities to whom Jesus told this parable would have immediately understood what Jesus was talking about. As our Old Testament lesson from Isaiah 5 exemplifies, God often spoke of Israel as a garden or a vineyard. God gave His people a promised land in which the mysteries of His grace and the gifts of relationship with God and others were to be celebrated, respected, and tended. (Are you detecting a pattern?)

Their “vineyard,” their very lives, were to bear fruit: the power of God’s life, as they cultivated relationship with God, was to be visible in their lives, not in some calculated way but as the inevitable result of living in a relationship of daily repentance and renewal with God.

In the parable, the landowner--clearly a stand-in for God--who has invested everything in the lives of the tenants, sends his servants--representing God’s prophets--to collect the owner’s cut of the fruits, just as the prophets were repeatedly sent to Israel by God to seek out the fruits of faith and repentance--lives turned to God as their only hope--as freewill offerings to God.

Read on, please: “The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way.”

The tenants--God’s own people--were indebted to the landowner--God--for everything. God sent His prophets. But the people, the caretakers of God’s mysteries, turned their backs on God and, in a bid to “be like God,” killed the prophets, imprisoned them, ignored them. Jesus lamented in Matthew 23:27: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” I wonder how often He utters the same lament over His Church today?

True story: There were two men who went to the same church, participated in the same small group Bible study, and worked at the same business. One guy learned that his Christian friend had found a way to siphon money from accounts he had charge of. But, the monthly accounts hadn’t been settled yet.

So, the guy went to his friend, confronted him with the facts, and asked him to make things right so that he wouldn’t have to report his friend. He assured the friend that God could forgive him.

But his friend was unmoved: “What’s God got to do with it? This is business.” Initially, like the tenants in Jesus’ parable, this man refused God’s authority over his whole life.

Happily, after prayer with his friend, he repented and didn’t follow through on his scheme.

For the Christian, all of life is God’s vineyard, a gift from God. That's to be remembered and relished and celebrated not just on Sunday mornings or when Bible studies are happening, but all week long.

The parable goes on: “Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.“But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

After centuries in which God sent prophets to call His people Israel back to Him, He sent His Son to call not just Israel but all who would believe in Him back into relationship with Him, so that through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, people could have a life with God that never ends.

But much of Israel--the Judea of Jesus’ first century world--wasn’t interested in repenting for sin and believing in Christ as “the way, the truth, and the life.” 

Like us, they wanted to do with God’s vineyard what they wanted to do.

Today, people say that their lives and their bodies and their time are theirs to do with what they will. But that isn’t true. Our lives (and our bodies and our time) have come from God.

And the new life we can have with Christ is not ours either. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: “You are not your own; you were bought at a price.”

Jesus Christ spent His body and blood on the cross to buy us out of slavery to sin and death. As Christians, we know that our lives are not our own. Our lives, our bodies, our minds, our time, our possessions are all sacred trusts from God to be used in ways that honor the Lordship of Jesus Christ and lift Him up as the only hope for this dying, violent world.

Jesus’ parable makes it clear, I think, that the religious leaders weren’t ignorant of Who Jesus was. They knew that He was (and is) God the Son. That’s why they wanted to remove Him from this world.

It’s why people to this day want to remove Jesus and His claims of ultimate authority from the life of the world.

It’s why when any of us allow our sinful selves to call the shots over our lives, we’d rather not think about Jesus.

We know we’ve been bought; but we’d rather forget that.

As John 1:11 notes: “He [Jesus] came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”

You and I are more subtle about deflecting Christ and His rightful claims over our lives than the first-century Judean religious leaders were.

Our favorite method of deflection is through busy-ness. We respond to the clamor of things we think we have to do and want to do, rather than the things we need to do.

We’re modern day Marthas, so busy doing that we fail to heed the one thing that’s needful, tending our relationship with Jesus Christ, being attentive to Him.

When Jesus asks the leaders what they would do to anyone who would spend their lives rejecting an owner’s rightful claims over his tenants (in other words, anyone who would reject God, the giver of life), they say: “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.” Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: “‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’[? “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”

Jesus was telling the leaders that they were so hung up on maintaining their status--and the whole human race remains hung up on having what we think is ours when, in fact, every good and perfect gift comes from God--that their very salvation was going to be taken from them.

The world--even the Church of today--is complacent. We’re running the vineyard and we don’t want to cede control to God. We want to be in control.

Besides, we tell ourselves, Jesus walked the earth so long ago. And it’s been so long since He rose from the dead and ascended to heaven.

But we must not be complacent! Nor egotistical! Our lives can come to an end in a flash and the course of our time on this earth can change more quickly than we can fathom.

When I woke up on one June morning in 2014, I had no idea that later that night, I would have a heart attack that would destroy 40% of my heart, that I would require not just a stent, but also a pacemaker and defibrillator. When I get out of the shower each morning and catch sight of the outlines of this machine in my chest, I remember that I'm just a tenant, that real life doesn't issue from being in control here, but in giving control to the One Who still has the whole world in His hands.

We must remember always that real hope comes from Jesus Christ alone.

God is still in control.

This vineyard will one day pass from existence and Christ will establish His new kingdom for eternity and those who have steadfastly followed Him will, by His grace, be part of it.

Jesus Christ is the sign and seal that God and His promises can be trusted.

And that this world is still His vineyard. We are still His tenants.

And if we will hold onto Christ, we will bear the good fruit of a life lived for Him and we will live in His good kingdom now and forever. Amen

Seed, Weed, Feed

[This was shared with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, during worship today.]

Matthew 21:33-46
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus quotes Psalm 118, an Old Testament passage that comes up repeatedly in chapter 21 of Matthew, and describes Himself as the stone rejected by the builders. Jesus claims to be the foundation stone of the universe, the God Who makes us and Who makes new and everlasting life for all who believe in Him possible. But he’s also saying that many who claim to build their lives on God will spurn Him and demand His execution on a cross outside the walls of Jerusalem. The crucified and risen Jesus ushers the kingdom of God into our world and into our lives, but He says that this kingdom will be taken away from those who fail to bear fruit.

What on earth does that mean?

And how does a person go about producing fruit?

Before tackling those two questions, a little background is in order.

Jesus often used fruit as a metaphor for Christians and the lives we lead.

In Matthew’s Gospel, for example, Jesus is quoted as saying that believers should produce the fruit of repentance. He says that trees that produce bad fruit will be cut down. He says that every tree produces either good fruit or bad fruit. He also says that a tree will be known by its fruit.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus says that He is the true vine and the Father is the vinedresser. Each believer, drawing life from Him, is a branch. Occasionally, to foster our growth, to prevent us from being disconnected from God, and to ensure that we keep bearing fruit, God will cleanse or prune us, subjecting us to challenging circumstances that will find us either depending more deeply on God or turning away from Him. God’s purpose is to help us to live fruitful lives.

So, what does it mean to lead a fruitful life? Simply put, a Christian bearing fruit is someone who, by their daily interaction with Christ, is living a life that honors God.

Often, Christians who are, in Jesus’ terms, “bearing fruit” will hardly notice what God is producing in them. They’re focused on following Christ, not on looking like Christians.

I once knew a man, we’ll call him Joe, who worked as an engineer for a major manufacturing firm. He learned that another man, I’ll call him John, had joined the congregation where I was the pastor.

“John is an incredible man,” Joe told me. “We worked briefly side-by-side twenty-five years ago and occasionally in the years since, we’ve come in contact when our divisions had to work together on things.”

Joe went on to explain that among the things that impressed him about John were that he was ethical, a hard worker, deeply dedicated to his wife and children, and, in spite of his busy-ness, one who managed both to be involved with his church and to take excellent care of himself, eating right and running several miles a day.

“And John is such a real person,” Joe went on. “But what I really appreciate about him is that he loves Christ without pushing his faith onto anyone. That earned him lots of chances with me—and I was a hard case at the time—to talk about faith issues. In his way, John, more than anybody I know won me over to Christ.”

When I told John about my conversation with Joe, he was shocked. “I don’t remember any of that,” he told me.

There’s a lesson in John’s reaction. Sometimes we Lutheran Christians feel guilty because we don’t go door-to-door asking people if they’ve been saved. Now, I absolutely believe in sharing our faith with others. I absolutely believe that we should tell others about Jesus and invite them to worship, study, pray, and serve with us in Jesus’ Name.

But I’m convinced that the Christians who have the biggest positive impact on others aren’t the ones who spout four spiritual laws and try to guilt others into following Christ.

They aren’t the ones who go around shouting about the need for justice and compassion in our world and then treat those who disagree with them like dirt.

Fruit is a byproduct of our connection to the God we meet in Jesus Christ. John was unaware of the good fruit he was bearing, the witness of his life with Jesus, because he wasn’t following Christ to impress anybody else. He was following Christ because He knew that it’s Christ Who gives us forgiveness, life, hope, confidence, and joy, in good times and bad here, and in eternity. Fruit is Jesus working in our lives, just as the apples from a healthy tree result not from anything that the tree itself has done, but from sun, rain, and cultivation. The more connected to Christ you and I remain, the more fruitful our lives will be.

But unlike a fruit tree that has no control over its exposure to sun, rain, or cultivation, you and I can choose whether we’ll remain close enough to bear the good fruit Jesus talks about. As Pastor Scott Salsman wrote some years ago, “God will produce fruit in our lives if we honor him in the garden of the soul.” So, how exactly does that happen?

First: We seed the garden. One of my favorite passages of Scripture in Isaiah 43:19. It’s in the Old Testament and comes as part of a section of that book, written at least five centuries before Jesus’ birth, which foretells the coming of a saving king. In the verse, the prophet quotes God as saying, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

The point? The living eternal God isn’t stuck in the past. God is always doing new things and often God is doing them in older people. Pastor John Maxwell cites an interview with a doctor he read. The doctor had studied people 100 years of age and older. This doctor found that all these people had one thing in common. Maxwell thought it might be good diets and exercise programs. The doctor could have mentioned good genetics. (In line with that old saying, "The best way to ensure a long life is to pick the right partents.") No doubt each of those things are helpful for long living. But, Maxwell says, “the one thing these centenarians had in common was purpose.” For them, “the future looked bright; they had a reason to live.”

I meet a lot of people who are stuck in ruts. You know what a rut is, don’t you? It’s a grave with the ends kicked out! But people who keep bearing fruit are people who keep seeding their garden. They continue to look for new ways to serve God and neighbor. They keep trying to learn new things so that they can continue living useful Christian lives. So, seed the garden. Be open to God doing new things in your life.

Second: Weed the garden. I’m a terrible gardener. Back when we lived in northwest Ohio, I tried for several years to keep a garden. I should have had a great garden. The soil up there is rich, as you know, part of the old Black Swamp. On top of that, the farmers would always disc the soil for me and then bring good manure for me to spread. In spite of all that though, every year I tried my hand at gardening, I managed to let the weeds get the better of me. But we can’t afford to let that happen to our relationship with Christ. We need to weed our garden.

A fellow I read about had developed a bad habit of misusing God’s Name. That happens any time we use God’s Name for anything other than prayer, praise, or thanksgiving. We tend to think that misusing God's Name is an insignificant thing these days. But whenever we use God’s Name in ways other than God intended, we cheapen God’s Name and dishonor God, we clog up the line of communication between God and us with pointless static.

This fellow became convinced that he needed to break his bad habit. He enlisted his wife and a good friend in helping him to do so. He put a thick rubber band on his wrist. Every time his wife or friend heard him misuse God’s Name, they were to snap him good. After a while, the fellow got tired of having a sore wrist.

However you choose to weed your garden, you’ll be clearing the way for God to bear fruit in your life.

Finally, to bear fruit: Feed the garden. By this, I mean, for one thing, doing what you’re doing right now. (No, not sleeping!) I mean worshiping. We also feed the garden when we regularly spend time in prayer, whenever we receive Holy Communion, and when we read the Bible on our own and with others, in Bible studies. We feed the garden when we connect with Christ every day and with the Church whenever it's possible.

Finding time for this can be really hard, I know. A young mother once told me that with her three kids, all under age of five, the only peace and quiet she ever got was in the shower. She used this time to pray. Her daily shower became the most important few minutes of her day.

A man I know bought a small Bible--one of those slimline editions--and kept it and a daily devotional like Christ in Our Home or Our Daily Bread, in the top drawer of his desk at work. Each day, just before he had lunch, he pulled out the Bible and the devotional and read and prayed.

A farmer, profiled by Mosaic, the ELCA’s video magazine, always gathered with farm hands in the barn in the predawn hours each day in order to read the Bible, what he called “the owner’s maual.”

Each of these three people were feeding the garden, keeping in touch with Christ and the Church.

Jesus Christ came into the world to give us citizenship in the kingdom of God. It’s a free gift to all who turn from sin and trust in Him.

But sometimes our life with Christ can be choked off by indifference and the demands of daily life. If we will commit ourselves to a lifestyle that includes

• being open to the new things God wants to do in our lives,
• ridding ourselves of the old things that drag us away from God, and
• staying in daily close contact with Christ and His Church,

we can bear the fruit Jesus speaks of today, whether we’re 6 or 106, or any other age.

Jesus, the cornerstone, builds great lives in those who follow Him intently.

[Seed the garden, weed the garden, and feed the garden are the three points for this text suggested by Pastor Scott Salsman in the sermon cited above. I'm grateful for the inspiration!]

A Look at The Bible Lessons for This Coming Sunday (October 5, 2008) (Part 1)

[Most weeks, I try to publish at least one post dealing with the appointed Bible lessons for the upcoming Sunday. My hope is that I can at least help the people of the parish I serve as pastor, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, to prepare for worship. Others may find these explorations helpful because we use the same Bible lessons used by most other North American Christians each Sunday. For information on the Church Year and the plan of lessons called the lectionary, see here. This week, this look at the lessons will be broken down into several installments.]

The Prayer of the Day:
Beloved God, from you come all things that are good. Lead us by the inspiration of your Spirit to know those things that are right, and by your merciful guidance, help us to do them, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen

The Bible Lessons:
Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:7-15
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46

Comments: Isaiah 5:1-7
1. Those who read Better Living regularly are familiar with the consensus theory of much modern scholarship that Isaiah was composed during three different periods of ancient Judah's history, composed by at least three different authors. (It was thought legitimate back in Biblical times for authors operating in the "school of thought" of an esteemed religious leader to write in that leader's name.) Whether all of the theories about Isaiah are correct or not, it's undisputed by scholars of all stripes that our lesson is among the earliest sections of the book to be composed.

2. Based on Isaiah 6:1, it's thought that Isaiah began his activities as a prophet during the last year of the reign of King Uzziah, meaning 743BC. Isaiah prophesied during the reigns of three subsequent kings of Judah: Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Hezekiah's reign ended in 687BC.

3. In the Bible, a prophet was not someone who necessarily predicted the long-term future, although some of the Old Testament prophets, notably Isaiah. did that. But Isaiah, particularly in the lesson for Sunday, exhibits key characteristics of the prophet's work. Prophets:

• saw themselves as messengers who
• addressed current situtations and
• pressed people to deal with those situations in order to avoid future difficulties or even punishment

4. The verses of our lesson come near the end of what is seen as the first major section of Isaiah, chapters 1 through 6. They contain oracles from God with both threats and promises for rebel Judah. (Judah is referred to, basically, as Judea in the New Testament. It's the southern kingdom that resulted from the split of ancient Israel shortly after the reign of Solomon.) In these chapters and in our lesson, God addresses Judah's rejection of God and explains the dire consequences for a nation that owed its existence to God.

5. As both Lutheran scholar Ralph W. Klein and The Jerome Bible Commentary explain, the first two verses of the reading are ambiguous. In what's thought to be a song, are these the words of the singer or of God? But the identity of the speaker in v.3 is clear: God.

6. The lesson presents us with a parable in which "the Beloved," God, is said to have worked hard to create and nurture the vineyard. He did so with the expectation of a great harvest. But, instead, the vineyard "yielded wild grapes." Here, the vineyard is Israel, which because of its increasing separation from God, is living worthlessly.

In v.3, God says, choose whether you'll live for yourselves and your momentary pleasures or for me. If you live for yourselves, death will inevitably follow. If you live for me, you'll not only have Me, but life thrown into the bargain, because I'm the maker and restorer of life.

7. The "fruit" of life without God is injustice, bloodshed, and futility. Injustice, of course, is never God's will for our lives. (See here and here.) For the prophets, justice meant loyalty to God and a commitment to caring for one's neighbor, even the foreigner in one's midst. The New Testament writer James' definition of "true religion" would do well as a definition of Old Testament justice:

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. (James 1:27)

8. Both Klein and the Jerome Commentary point out that the lesson ends with a pun in the original Hebrew (the Old Testament writers loved puns). The Jerome commentary says:

[In the play on words in v.7,] God looked for "judgment" (mispat) and all he found was "bloodshed" (mispah), for "justice" (s'daqa) and he found an "outcry" (s'aqa). Mispat was basically a judgment, the revealed will of God covering the totality of man's [sic] duties, to God, to man [sic], and to himself. S'daqa was the correlative of mispat and it meant whatever accorded with this divine demand. It could be applied to some particular duty or to the quality of the man who lived according to mispat. We translate it as "justice," which meant both the doing of one's duty and the state of being resulting from doing that duty.

9. When Israel goes bad, God says, it isn't for lack of care and attention from Him. Israel is responsible for its own fate.