Urban Vineyard

John continues our series of the Parables of the Kingdom looking at Jesus' parable of the lost sheep. He encourages us to recognise that Jesus is the good shepherd who has come to find us but also that we have been called to imitate Jesus in seeking out those who have wandered, to pray and seek until we find so we too can enter into the joy of seeing the lost come home.

Jonathan unpacks one of Jesus' shorter and perhaps lesser-known parables from Mark 13:34 – the parable of the doorkeeper and the faithful household. This was a parable Jesus gave within the flow of an apocalyptic discourse with his disciples to encourage them to endure the end-of-the-world, both in the literal sense (the end of all things) and in the personal sense (the little apocalypses life delivers us). Jesus' challenge in this parable is to remain a people who always have an eye toward the future of God's new world which is coming. He asks us to be watchful and awake to the presence of the kingdom and to be faithful to the things to which he has called us. The disciples fell asleep, and so do we, but the kingdom comes anyway – still, the invitation is to enter the joy of seeing the kingdom come, rather than to sleep through it.

In this sermon, Jonathan unpacks one of the darkest and most disturbing parables Jesus ever told – the so called "parable of the wicked tenants." Of course, the title of that parable is not one which Jesus or the early church chose. It's a later translators gloss which shapes our reading in a mostly unhelpful way. A better title would be the "parable of the madly hopeful landowner." After all, why does this landowner keep reaching out to these tenants when he only ever receives a door slammed shut in his face? Why does he not give up on them? The actions of the landowner truly boggles the mind when read from this perspective, especially when he decides to send his own beloved son into the heart of the mess. Fyodor Dostoevsky, the 19th Century Russian novelist, once tried to write a story with what he called "a completely beautiful human being" at its centre; a character who would embody the essence of pure Christian love and compassion. He placed this character, a young prince called Myshkin, into the context of his own upperclass Russian society and let the narrative unfold. What we find in Myshkin is a character who appears to be woefully ignorant of the normal social conventions that govern polite society. But what sets him apart from the other characters in the novel is not his ignorance, but his goodness. He has an almost impossible capacity not to be offended, not to judge, and to feel genuine compassion for nearly anyone—even those who are abusing him. Dostoevsky, with his eye on Myshkin, called the novel "The Idiot."The kind of love and grace we see in the gospels and in the parables is insane – idiotic – by the standards of the world; it is utterly maladjusted to the world of sin. But the message of Jesus' parable is that in the end, the love of God will prevail against the very worst instincts in humanity.We read right back at the start of the Bible that God has only ever had one plan for this world; "Now the Lord God planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed" (Genesis 2:8). No matter what we have done to try to wreck that plan, no matter how high human arrogance has risen against God, God's love prevails. That is the message of the kingdom. God has given us everything, and in Jesus, he has announced his return to the vineyard that is our life, our heart, our world – not to displace us but to finally bring about true fruitfulness. God knocks on the door and we so often bolt it shut, interpreting the grace of his advent as judgement. But in the end, that which we reject as impossible, improbable, idiotic – the love of God – will become the cornerstone in our world and in our lives. The Lord has done this, and it is marvellous in our eyes. 

In this final sermon in our Opening to God series Makerita reminds us that we pray and intercede not from a place of striving but from the security of the victory that God has already won.