Urban Vineyard

NOTE: The original live recording of this sermon was unfortunately lost so Makerita kindly has re-recorded her presentation for us and we are very grateful!

Jesus told the parable of the weeds and wheat to remind us that our lives are agonisingly caught between the present – where evil runs amok – and the future – where all shall be well. Like the servants in the parable, our temptation is to crusade out into the world in the name of justice to go and deal with evil, but Jesus, through the parable, reminds us that we have neither the wisdom, discernment nor the ability to root out the weeds. Indeed, such a crusade turns us into little devils along the way. So the parable leaves us in a difficult position. On it's own it seems to lead us into 'Christian quietism'; a kind of 'do nothing' approach to the weeds in our world. Such an amoral response doesn't line up with the rest of Scripture though; it seems completely out of step with the prophetic tradition, so there must be more going on than meets the eye. In this sermon, Jonathan opens up a larger view of the parable by putting into the conversation with the parable of the yeast in the dough. In the end, he suggests we are neither called into quietism or crusading when it comes to our response to the evil in the world and the evil in our own hearts. Instead, we are called into a dynamic partnership with God; trusting that he is the one who is reforming the world and reforming us. We add what looks to everyone else as something so tiny and insignificant, namely, our hidden act of faith, which on it's own achieves nothing, but when brought into the chorus of God's work, it is gathered up and brought to bear in the larger scheme of putting the world, and our own hearts, back to rights.

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.