There is so much that we are not allowed to do at the moment to enrich our lives. The pandemic stops us sharing coffee, sitting near each other, tasting the wine from our common cup, singing and most of all partying.All these things, plus dancing take place at wedding banquets.Today’s’ parable of the wedding feast reminds us that our heavenly Father invites us to a joyful celebration, a banquet, a wedding reception where he lays on the best of everything for his guests.Wedding receptions are celebrations of God’ goodness, of his great love, of the family we are meant to be and of community. Two families are brought together and made one through the marriage of the bride and groom. Jesus continues speaking to the chief priests and Pharisees, but the imagery he uses moves from the comparison of the Kingdom of Heaven with a vineyard to the imagery of feasting.Again, the imagery is familiar in the Old Testament. We meet it in Psalm 23, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies” and primarily in the passage we have just read, Isaiah 25 which begins with a communal hymn of thanksgiving for God’s deliverance from tyrants continues with a description of a universal banquet hosted by God “on this mountain,” on Mount Zion, where the temple stood. God is faithful and steadfast. He will deliver his people from the tyrant, Babylon, just as he will deliver us from the pandemic. He is a refuge for the poor and needy, just as he is the one we run to now in our time of need.In the previous chapter, Isaiah 24, God was seen inaugurating divine reign on Mount Zion, attended by elders who saw God’s glory. Seventy elders were invited with Moses, Aaron, and Aaron’s sons to see the God of Israel on Mount Sinai, and to eat and drink in God’s presence, just before the stone tablets containing the commandments were given to Moses.Jesus, the bridegroom, who invites us into a marriage relationship with himself, invites us to feast with him on Mount Zion where God prepares this banquet not only for the leaders, or for the chosen people, but for “all peoples” and “all nations.” Here it is God who plans and serves the menu, described as very rich food and wine. Mourning clothes are no longer needed, since the people are comforted. As they eat, God victoriously “swallows” both the shrouds and death itself and wipes tears from all faces.Jesus always invites his enemies as well as his friends to feast with him. In his last supper he invited Judas knowing he was going to betray him.The chief priests and Pharisees were welcome even though they had been trying to engineer his death for a long time.There is continuity between this parable and last week’s story of the wicked tenants. In both slaves are sent out, in the one to collect the harvest and in the parable of the wedding feast to call those invited to the banquet.Even though the father of the groom, the King, had prepared the best calves and got the meal ready, his guests did not come.Being invited to a wedding feast is a privilege. The parents of the happy couple spend a lot of money and take long time preparing. The feasting went on for a week during a Middle Eastern wedding and gallons of wine would be drunkThe invited guests however make light of the invitation. Their responses are rude, making light of all the King has done for them.They did what a lot of us do when invited to feast on Christ through having a living relationship with him.Instead of enjoying what is best and good, they went away, one to his farm and another to his business while the rest maltreated and killed the slaves.They either ignored the invitation or angrily responded with violence.The majority of people are thankfully non violent. In this country, except for the new atheists, most people just ignore and give the church a wide berth. In much of the world today however, Christians are persecuted and killed, especially if they give God’ invitation to others and invite them to become Christians.Understandably the King was enraged and sent out troops to destroy the murderers and burn their city. This is strange. These people are the King’s citizens so presumably he is destroying his own city.The chief priests and Pharisees did not accept God’s invitation, the King’s Son was crucified and Jerusalem, the city of the great King as it is called in the psalms was soon to be destroyed.Strangely, the King sent out his slaves again, while the city burnt, this time to invite anyone they could find who would come.They invited all, good and bad so that the wedding hall was full of guests.God is not a respecter of persons. All, every race, gender and class of people are invited, Jew and Gentile alike.It is of great importance, however that we respond to the invitation. Our salvation and deliverance depends on it.Since our heavenly Father and King invites us to a party, our worship should be times of rejoicing and enjoying his presence. Post pandemic let’s enjoy, music, dance and feasting more often together as we celebrate who we are in Christ. The party in the story was in full swing when the King arrived. He notices a man who wasn’t wearing the right robe. The guests had been plucked off the streets so they wouldn’t have had a chance to find one. Their robes would have been provided by the host, a common practice in Middle Eastern weddings.The robe may refer to the robe of righteousness we are given when we repent of our sins and come to Christ, the robe placed upon us by our heavenly father which compare with the royal robe placed on the prodigal son when he returned to his father’s love.This guest was clearly not joining in with the rest of the guests so he is bound, and thrown out into outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.The only way of entering the wedding celebration is by invitation to celebrate the marriage of the King’s Son. We can only enter the Kingdom of heaven through Jesus and the sacrifice he made for us on the cross.Isaiah 62 talks about Jerusalem no longer being forsaken and of her land being married to the Lord. The chief priests and elders knew they were set apart to be God’s holy bride but had failed to reflect his glory.Ephesians 5 tells us that wedding celebrations are a picture of the marriage of Christ to his church and Revelation 19 reminds us that we will, one day, enjoy the marriage feast of the lamb who was slain for us in heaven. Jesus showed his love for us by dying on the cross so that our sin could be covered by his love.Through our hospitality and worship of God today we reflect the feast we will one day enjoy.One day soon our worship will look more like a celebration. Until then let us accept God’s invitation of love to become united with his Son and rejoice with the angels in heaven within our hearts.
The trouble with vineyards, churchyards and gardens is that however lovingly you tend and look after them and however much hard work you put into them, they very quickly become a weedy mess if you don’t keep it up.Today’s parable is the last one Jesus told to the chief priests and elders about God’s vineyardThe first, if you remember was about the equal pay given to all those hired to work in the vineyard. The second was about the two sons, one of which did what his father wanted and the other who didn’t. We are both labourers and children called to work in our part of God’s vineyard, called to produce fruitToday’s parable relates directly to the parable told in Isaiah. The landowner is God. All creation belongs to him, including us. He has produced a beautiful, fertile world for us to enjoy. In the Isaiah parable, the house of Israel and Judah are the vines, his choice planting. They are expected to bring forth cultivated grapes but instead they run wild and produce wild grapes.Because they are not behaving the way they ought, the landowner breaks down the wall of protection round about them and stops nurturing the vineyard. Very quickly, it becomes overgrown and full of briars and thornsWe saw a picture of what can happen when walls are broken down last Sunday. Soon after burying John’s ashes, fly tipping appeared, thrown over our broken down wall. It was shameful desecration of our churchyard and I am thankful to the person who cleared it.Isaiah, however wasn’t just talking about a piece of land. He was comparing the vineyard to the moral and spiritual state of God’s chosen people.Instead of justice Israel and Judah had produced bloodshed and instead of righteousness grief. They had given little thought to Yahweh who has loved and chosen them and given the all they needed to grow. God’s character of justice and mercy didn’t shine through their livesThey were suffering the consequences of their behaviour. God had done all he could for them, but in the end there are always consequences for the choices we make.Last week we looked at the consequences our beautiful world is suffering as a result of exploitation and greed and we saw that global warming and the pandemic has to some extent issued out of human desire for more and more. If we do not repent and change our behaviour we will be the author of our extinction.Soon after Isaiah told this parable Israel ceased to exist and Judah was carried away into Babylon. In the retelling of the parable by Jesus, the landowner leased the vineyard to tenants and went to live in another country. When the harvest came, he sent his slaves to receive his portion of the profits. The evil tenants seized one, killed another and stoned another. They were greedy and cruel, wanting to keep all the produce to themselves.The allusion is to Israel’s treatment of God’s prophets. They killed Zechariah by stoning him, beat Jeremiah and placed him in the stocks and killed the prophet Uriah.Instead of sending soldiers to execute the tenant farmers, the landowner was crazily patient. He doesn’t want to come down heavily on them so he sent more slaves with similar results.Finally he sent his Son, saying, “They will respect my Son.”The wicked tenants killed him to get his inheritance and threw him out of the vineyard. This was a picture of what the chief priests and elders were about to do to Jesus in crucifying him outside the city wall of Jerusalem. Jesus already knew what was in their hearts and mind.Jesus asked the chief priests what the landowner ought to do at this stage. They gave the only answer that would be just. The landowner should evict the wretches from the vineyard and make them suffer a miserable death. The vineyard should then be given to those who will produce fruit, share the produce and give the landowner what he is owed. The leaders of the Jewish people are pronouncing judgement upon themselves. Jesus was giving them an opportunity to turn from their evil. They didn’t do so and within forty years of Jesus’ crucifixion their city was destroyed by the Romans and the Jewish people were scattered across the globe.The final image is completely different and is one of both mercy and judgement. Jesus refers to himself as the stone who the builders rejected who becomes the cornerstone, the keystone without which a building cannot stand. Because the chief priests and elders had rejected Jesus and were about to kill him, they would be crushed by the stone whereas those who produced the fruits of the kingdom would inhabit God’s vineyard.This parable is all about how we treat Jesus. The chief priests and elders knew Jesus was talking about them. If they repented and followed Jesus they would have received mercy and Israel would have been saved. Instead they looked for a way to arrest him.Just as Jesus confronted the religious leaders of his time with the truth about their greed and violence, so he confronts us today.He longs that all God’s people, Jew and Gentile enjoy and display the fruits of his Kingdom. When we reject Jesus God’s only begotten son we exclude ourselves from God’s presence.“God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”We have all been given work to do in God’s vineyard nurturing the people, relationships, circumstances and events that God has entrusted to our care; our spouse, children, family, work, and church and the people of Frankley, Illey and Kitwell. Within our daily decisions and choices, our hopes and dreams and concerns we are called to reveal the presence and life of God and produce the fruits of his kingdom. God doesn’t call us to be lone workers. Jesus the Son who was slain works alongside us, nurturing and caring for us and filling us with his strength. He described himself as the vine. We are the branches.It would be easy in these days of death and destruction to forget about following Jesus and being members of his church.The Son and the slaves in Jesus’ parable suffered much in trying to bring in the harvest. Some of them were killed. They were not successful.Paul reminds us in Philippians 3 that we are our not required to be successful but to be faithful to Jesus. Our success and ultimate resurrection from the dead comes in knowing Jesus. Paul says, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.”When we know Jesus his life and character will shine through us bringing fruit for the kingdom of God.
The trouble with vineyards, churchyards and gardens is that however lovingly you tend and look after them and however much hard work you put into them, they very quickly become a weedy mess if you don’t keep it up.Today’s parable is the last one Jesus told to the chief priests and elders about God’s vineyardThe first, if you remember was about the equal pay given to all those hired to work in the vineyard. The second was about the two sons, one of which did what his father wanted and the other who didn’t. We are both labourers and children called to work in our part of God’s vineyard, called to produce fruitToday’s parable relates directly to the parable told in Isaiah. The landowner is God. All creation belongs to him, including us. He has produced a beautiful, fertile world for us to enjoy. In the Isaiah parable, the house of Israel and Judah are the vines, his choice planting. They are expected to bring forth cultivated grapes but instead they run wild and produce wild grapes.Because they are not behaving the way they ought, the landowner breaks down the wall of protection round about them and stops nurturing the vineyard. Very quickly, it becomes overgrown and full of briars and thornsWe saw a picture of what can happen when walls are broken down last Sunday. Soon after burying John’s ashes, fly tipping appeared, thrown over our broken down wall. It was shameful desecration of our churchyard and I am thankful to the person who cleared it.Isaiah, however wasn’t just talking about a piece of land. He was comparing the vineyard to the moral and spiritual state of God’s chosen people.Instead of justice Israel and Judah had produced bloodshed and instead of righteousness grief. They had given little thought to Yahweh who has loved and chosen them and given the all they needed to grow. God’s character of justice and mercy didn’t shine through their livesThey were suffering the consequences of their behaviour. God had done all he could for them, but in the end there are always consequences for the choices we make.Last week we looked at the consequences our beautiful world is suffering as a result of exploitation and greed and we saw that global warming and the pandemic has to some extent issued out of human desire for more and more. If we do not repent and change our behaviour we will be the author of our extinction.Soon after Isaiah told this parable Israel ceased to exist and Judah was carried away into Babylon. In the retelling of the parable by Jesus, the landowner leased the vineyard to tenants and went to live in another country. When the harvest came, he sent his slaves to receive his portion of the profits. The evil tenants seized one, killed another and stoned another. They were greedy and cruel, wanting to keep all the produce to themselves.The allusion is to Israel’s treatment of God’s prophets. They killed Zechariah by stoning him, beat Jeremiah and placed him in the stocks and killed the prophet Uriah.Instead of sending soldiers to execute the tenant farmers, the landowner was crazily patient. He doesn’t want to come down heavily on them so he sent more slaves with similar results.Finally he sent his Son, saying, “They will respect my Son.”The wicked tenants killed him to get his inheritance and threw him out of the vineyard. This was a picture of what the chief priests and elders were about to do to Jesus in crucifying him outside the city wall of Jerusalem. Jesus already knew what was in their hearts and mind.Jesus asked the chief priests what the landowner ought to do at this stage. They gave the only answer that would be just. The landowner should evict the wretches from the vineyard and make them suffer a miserable death. The vineyard should then be given to those who will produce fruit, share the produce and give the landowner what he is owed. The leaders of the Jewish people are pronouncing judgement upon themselves. Jesus was giving them an opportunity to turn from their evil. They didn’t do so and within forty years of Jesus’ crucifixion their city was destroyed by the Romans and the Jewish people were scattered across the globe.The final image is completely different and is one of both mercy and judgement. Jesus refers to himself as the stone who the builders rejected who becomes the cornerstone, the keystone without which a building cannot stand. Because the chief priests and elders had rejected Jesus and were about to kill him, they would be crushed by the stone whereas those who produced the fruits of the kingdom would inhabit God’s vineyard.This parable is all about how we treat Jesus. The chief priests and elders knew Jesus was talking about them. If they repented and followed Jesus they would have received mercy and Israel would have been saved. Instead they looked for a way to arrest him.Just as Jesus confronted the religious leaders of his time with the truth about their greed and violence, so he confronts us today.He longs that all God’s people, Jew and Gentile enjoy and display the fruits of his Kingdom. When we reject Jesus God’s only begotten son we exclude ourselves from God’s presence.“God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”We have all been given work to do in God’s vineyard nurturing the people, relationships, circumstances and events that God has entrusted to our care; our spouse, children, family, work, and church and the people of Frankley, Illey and Kitwell. Within our daily decisions and choices, our hopes and dreams and concerns we are called to reveal the presence and life of God and produce the fruits of his kingdom. God doesn’t call us to be lone workers. Jesus the Son who was slain works alongside us, nurturing and caring for us and filling us with his strength. He described himself as the vine. We are the branches.It would be easy in these days of death and destruction to forget about following Jesus and being members of his church.The Son and the slaves in Jesus’ parable suffered much in trying to bring in the harvest. Some of them were killed. They were not successful.Paul reminds us in Philippians 3 that we are our not required to be successful but to be faithful to Jesus. Our success and ultimate resurrection from the dead comes in knowing Jesus. Paul says, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.”When we know Jesus his life and character will shine through us bringing fruit for the kingdom of God.
One of the joys of lockdown was the return of birds to our garden. We became more aware of birdsong and the calming effect of the natural world to our well being. I enjoyed seeing a goldfinch for the first time as it drank from the bowl outside my window. I had never realised how stunningly beautiful these colourful birds are. We were created to live in a garden. The Bible begins with the garden of Eden and ends with a new heaven and earth where humans are surrounded by trees and the river of the water of lifeWe were created to live in harmony with and care for all creation, not to exploit it for our own ends. We become healthier in body, mind and spirit when we care for a garden or allotment or walk in the country. We are calmed when we stroke our pets and become close to animals.Our gospel today is the middle parable in which Jesus asks us his listeners to look at the Kingdom of Heaven as a vineyard, a place which if tended and nurtured brings forth much fruit.Last week’s parable was about workers hired to tend the grapes. Although they were all treated well by the generous landowner, they were hired workers. They enjoyed the profits, but the vineyard didn’t belong to their family. In this week’s parable, a father sends his sons into the vineyard to share in the family business.The first refuses to go and later changes his mind, whilst the second agrees to go and then doesn’t bother.It is so frustrating when someone agrees to do something and never gets around to it, whether it is at work, in the home or at church. If vines are not pruned and the grapes are not collected, a vineyard will fall into ruin. A garden doesn’t look beautiful without helpWho are we in this parable, the one who appears agreeable but is lazy and doesn’t bother or the one who appears to be rude and obstinate but eventually gets the job done? As children of the vineyard owner the sons are immensely privileged. They will enjoy the benefits and produce. One day they will inherit the land. It is in their interests therefore to look after their father’s property.Jesus told this parable in the temple to the chief priests and elders who were questioning his authority because Jesus had challenged theirs. He had just ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey while the crowds proclaimed that he was the coming Messiah. Furthermore he had overturned the tables in the temple of the money changers who were selling animals for sacrifice at extortionate prices.The chief priests and elders were exploiting those less powerful than themselves for profit. When Jesus sees people exploited he is angry.We know Jesus acted under the authority of his heavenly Father, he is Israel’s Messiah and he was right to challenge exploitation in his Father’s house of prayer. Do we challenge exploitation when we see it?Jesus knew that if he answered the question about his authority, he would immediately be condemned so he responded with a question about John the Baptist. Did John’s baptism come from heaven or from humans? The chief priests knew that whatever they answered would condemn them. If they answered that his baptism came from heaven, they were guilty for not getting their lives right with God and acting on John’s teaching.If they said John’s baptism was of human invention they risked the wrath of the crowd who had repented of their sins, returned money to those they had extorted it from and who were behaving more fairly.The image of the vineyard in scripture represented Judah who God had planted and expected to bring forth fruit.As leaders of the Jewish people, the chief priests should have been looking after the people in God’s vineyard, not exploiting them for their own purposes.As those well versed in scripture, they had said yes to God but had not done what they had been called to do. They needed to repent.The tax collectors and prostitutes however, were like the son who had been disobedient, yet repented. They had listened to John the Baptist when he told them not to extort or use violence to gain more money than was their due and be generous if they had more than they needed. They had repented and therefore would enter the kingdom heaven before the unrepentant chief priests and elders.God has created a beautiful world of great variety and abundance. He wants us to enjoy it, not exploit it; to look and listen with wonder, to touch, taste and know the goodness of God.We are labourers in God’s vineyard. We are not slaves but his children who should long to share in the task of sowing and reaping fruit for the Kingdom of God.Sir David Attenborough has reminded us in his television programme “Extinction,” that the human race faces a tough choiceIf we continue to exploit the earth for economic purposes and compete on a global scale, we face destruction.The earth is warming up quicker than we expected. Millions of species, particularly insects are being lost. The effects of flooding, fires and less land and natural habitats mean animals and humans live more closely together. The consequences are that pandemics like COVID 19 are likely to be more frequent as diseases jump from one species to another.There is likely to be a lack of food and the poor suffer first.Our Philippians passage reminds us that Jesus came to show us a different way. We are not to do anything from selfish ambitious or conceit. Instead we are to have the same mind as Christ Jesus who did not regard equality to God as something to be exploited.Instead he took the form of a slave and suffered and died for us.Like Jesus we are called to serve, to look after each other’s interests before our own; to tend and nurture the natural world and care for all who should be sharing in the fruit of God’s vineyard.We are to be, loving, compassionate and humble like Christ. I am thankful for all those who continue to serve in our part of God’s vineyard here at St Leonard’s, in the churchyard, during our services, in your giving of gifts and money and in the phone calls you make showing your love for each other. Because you are children of God and family, you do it without reward or monetary gain. In the face of natural disasters and the pandemic we are humbled.How could humans think God would allow exploitation of his beautiful world to go unchallenged? Post pandemic, is it really viable to carry on exploiting God’s world? In serving and dying for us Jesus became God’s rescue plan both for us and for creation. Let’s be like the tax collectors and prostitutes, repent of our sins and accept Christ’s love in our lives. Until that day when every knee will bow to him, may we be like Jesus serving in God’s vineyard.
