Urban Vineyard

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’“For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

The parable of Lazarus and the "rich man" is one of the more disturbing passages of our sacred scriptures, especially when viewed as a simple story about the rich getting punished and the poor being rewarded in the life to come. In reality the parable tells the story of two poor men; one who longed to be fed and one who clung to his world of self-sufficiency. In death, both were exposed as naked before God but only one was willing to acknowledge it. His failure to acknowledge his emptiness kept him locked out of communion with God and the saints. In this parable, Jesus provokes us to see that underneath appearances, our lives are lived in total dependence on the graciousness of God but if we refuse to say "yes" to the gift, trusting instead in our own power, we may find ourselves stranded between somewhere we don't want to be and somewhere we refuse to enter. The ultimate question in this parable, as in all of Jesus' parables, is 'how does this story help us to be "on hand" for that which is "at hand" but not "in hand?"' In this sermon, Jonathan suggests that there are two things needed: 1) a revelation from God and, 2) a concrete response, even if it's as small as a mustard seed (or onion - IYKYK), that creates a crack in which the light of God's new world can shine in.

In a break from our parables sermon series, John Peachy brings a fresh perspective on God's grace with the image of the family fridge upon which all the faces God delights in get placed. John asks the question "how do you make it onto God's fridge?" – or put differently, "how do you become one of God's favourites?" "How do you become the apple of his eye?" John then opens the Old and New Testaments to show that we are already irrevocably loved and wanted by God; we are the source of his great delight; we are already "on the fridge." The more we let that truth sink into our hearts and minds, the more the fruits of God's family likeness – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness etc – will begin to appear in our lives.

The parable of the barren fig tree (or as we read it, the parable of the gracious gardener) is inescapably concerned with the question of fruitfulness and judgement. It comes at the end of a long, and puzzlingly dark set of conversations between Jesus and the crowds following him. In this sermon, Jonathan continues our exploration of the kingdom of God through the lens of Jesus' parables.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the most well known and beloved stories in all of Scripture. But as with all things 'familiar' we can easily fall into a trap of thinking we 'get it' when really it wants to 'get' us. Jesus' parables, as we have been emphasising in this series, were not morality tales – they were kingdom announcements and enactments. In this sermon, Makerita shows this to be the case by placing the parable back into it's kingdom context. Where we might have once focussed on how to be 'good samaritans', Makerita (following Luke, following Jesus) shows instead that this parable is really about the spilling over of the age to come into the present age. It is about the hiddenness of the kingdom being revealed in the most unlikely of people. In this sense, it is an invitation to open our eyes to the reality of the kingdom which is 'at hand' in the roads we travel every day. It is also a reminder that Jesus has come to find us and bring us back to health. Hallelujah.