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Sermon for Sunday, September 28, 2008
Pastor Sara Kay Olson-Smith
Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
Texts: Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80:1-7; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46
Grace to you from our Living God and from Christ Jesus our Savior and Lord.
This fall, we are using a Stewardship Program called: 100% BOLD: Living Abundantly in the Time of Scarcity. It is shaped around the 4 primary actions in the Eucharistic Prayer: take, bless, break and give. We remember Jesus who took bread, gave thanks and blessed it, broke it and gave it to his disciples. Take, bless, break and give. It is these actions which are also at the heart of our lives as stewards. The first, which we’ll talk about today, is take. Now “take” is not really something that you expect to hear as we start talking about stewardship. We mostly talk about the opposite of taking - giving. But this taking, as stewards,is about receiving faithfully what God gives. It is not the sort of taking which we see so often in our own world - the taking which becomes hoarding, getting as much as possible, the taking which assumes that what we have is ours alone, the kind of taking which has gotten our global economy into one big mess. However, the taking we are talking about is about receiving that which God has given to us, with gratitude and faithfulness.
Taking begins our life as God’s stewards because it reminds us that what we have is not ours, but is rather a gift that we’ve been given. We begin stewardship with a posture of receiving in knowing that our stuff, our finances, our gifts, our talents, our time, our blessings are not ours to own, but are pure gift, something that we’ve been given. So we take these things we’ve been given (as Jesus took that loaf of bread on that night so long ago) and receive it as a gift.
Our readings today help point to this way of living faithfully in God’s world. I love these parables which tell of God, the farmer, the vineyard owner, this image of God who plants with such tenderness, such hope, such determination, such persistence. In these stories we get an image of God who longs for life, who is stubbornly set on bringing an abundant harvest, and who will not be derailed. In our reading from Isaiah, the prophet speaks of God, who dug and planted, built a watchtower, and yet it yielded wild grapes, noxious fruits. God speaks of all God did to bring forth good fruit, but confronts us with the reality that so often we fall short of God’s expectations, for God laments,“What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not yet done in it?”
The Bible speaks over and over again of how God’s mission to save the world will not be stopped, will not be taken off course by unfruitful vines, by sinful folks, by our faults and failings, our pride and our selfishness. God will not be stopped in bringing about God’s way of life and salvation to this world. God’s saving way and God’s kingdom is built, not on us, but is planted and built on the cornerstone of Jesus Christ.
In his parable, Jesus tells about God as the vineyard owner again, and describes these tenants, these stewards who are more interested in getting their hands on the property, on plotting their way to owning the land than on being stewards. As we talk about the “taking” of stewardship, about receiving all that we have as God’s gifts to us, we are challenged by this understanding that we - as God’s people - are “stewards of so much, and owners of nothing.” All that we have we take as gift, as something that God owns, and which we receive to be stewards of.
As Pastor Mary Anderson writes, “Stewardship in a vineyard means being entrusted with the responsibility to tend the vines so well that they produce an abundance of good fruit. It means using the owner’s resources economically and wisely. Stewardship remains difficult for us, because in our hearts we still want to be owners, the independent shot-callers. Even if we weren’t violent tenants, we are reluctant ones. The warning of this parable, this call to repentance, is that the vineyard, the kingdom needs faithful stewards.”
This parable calls us to understand that we are stewards of all that we are and all that we have, not owners. We are called to be faithful tenants, to receive all we have as people entrusted to it for the time being, so that so that we, along with our neighbors and all creation, can live well, abundantly, even in the midst of scarcity.
We have this pastor- colleague who is great at reminding us pastor-types about this gift, that all we have and are is God’s. In our Tuesday morning text study, when any one of us says something like, “Well, over at my church....” he interrupts us and says “Whose church?” At this point, we all smile and say, “God’s church... well, over at the church I serve....” It’s become a sort of joke for us, but it is a helpful and faithful reminder that all that we have, all that we are, especially this church - the little vineyard here - is God’s and we have all been gifted with the opportunity to tend it together for awhile.
The good news in this is that God continues to nurture and tend the vineyard, to give us what we need, to provide for us in surprising ways, to bring forth good fruit, even in the smallest of vineyards. As stewards, we have responsibility to tend the vineyard, to nurture relationships with love and listening, to tend to the vines of justice and peace, to spread the seeds of faith in witness. While we have responsibility, in the end, God already took responsibility for saving us and the world. God has the ultimate responsibility to repair and redeem this world. It is kind of like the difference between renting and owning.... if you rent, you’ve got someone to call when the upstairs toilet starts leaking on the new couch downstairs. God is the one who is responsible, ultimately, for repairing this world.
We know this because of Jesus, who on the cross took responsibility for us and for our faults and failings as stewards of God’s creation. We know this because Jesus has saved the world, has redeemed us, has repaired the broken world and who by his resurrection has given us life - abundant life - even in the midst of scarcity. Jesus by his life and death and resurrection has freed us, so that we can be stewards of all that God has given us, free to love and serve and risk and give ourselves away, knowing that we have received so much. We cannot save ourselves, but we have been saved, the responsibility is God’s. We can work for God’s kingdom with joy because we are lifted from the burden of having to repair everything by our own strength and power.
At this table, we come forward to take the grace and forgiveness of Jesus, to receive the repairing and redeeming grace of God. In this meal we receive what we need to be good stewards, to tend what we are given, to plant some seeds and pulls some weeds and tend some vines, and give it all back to God, trusting that it was never ours, but God’s. We trust that God is taking care of it, and is taking care of us. We are called to be stewards of the many gifts that God has given us, to save and share and give away, and to take and receive, knowing the we are owners of nothing, and stewards of so much.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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