Isaiah 5:1-7
Let me sing for my beloved my love-song
concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He
dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a
watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it
to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to
do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield
grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? And now I will tell you what I will do to
my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break
down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste; it shall
not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will
also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the
Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant
planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a
cry!
Luke 22:14-20
When the hour
came, Jesus took his place at the table, and the apostles with him. He said to
them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I
suffer; for I tell you, I will not eat
it until it is fulfilled in the realm of God.” Then he took a cup, and after
giving thanks he said, “Take this and divide it among yourselves; for I tell
you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the realm
of God comes.” Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he
broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.” And he did the same with the cup after supper,
saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
***
Will
you pray with me? Welcoming God, it has been a hard week for many of us. We
come to you seeking restoration, refreshment, encouragement and hope, knowing
we will be fed at your table. Give us grace to accept your gifts without doubt,
knowing we are your beloved children, and part of your universal family of
love, united through your child, Jesus the Christ.
Yesterday I did one of my favourite things—driving out
in the county. There is something about being out there, riding and talking in
the company of friends, stopping here and there for apples or a late breakfast,
seeing the trees beginning to change—I need that experience in my soul during
the changing seasons, in spring and especially in the fall. It brings me to
that autumn state of mind—time to make stew, to eat apples fresh from the
orchard with cheddar cheese as a bedtime snack, to put away the sundresses and
sandals and dig out the turtlenecks and sweaters, to stock up on soup mixes.
It’s harvest time, with all the harvest feelings of plenty and full cupboards,
of taking stock for our preparations for the winter to come—do we have what we
need to make it through? Are the root cellars of our lives full—not just with
food, but with friendships, mutual support, love, hope, all the blessings of
our lives? Next week is Thanksgiving, when we recognize and name these
blessings; but today we can recognize where those blessings originate—the one
from whom all blessings flow.
In our reading from Isaiah, that vineyard did not
produce, in spite of all the owner’s preparations—the cultivation, the weeding,
the wall to keep out predators and thieves, the winepress ready to go when the
grapes were ripe. In Isaiah’s day, this vineyard image was a metaphor for
Israel—that Israel was God’s vineyard, prepared and planted but not productive
of God’s good things. We cannot read that forward to Jesus’ time and say that
once again Israel was not ready, did not give honor to the one who deserved it.
That is not historical for one thing, and for another, it lets us off the hook.
We can dismiss it as meant for those who could not follow Jesus, and pretend it
does not also apply to us.
The fact is that God creates, plants, vineyards in
every one of us—all of our individual hearts—gives each of us gifts and the means
to share them—those vines and the grapes God is looking for.
So—how is your harvest coming? Have you been weeding
and watering, pruning and clearing, preparing the vines for the harvest? Are
you looking over the vines, seeing if the grapes are ripe and ready to be picked?
Have you been willing to share your gifts, your talents, whatever you have that
is needed?
We don’t always know which of our gifts will be needed
nor how they will be used. Sometimes we know we have a gift—for, say,
conversation, we can talk to almost anyone about anything—but we can’t see how
God could possibly use it or need it. And then one day, we realise that with our gift, we can be the welcomers—the
ones to greet others at the door, to host a coffee hour, to be part of a
newcomers welcoming group—or maybe even to become a counselor, supporting
people in need, offering hope to people who can’t seem to find any.
God uses all our gifts, no matter how insignificant
they may seem to us, how un-useful. The harvest in the vineyard of our spirits
is never wasted.
Today is World Communion Sunday. Today we gather in
spirit with our sisters and brothers around the world at God’s table of grace. This
Communion table is God’s harvest table, full of the gifts we have brought, to
be shared with all of God’s people—gifts from the vineyards of our hearts, our
gifts and talents and finances and graces.
Do
you know the two most powerful forces in human life, the two basic motivating
factors in all we do? Eating and sex. They are both necessary—food to continue
the life of the individual, and sex to continue the life of the species. And so
they both feel good and are pleasurable—and so both can be insidious
addictions, because we must eat to live and the vast majority of healthy adult
humans have sexual feelings. How we act or whether we act on those feelings of
physical hunger and sexual desire is another matter and beside the point. My
point is that in every civilization, around the world and across time, these
two factors define the culture.
It is
said that the two best ways to learn a language are: 1) to learn how to cook and
eat that culture’s cuisine and 2) to have a lover who speaks the language as a
first language. Any culture’s most rigid
rules and customs—not laws, but customs and habits—are around food and eating,
and sex. Who may invite whom to eat at their home, the foods offered a guest
rather than a family member or intimate, how the table is arranged, who sits
where, how the tableware is used—these all have importance and if any of them
are violated, confusion and possibly offence and insult are the outcome. In
Europe, for a minor example, when the fork and knife are placed parallel on the
plate, it means the person is done eating—in North America, it means nothing.
In North America, it is common to invite someone to your home for a casual meal
after knowing them a short while. In Germany, to be invited to someone’s home
is an honour and an indication of deepening intimacy and friendship. In a restaurant in Europe, if it is busy,
strangers may share a table—with no expectation of conversation, although it is
not offensive to talk. In North America, that is unheard of! And so on.
Sometimes
these two factors—meals and intimate relationships—are brought together, such
as a date for dinner out, or a special meal prepared the first time a potential
partner comes to your home.
But
they both come down to vulnerability and sharing. We open our homes, our
private space; we open our hearts, our spirits; we dare to share what moves us
most, what we would most grieve losing—our homes, our selves, our physical
bodies. We risk vulnerability, that openness to being hurt, because it is in
that risk, in finding that the other does not hurt us but in turn opens and
shares with us, that we find true intimacy.
In going to someone’s home, sitting at their table, eating their food,
that person risks our presence in their private space—and we risk going to an
unknown place, a place that may be dangerous to us in some way—not literally,
probably, but where we both, host and guest, risk rejection, misunderstanding,
loss of dignity or standing, exposure of our faults or ignorance…any number of
things.
And
yet, having taken that risk, we may well find a deeper level of intimacy, a
better knowledge of the other person. We have both dared to be foolish or
wrong—and we were not. To me, sharing a meal in someone’s home, whether it is a
full-blown seven-course dinner or simple coffee and cake, is an expression of
caring and intimacy, a way to say, I care for you and want to know more about
you, to support and encourage you; I trust you with my fears and hopes and
vulnerabilities, and you can trust me with yours. This is why, across cultures,
violation of these hospitality customs –to injure a guest or allow a guest to
be harmed is so grave, and often results in expulsion, temporary or permanent,
from society for the offender. Guests require the best of the host, generosity,
vulnerability and protection.
All
of this comes together in Communion, which is sharing a meal with our brothers
and sisters in Christ. We share not only a meal, but ourselves, being
vulnerable to them, and them being vulnerable to us; with God as our host, God
and God’s people are intimate, open, and trusting with one another. And so we
pray for our sisters and brothers, support them, encourage them, both as
churches and as individuals. You can see this every Sunday. In our worship service, we come together in
worship—the call to worship. We hear what God has to say to us, in Scripture
and then the discussion of that Scripture. We put that message to work by
returning gifts to God in thankfulness and then by praying for our sisters and
brothers, and for ourselves. Then we confess—we tell the truth about what we
have or haven’t done as we know we should—and having received and then given
forgiveness, we can come to God’s table as equals, with no constraints between
us of distrust or anger or hurt. We share God’s marvelous feast, and then,
nourished and strengthened by God’s love, we return to the world to share that
bounty with other people.
That
is the Christian life, wrapped up in symbolism and condensed to an hour! We’ll
be talking about it in more detail, incidentally, at our worship study and
training event on November 5…
It is
God who invites us to this table, all of us. As you have heard me and many
others say many many times, this is not my table, not this church’s table, but
God’s table. We gather in spirit around this table with all Christians of all
times and places—Rome in 75, Paris in 721, Cadiz in 1551,
Brazil in 1834, Capetown in 1921,
Tokyo in 1965, Sydney in 1999, Windsor in 2012.
It is
not for us—you and I—to determine who can come and who cannot come to share
God’s gifts. All are invited to share at God’s table—even Judas shared in that
last supper with Jesus which we remember in Communion, in the upper room with
the other disciples.
So
come—today and all days—receive God’s gifts, God’s trust; deepen your knowledge
of God, open your heart to God, risk that vulnerability at God’s table. Join
with all God’s children in this feast of love, spread for you and for all of us
through God’s grace and mercy in Jesus Christ.
In
God’s many names, amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment