Resurrection Life

Easter 5, 2012: In which the preacher invokes "The Big Lebowski" in a congregation full of 80-year-olds. Crickets chirped. Oh, and Jesus teaches us to "abide".

Gospel: John 15: 1-11

 

Today’s Gospel text follows on the heals of the message that Glenndy Ose brought to us last Sunday.  Last Sunday Glenndy spoke of Jesus as the Great Shepherd of the Sheep an image we quite like to have until we recall that, hey, Jesus is calling us sheep.  All we do is just kind of stand there and let Jesus do all the work.  To which I respond: exactly.

 

This morning we hear Jesus refer to himself as the vine and to us as branches.  Another quite intriguing picture of who Jesus Christ is but again, kind of a disheartening image for someone who wants to know what it is they need to do to get into heaven.  

 

Each of our girls developed their independent gene in similar ways and they both made those developments known to us in their use of language.  For one of them it was they word, “Self”.  If we tried to do something for her she would snatch whatever it was out of our hands with the words, “self self!”.  Likewise our other daughter notified us of her independence by grabbing the spoon or whatever we were trying to do for her with the words, “Oni me, oni me!”

 

Those traits continue in each of us as we grow and develop as adults.  We are a people who are proud of the things we accomplish for ourselves.  We pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and soldier on making our way through life to each his own.  

 

The news has had quite a few stories on the decline of the mainline church and the rise of the mega non-denominational church.  Why is this happening one radio commentator wanted to know?  One young woman phoned in and said, “I go to such and such church because their message is relevant to my life and is filled with good advice.  The sermons teach me how to be a better spouse, a better Christian, and a better person.”

 

We like to have a checklist of things we have to do so that we can then be assured of our place in God’s presence.

 

But then these little vignettes pop up in Scripture and it turns everything that we want to do on our head, instead it is showing us what it is God is doing to bring us together and to give us life.  We just sit there in the sheepfold or stay clinging to the vine.  No branch gets to exclude any other branch, it’s not our job, God does the pruning and tending to His garden.

 

Our job, if it can be called that, is to abide in Christ.  In the movie the Big Lebowski the character played by Jeff Bridges was called simply, “The Dude” and the dude was known for one thing and one thing only... the Dude Abides.  The dude was always around and always would be.  The dude stays the dude even when everything else around him was going crazy.

 

So when Christ is talking about the branches abiding in the vine is he using the same definition as the dude?  I think so.  We cannot win our salvation by doing checklists of good works, our salvation was won for us by Christ, our good shepherd, our vine.  

 

We, in turn, have been grafted into Christ by virtue of our baptism, we have become part of the vine.  It is our job to make sure we stay that way, thus, while good works are not our salvation, making sure we stay near Christ is.  Like any living thing our faith our relationship with Christ needs to be nourished to stay alive, thus, when we come to church, study God’s word, find fellowship with other people on their life’s journey’s, we find ourselves drawing our life and our light from the true vine, Jesus Christ.  But, when we do not we find ourselves soon lost and dried out, ready to be thrown on the fire.  When I get into conversations about faith with seekers or with those who just aren’t sure about the whole God thing yet I like to explain our my spirituality, my faith, is like having an extra gear waiting for when the going gets rough.  People of faith have been proven to be more resilient to life’s curve balls because we know when confronted by these things that we are not alone.  It is not up to us alone to walk through this life.  We have each other, and more importantly, we have our true vine, jesus Christ.

 

Amen.

 

"While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering": a sermon on the future of an established, declining congregation with great things in store for it.

3 Easter 2012

Luke 24: 36b-48

Pastor Chris Enstad

Christ is Risen!  He is Risen indeed!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Brothers and sisters, I bring you grace and peace in the name of our Risen Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ.  Amen.

“While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering.”  

What an amazing statement by Luke. “While in their joy they were disbelieving and wondering.”  

In truth, those could be the words stamped on the outside of just about any Christian congregation could they not?  Oh, I know that there are plenty of Christians walking around feigning certainty but, usually I find that that certainty is really a smokescreen for uncertainty.  Indeed, often times the louder a Christian shouts at an unbeliever or questioner about the faith, the more often you have to wonder what they have that the rest of us don’t.  Christ appeared in the flesh only between the Resurrection and the Ascension, so, unless you have Jesus locked away in your basement then you are in the same boat as the rest of us.

We possess a very real but a very fragile faith.  Faith in and of itself is a gift given to us by the God who created us.  But, in giving us that gift, God entrusts it to some very human humans,  frail, easily distracted, sinful, judgmental, and capricious.

I have had friends in the faith who have had awful things happen to them or to someone they love, get lost in that most scariest of questions, “If there is a God, why would he let something so awful happen to me or to that person?”  

I also have friends who have so many crazy things going on in their lives that they seek a Christian faith that is unchanging, unshifting, uncompromising.  Both of those extremes, unfortunately, miss out on the living breathing gift of the fragile but real faith granted to us by the God who created us and loved us.

Elim: A people of joy who still, at times, disbelieve or wonder about this whole God thing.  I wonder if a church put that phrase on the outside of the door if more people might not darken the doors.  A church is all too often seen by those who are questioning, those who perhaps are in active states of disbelief, they are often seen as clubs for those who have it all down pat when, in fact, if folks out there knew that, “Hey, we have questions too,” might they not join us in our journey as a church?

I wonder….
“While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering”.

You know, I wonder about this whole thing all the time.  Who is this Christ that we claim has risen from the dead and what in the world does it have to do with us?

We say that we meet Jesus when we walk in the doors of this place.  Pr. Theim referred to the sign that is in the pulpit up here “That we would see Jesus”.  Well, if I’m doing my job and Pr. Marcia is doing hers and Pastor Theim is doing his, and we are meeting Christ in the flesh when we walk in here... what is keeping us from sharing that amazing news with all of the souls walking past the doors of this place.

The last verse you heard in the Gospel text this morning says, “You are witnesses of these things.”…….You are witnesses of these things.  

But, man oh man, don’t we wish we could just be witnesses and not have to testify to what we have seen?  We don’t want to be seen as being too pushy or too in your face like some other kind of Christian that we see on TV or on the street corner.  But, we can testify to the wonder of the resurrection in many other ways.

Being a believer gives us the story to tell.  It gives us the path to walk.  It gives us our way forward.

Elim is taking great steps in faith did you know that?  I don’t think we have all grasped the significance of four congregations worshipping together in the same building.  Do you know what kind of seed it is that God has planted?

Pr. Theim preached on Easter Sunday.  Some folks questioned that decision, others got it.  The way ahead for our congregation will not look or sound like the Elim of 40 years ago.  This afternoon a team made up of the pastors and 4 lay people from Lao Lutheran and Elim will gather around a meal to begin dreaming of new ways to expand our relationship with each other.  The opportunities are really and truly amazing.

But tell me this: What do you think might happen to us when we move beyond a landlord/renter relationship with Monument of Faith or All God’s Children churches?  One is a Pentecostal denomination, the other is non-denominational, what kinds of new ways of being Elim might happen when we take those next steps?  

And, what about new ministry opportunities in our community that are making themselves known to us?  We are actively putting together outreach teams for Lakeview Elementary School and Good Samaritan Speciality Health Community.  Please, let me or Shirley know if you would be a part of those teams.  

Or, how about our soon to be made, agreement with the Red Cross to become a disaster response location or with Families Moving Forward as they seek to increase the number of places homeless families can stay for a week at a time.  Or, North Memorial as they dream with us about ways we can serve as a health care outpost for them?  

The opportunities for us to make a positive structural impact on our community are amazing.

But, the question I have been holding out to our leadership is the same one I am holding out to you:

“What can Elim do uniquely better than the 1,000 other congregations in our area?  And why are we doing it?”

A pastor friend of mine put that question in an even more powerful manner: “If Elim were to cease to exist tomorrow would anyone in our city notice?”

I pray the answer to that last question would be, “Yes.”  My answer to the first two questions is from our scripture this morning: “Because we have witnessed the resurrected Jesus Christ, we have received the promise of salvation we have been commissioned today to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins to all nations.”

We are called to get over the fact that we are at once a people of joy and disbelief and are a people called to witness to our city, our families, and our world what an amazing thing God has done.

I asked our council last week to think about what kind of newspaper headlines might be written about Elim in three years time.  We had several pretty awesome submissions.  Let me share mine with you, and mind you, this is just visioning so, don’t get too freaked out:

The headline reads: “93 year old congregations closes its doors and reopens as The Oasis Church.  Come and see a multi-cultural, multi-denominational church as it works for transformation in the Robbinsdale area.  Come and experience the Oasis, a cup of cold water for your life’s journey.”

If you thought having the Laotian pastor preaching on Easter was pretty far out, just hold on to your socks.  

Christ is Risen!  He is Risen, indeed!

Alleluia, Alleluia.

Amen.

Technorati Tags: Elim Lutheran Church, Lutheran, preaching, Luke 24, sermons

Thoughts on Caine's Arcade

This video:

http://cainesarcade.com/

Is making the rounds of the internet.  I think it is a tremendous teaching tool for companies, entrepreneurs, and congregations.

The lessons I take away from a story like this in regards to church life go like this:

1. Do what you are called to do as a church.  Don't look around wondering if you're doing it right, just get moving and figure out the details as you go.  Many congregations are stuck in "talk" mode and don't ever get to "do" mode.  Caine just started doing it, and he made it his young life's mission to staff that arcade... that's what we're called to do for the Gospel Good News!

2. Find your congregation's square root button.  It slips by so fast you might miss it but did you notice that Caine uses square roots to determine the validity of the fun pass?  What's your cool button at your church?  Or did yours fall off years ago and no one has thought to clue it back on?  The highest functioning congregations are the ones having fun doing what they're doing.

3. It's ok to be proud of something you and your church have done.  We often, as congregations and leaders, don't like to wear our "Caine's Arcade" shirt to school because we're afraid someone will make fun of us.  In the church world we are reknown for eating our most promising young leaders because of the scorn heaped on them for trying something new and breaking established traditions.  The last words out of Caine's mouth in the film credits are, "I'm proud."  I think God says the same thing when we forget about the critics and the naysayers and just get to work doing what He has called us to do as congregations.  Celebrate the victories!

 

"It is Finished": A sermon for Good Friday

Good Friday 2012

Meditation on the Cross


“It is Finished”


And so this is what it has come to… in the end this day is about the news of a death is it not?

And after these last years of war and death and famine with the nightly news showing us picture after picture of what human beings are capable of doing to each other do we really need to be confronted by one more casualty of human sin and brokenness?

This evening, here in this place, we are gathered in order to contemplate the crucifixion of our Lord, Jesus Christ.  We gather to contemplate and to see what it is that we have done to this innocent man, this teacher, this friend to the friendless and comforter to the afflicted.

Together we contemplate this cross and the body that hangs upon it.  Does this scene depress you?  Does it scare you?  Or does it give you hope?

“It is finished.”  These are the words uttered by Jesus in his last breath on the cross.  We don’t often pause to think about what these words mean for God or for us. “It is finished.”  What is it?  And how is it finished?

What we are confronted with this evening is not a picture of how our worldly wisdom defines success, it is not a picture of how our individualistic culture defines leadership and it is certainly not how the American version of Christianity defines salvation is it?  A successful man knows how to manipulate the political process and can hob-knob with the elders and the politicians to get what he wants.  A true leader knows how to fight evil and combat the forces of darkness does he not?  A true savior shields us with his strength and defends us with his might.  A true Christian would not have stuck out of the crowd enough to get killed for his views.  

But we will contemplate this cross and the body that hangs upon it.  We cannot run, we cannot hide, we cannot pretend that something else happened to our Lord and Savior.

When you look upon this cross what do you think about?  Do you perhaps understand with your head but not your hearts?  Do you seek to distance yourself from the reality of Jesus’ suffering and death as though it were some act that happened too long ago to affect us?  

Can we dare to pretend that we do not know this young man?  Will we deny Jesus Christ?  Will we deny that it is through suffering and death that we were won from suffering and death?  

You know this man, brothers and sisters, you know him intimately.  You were there when he was born in a manger to an unwed mother who held him tenderly in swaddling clothes do you remember that?  You were there, remember, when he was baptized in the River Jordan?  You were there and watched his ministry to the outcast, the helpless, the excluded… you have seen the miracles he performed bringing the dead to life, feeding the masses, changing water into wine.

Listen to what I am saying to you, you know this man, brothers and sisters… and he knows you.  Tonight we can no longer pretend that the crucifixion was a distant act in a distant time in a distant land.  When we look at this cross this evening we must be reminded that the sons and daughters of God are being killed every day… they are killed in war, they are killed by hate, and they are killed in prisons both with and without walls.  Every time the status quo is threatened to be upset it happens, again and again.  

Remember tonight that it wasn’t Jesus’ enemies that did him in; it was his friends.  Remember tonight that it was not unbelief and lack of order that killed this man but it was the religious authorities working in conjunction with a very well oiled Roman government that nailed him to the cross.  

As we meditate on the cross… a pilgrim church gathered around the hill at Golgotha do you see yourself there?  In his crucifixion and death, Jesus Christ draws us all to himself… each and every one of us.  In his body hanging on this cross do you see yourself looking back?  In Jesus Christ, our perfect mirror, we are confronted by our own sin and suffering.  

We are reminded that when confronted by evil God fought back not with evil but with longsuffering love.  We are reminded that in Jesus’ love for the world we must confront our own hardness of heart, in Jesus’ ministry to the sick and the poor and the hungry we must be confronted by our own hoarding of wealth, our endless pursuit of honors and glory, our striking out at those who might hurt us in the name of protecting what we have.  We are reminded that this body hanging on the cross is someone we know… it is us.

In drawing us to himself on the cross Jesus Christ draws all of who we are… our entire sinful selves.  What of you will be left on this cross this evening?  Contemplate that.  This is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world… including yours.  What are they?  

Know in your heart that just as sure as Jesus was nailed to this cross 2000 years ago so he is nailed to the cross each and every day in our transgressions against God and each other.  When we are confronted by the pure light his body reflects back at us our instinct is to hide from him or smash him into nothingness.  Every time we choose to stand with the strong against the weak, every time we keep our mouth shut in the presence of injustice and inequity we nail him to this tree.  

Contemplate this cross this evening brothers and sisters and ask yourself what you see reflected back at you.  Do not turn away, make yourself look… you cannot get away from this tree today though you may choose to ignore it the rest of the year… look at what lengths God will go through to win you back for himself.  Do not run, do not hide.

I stand here to proclaim to you that tonight Christ draws you to him, he takes all of your sins on himself, and he gasps one last word… “It is finished” It is accomplished… leave your sins on this cross tonight brothers and sisters for they have no more power over you… they are done… we are done… we now belong to God, we now belong to one another.

Thanks be to God.

A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

4 Lent 2012

John 3: 14-21

Pastor Chris Enstad

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.

These are the most famous of the famous texts in the Bible is it not? It appears on bumper stickers and billboards, in end zones and painted on athletes faces.

John 3: 16 is often called the “Gospel in a nutshell”. I, however, would have to disagree. Yes, this verse is important and, yes, if we were to ever memorize any of our Bible at all I would want this to be at the top of the list of required verses.

However, the context in which these words appear is just as or even more important for us to know.

For instance, to whom is Jesus speaking? Do you remember?

He is speaking to Nicodemus, a Pharisee. Remember that Nicodemus came to Jesus Christ at night, a very important thing for John who was ever concerned with the things of the light and the things of the dark, with good and evil, with insiders and outsiders.

Recall that in its early days Christianity was not the dominant religion of society or culture, indeed it was a persecuted system of beliefs. When John wrote his Gospel there were small communities of Christians and they were living cut off from friends and family for rejecting the faith of Israel. But within the synagogue there were secret believers, those who had come to faith in Jesus Christ but were afraid of confessing that faith so they they too would not be expelled from the synagogue and also cut off from their families.

So, Nicodemus, a Pharisee, comes to Jesus in the dark and confesses that he knows that Jess is a teacher who has come from God for no one could do those signs apart from the presence of God.

And Jesus begins to teach Nicodemus using metaphors that helped paint a picture not just of faith but of life in God. He used common words to paint a picture of an uncommon occurence, that is, having faith the God was here in the flesh and moving amongst his people, who, John tells us, knew him not.

But Nicodemus knew. Or he thought he did.

No one could do these things apart from God, Nicodemus says.

And teaches proceeds to teach him about going to heaven after being born from above.

One must be born again from the Spirit. Nicodemus could not grasp this new, radical understanding of conversion and absolution. How can I be born again?

Jesus turns him back on his own knowledge, hey, buddy, you are a teacher of Israel how can you not understand these things. I am testifying to you and you aren’t receiving me.

Here, how about this one:

And then Jesus takes Nicodemus back into one of what a friend of mine calls a “deep track” of Scripture. A story that people knew but probably didn’t do much with.

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believes in him may have eternal life.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

And then Jesus goes on: Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.

The community of believers that John was writing to was small. Though these versus are often now used by a strident and over confident Christianity in a way of forcing people to believe, the community that read and heard these words was weak, small and at constant danger of disappearance all together. Hear those words in that context and they take on a whole new meaning.

Now we think to our Lord, Jesus Christ, as the serpent on the stick that we heard from Numbers this morning and we will examine more closely on Wednesday at our midweek services. And then we know that these verses in John are not about us, they are about Jesus. He is teaching Nicodemus, and us, not just about our faith but about himself and why he had to die.

The people in the wilderness of Numbers are us. We are a sinful humanity by nature. When confronted with a choice we will more often then not choose our own needs over and against the needs of our neighbors. When the people of Israel were in the wilderness they complained about the food and God sent the serpents to kill the people. We too are in the wilderness of sin, a wilderness that can and has overwhelmed either ourselves or those we know and love.

And then Jesus compares himself to the brazen serpent. This was not a serpent made out of Gold, it was worth little to nothing. How could something like a serpent on a stick save the people, they must have pulled their hair out figuring that out.
Likewise, how could Jesus Christ, a man beaten, whipped, and and killed be the savior of the whole world?

And, Jesus tells Nicodemus, and us, he must be lifted up. And we, too, prepare ourselves in Lent for the crucifixion of our Lord, Jesus Christ. This man whom we love and adore must be put to death on a cross put to death by the humanity he came to save. That is why our faith, especially in the Lutheran church, is not a faith of glory but a faith that is delivered to us from this symbol of death. It is a theology not of glory but a theology of the cross.

So when the waves threaten to overturn you, when life is poisoning you or those you love, let us pause and look to the cross. Look to Christ. The whole entire world but tell you that you are worthless, that you cannot accomplish much, and that all that you have done is for naught, but it is from the cross that Christ preaches to you today, you are worth this much, that God loves you so much that he sent me to die for you. For you.

Let us find ourselves gathered always as a community around the foot of the cross looking to it for our faith, our hope, and as the essence of the love we share with each other and our world.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Technorati Tags: lectionary, preaching, Elim Lutheran Church, sermons, theology of the cross

"Makings" vs. "Meetings"

Seth Godin recently pointed out that there is a huge difference between making something and meeting something. We organize and prioritize things differently if we were, say, to be meeting a train over and against making a train. Working in the church can often end up in days of endless meetings. Meetings are necessary but they invite hurried boredom, frustration and downright rudeness (for the chronically late) because more often than not creatives and producers on your staff would rather be out DOING something than sitting in a room talking ABOUT doing something.

I wonder if we might not invite each other into "makings" where the staff team is invited into a relationship where they are making something not meeting about something.  What kind of inspiration would come from that?  How many silos might get torn down when different areas of your church stop defending their turf and start making something new and exciting?

Challenge: Try preaching 1000 of your best words this Sunday

In listening to a singer-songwriter speak about his craft recently, he said something that struck me as quite poignant.  A woman asked, "How do you know a song you are working on is 'done'?"  His response, "When I am making an album I know that I have to say everything I want to say in 3 1/2 minutes, that kind of economy forces me to be creative with what I am saying and how I am saying it."

As preachers we have often been led to believe that we should preach until we are done, but there are often no brackets around the sermon moment.  Often preachers circle the landing field three or four times before landing the plane, as they say.  

And so I have been challenging myself to paint my sermons as though the canvas is only so wide and so high.  I have been crafting sermons that have a limit.  In self-limiting the sermon I believe two things are happening: I am making my points in a clearer, more succinct way and two, I see fewer glances at the wristwatch.  

How am I doing this?  By challenging myself, each week, to limit myself to 1000 of the very best words I can use to preach on any given text.  1000 words is a lot of words, why not try it and tell me how it goes?

When I mentioned this challenge on my Facebook page it ignited a small firestorm of pushback from several of my ordained colleagues but several more "attaboy" thumbs-ups from my friends who have to sit in the pew and not stand in the pulpit.  I wonder if preachers were to challenge themselves to hone their craft on a more consistent basis, more like a singer-songwriter, if we might not find ourselves with a cadre of energized, talented preachers rather than burned out, dried out, emptied out ones?

What do you think?

This post was 319 words.

 

Sacrilege: Finding Life in the Unorthodox Ways of Jesus by Hugh Halter

Hugh Halter is a well-regarded church planter, pastor, consultant and missionary to the United States.  He builds and maintains a network of missional church communities called Adullam in Denver, Colorado.  He has street cred.  He is not just a talker, he is a doer.  

Halter's book, Sacrilege, is an interesting take on the Jesus story and what it means for the church in the present age.  His pithy and trenchant stories are not as much grist for the mill as much as they are food to sustain those who are striving to lead intentional communities particularly if they come out of the evangelical traditions of church planting.  I say this because much of what Halter is discovering has been present within the mainline traditions for sometime.  The Emerging Church movement has actually freed the mainline and some questioning evangelicals to discover new freedoms and new ways of preaching Christ that don't necessarily follow the paradigms of the past.  As such, people in Halter's world often will accuse some of his communities of committing sacrilege.  Halter, like many of my Lutheran tribe, will turn to the Scripture and respond, "Oh, really?  How so?"

This is really just a book of stories from a pastor who is on the ground.  There are six footnotes to the whole thing and one of them is from a book about Bono so that means there are five footnotes.  I would use the book to open up discussions within existing communities or if a leader is seeking to get people to dream about church lived an other way.  It is good stuff but not necessarily a lasting tome for the library.

My uncle: a eulogy (of sorts)

My dad is a fraternal twin with my uncle Paul.  Paul died last week at the age of 64 of all sorts of issues but whatever they were they were complicated by Paul's addiction to alcohol.  Addiction is a disease.  I have seen all the email forwards and read all of the hard-hearted things that people have to say to someone like me who insists that addiction is about more than just "quitting cold turkey".  It is an illness and it is a terribly destructive one at that.  Families affected by alcoholism are turbulent, often crazy-feeling, and kids raised in those households enter life with two strikes against them 1. that they were raised in an unstable environment and 2. their parents aren't there to provide the kind of safety net a normal family provides.

Alcoholics need to be intervened upon by friends and family and put through treatment.  Yes, I've seen the stats and they are, forgive the pun, sobering.  But sobriety without a program is not real sobriety.  Would you believe me if I told you that to this day I am convinced that George Bush's actions and decisions were affected by his untreated alcoholism?  He exhibits many of the symptoms of what we call being a "dry drunk"... what kind of man would he be if he were in a 12-step program that led to his truly being "in recovery"?

If you or someone you love is in the midst of addiction of any kind do yourself a favor and intervene.  There are websites that show you how to do it here's one.  Denial is more than just a river in Egypt.  Paul was intervened on many times and none served to break his addiction, but we can all rest knowing that we tried.  It shows just how powerful the drug of alcohol is that not even family and grandkids can get you to turn around.  

I loved (love!) my uncle Paul.  He reminded me of Paul in A River Runs Through It not that my dad was any kind of Norman but Paul definetly insisted on raising the crazy-bar at every turn.  He was bigger than life, as many alcoholics are; but you knew that in the glint of his eye he gave a crap about you and the world.  God bless the memory of Paul O. Enstad

Sermon from 16 Pentecost regarding Matthew 21: 33-36 in which the Preacher takes a good look at our "Christian" "Moral" nation

16 Pentecost 2011

October 2

 

Matthew 21: 33-46

 

Pastor Chris Enstad

 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

 

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.  Do you understand what you are doing here?  Why oh why are you continuing to mouth off to the religious authorities?  Why oh why are you challenging their authority in front of the crowd, don’t you understand that they work with the Roman government?  Don’t you understand what is going to happen to you if you don’t just keep your head down?  You are standing in the temple, in Jerusalem, in front of the chief priests and elders of the people talking down to them and telling parables that aren’t quite parables are they, they aren’t quite as hard to understand as some of your other parables, it’s like you’re not even trying to protect yourself from the charges of heresy and even treason.

 

Just last Sunday we heard you respond to the questioning of the authorities who came to you challenging your authority and you responded by challenging theirs and in fact knocked their authority down a couple rungs by forcing them to respond to your question regarding the baptism of John with the answer, “We don’t know.”  You told the parable of the two sons one who said he would go to work and didn’t and the one who said he wouldn’t go to work and then did asking which one did the will of the father... clearly it was the one who changed his mind.  You held out to the people of Israel yet another chance to repent and to live not just as children of God by title but by deeds as well.

 

And now today, today Jesus you continue to press your point with yet another parable, right on the heels of the first.  And now you are really going to far.

 

Why are you doing this?

 

Jesus tells this story:

 

A master of a house planted a vineyard, dug the winepress and then wanted to turn the business over to tenants who would pay rent freeing him to pursue other endeavors.  He sends his servants to get his payment, the first fruits of the harvest, and the tenants beat one, killed the other and stoned yet another!  And so the owner sent MORE servants and they did the same to them!

 

So the owner said, “Ok, maybe if I send my son they will respect him.”  But the tenants thought to themselves, “hey this is his only son if we kill him we can have the inheritance for ourselves.”  So they killed him.  “What do you think the owner will do to them,” Jesus asks the religious authorities?

 

“He will put them to death and give them vineyard to someone who will do right by him.”

 

“Ahh,” Jesus said.  “You know that it is written that the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” (that’s Psalm 118)

 

“Therefore the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. “ 

 

And it turns out the chief priests and Pharisees didn’t have to think very hard to get it, and they they decided they needed to get him.

 

There are two very important, life and death important, things that we need to grasp by faith this morning. 

 

The first is that our God is a loving God.   A young pastor out in California named Francis Chan wrote a book about God’s love and he titled it, “Crazy love”.  For God’s love is indeed crazy, it is irrational, it makes no sense to us in how we treat each other and go about our daily lives of judgement, lack of mercy and compassion, it is truly a crazy God who would love us so much that he sent his prophets to proclaim His commands as our Creator and we rejected them.  

 

You don’t believe me?  Well how about let’s see how our lives and actions and politics and government and communities line up against God’s word then?  There are a whole lot of preachers getting up into their pulpits today to make a point that the church should be involved in vetting politicians.  My guess is that their sermons will be more about the empire than the Kingdom.  What politician can possibly measure up to the Word of God?  Shall we see how we are doing as a country?

 

How about Jeremiah? “ Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing and does not give him his wages, who says, “I will build myself a great house with spacious upper rooms, who cuts out windows for it paneling it with cedar and painting it with vermilion.  Do you think you are a king because you compete in cedar?  Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness?  Then it was well with him.  He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well.”

 

Oh yes the words of the prophets were rejected.

But this crazy God, this love-crazy God did not end it all for us then for good, no, he sent MORE prophets.  How about Ezekiel?

 

“If a man is righteous and does what is right and just -- if he does not eat upon the mountains or lift up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, does not defile his neighbor’s wife does not oppress anyone but restores to the debtor his pledge, commits no robbery, gives his bread to the hungry, and covers the naked with a garment, does NOT lend at interest or take any profit, witholds his hand from injustice, executes true justice between man and man, walks in my statutes, and keeps my rules by living faithfully -- he is righteous, he shall surely live, declares the Lord God.”

 

Our crazy-loving God offered us the means to repentence over and over again and we rejected those efforts every single time.

 

And so God sent his Son.  And we killed him too.  But our God, the God who loved us so much that he sent his Son to win us back to him.  That God who had all rights under any sense of justice anywhere in the world to call it quits for us once and for all.

 

That God won us back because that rejected stone became the cornerstone of a whole new world. 

 

Oh the chief priests and Pharisees got it all right, and they, in the end, got Jesus, but Jesus got us back.

 

Second, we must always remember that this world, our lives, our families, our time, our money, our possessions are not ours.  We are leasing them from the one who created them all in the first place.  God asks of us the first fruits of our labors and our worship and praise and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Think back to the roots of sinful thoughts or occasions in your own lives and how many of those sins can be traced back to the moment when you forgot that this whole thing is on loan from God and mistakenly thought it was all about you and your will and your desires and YOUR opinions of your neighbors and the poor and the weak and the downtrodden?

 

When I turn on the TV and find people cheering that an old person be allowed to die because they couldn’t afford insurance, that a gay soldier might be booed for asking for equal rights from the countrymen he is protecting, and then cheered a state that has committed 237 execution supposedly because we are so certain of our own judgement that we see fit to take the life of another human being... we are so dead certain that we take it on ourselves to remove from God’s vineyard a person he created.  

 

Where is our Ezekiel today?  Where is our Jeremiah?

 

I don’t care what party you are from, I don’t care about your politics, I care about your souls, I am going to be held accountable for those.  So line your lives up to God’s word today people?  Would you not have rejected the Son sent to claim what was his Dad’s to give it to someone more deserving?

 

Thanks be to God that our God loves us more than we can love each other and forgives us for taking it upon ourselves to sentence his Son to death.  I pray that each of us and our own egos and wills and desires may fall on the rejected stone of Christ, to be shattered today once and for all... and a new house be built from those pieces, with Christ as our cornerstone, as our head, the first fruits of the true life to come.