On the Way to Wonder

First Reading: Isaiah 5:1-7 ¹Let me sing for my beloved
  my love-song concerning his vineyard:
 My beloved had a vineyard
  on a very fertile hill.
 ²He 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.

 ³And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
  and people of Judah,
 judge between me
  and my vineyard.
 ⁴What 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?

 ⁵And 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.
 ⁶I 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.

 ⁷For 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!

Psalm: Psalm 80:7-15

Look down from heaven, O God; behold and tend this vine. (Ps. 80:14, 15)

 ⁷Restore us, O God of hosts;
  let your face shine upon us, and we shall be saved.
 ⁸You have brought a vine out of Egypt;
  you cast out the nations and planted it.
 ⁹You cleared the ground for it;
  it took root and filled the land.
 ¹⁰The mountains were covered by its shadow
  and the towering cedar trees by its boughs. 
 ¹¹You stretched out its tendrils to the sea
  and its branches to the river.
 ¹²Why have you broken down its wall,
  so that all who pass by pluck off its grapes?
 ¹³The wild boar of the forest has ravaged it,
  and the beasts of the field have grazed upon it.
 ¹⁴Turn now, O God of hosts,
  look down from heaven;
 ¹⁵behold and tend this vine;
  preserve what your right hand has planted.

Second Reading: Philippians 3:4b-14

 [Paul writes:] ^4bIf anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: ⁵circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
 ⁷Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. ⁸More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. ¹⁰I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, ¹¹if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
 ¹²Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. ¹³Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Gospel: Matthew 21:33-46

 [Jesus said to the people:] ³³“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. ³⁴When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. ³⁵But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. ³⁶Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. ³⁷Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ ³⁸But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ ³⁹So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. ⁴⁰Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” ⁴¹They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”
 ⁴²Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:
 ‘The stone that the builders rejected
  has become the cornerstone;
 this was the Lord’s doing,
  and it is amazing in our eyes’?
⁴³Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. ⁴⁴The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”
 ⁴⁵When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. ⁴⁶They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

CHILDREN’S SERMON: Today we are going to start with a riddle.  How do you know an elephant is in the refrigerator?

   (Look for its footprints in the Jell-O – or butter!) 

How does an elephant hide in a strawberry patch?

                  (It paints its toenails red!)

Let’s pray.  Lord may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, my Rock and my Redeemer.

SERMON

I learned this week that elephant jokes are actually part of a 4-step logic test given by some corporations. 

Question 1.  How do you put an elephant in a refrigerator?  Answer: Open the door, put it in, and close the door. It tests if you can you do complicated things in a simple way?

Question 2.  How do you put a giraffe in a refrigerator?  Answer: Open the door, take out the elephant and put in the giraffe, then close the door.  It tests if you can think of the repercussions from your previous actions?

Question 3.  The lion hosted a banquet and invited all the animals.  Who did not come?  Answer: the giraffe because he’s in the refrigerator.  It tests if you can you remember what you just did?

Question 4.  How do you cross a river full of crocodiles? Answer: Jump in and swim across because the crocodiles are at the lion’s banquet.

         We laugh at these childhood jokes that tease the edges of our logic.  Our text today reminds me of how often Jesus combines things that don’t seem at first to make sense.  Elephants can’t fit in a refrigerator.  What do a vineyard and a cornerstone have in common?  Not so obvious.  What in the parable does Jesus want us to see?  Are we looking at the Jell-O when we should thinking about the elephant?  Let’s look at this a bit closer.

“There was a landowner who planted a vineyard,

put a fence around it,

dug a wine press in it,

and built a watchtower.”

         The parable opens with everyday images, a vineyard with a fence, a wine press, and a watchtower.  Often Israel is compared to God’s vineyard that he plants.  Our Old Testament reading and our Psalm reading use these images.  God is the creator, the owner.  The religious leaders are responsible to care for the vineyard.  They are the tenants.  God will expect his share of the harvest at the end of time.  He sends his servants, the prophets, and eventually his son, Jesus, to collect his share from the tenants.  The tenants kill the son thinking that then the vineyard will be theirs.  The religious hierarchy knew Jesus was talking about them.  The parable implies the leaders know Jesus is from God and their greed at wanting the vineyard is their downfall.  Jesus continues to talk, though, about a cornerstone pointing to God’s victory despite the tenant’s self-centeredness.  So how does the story speak into our lives today?  Is there more we can learn from pondering the relationship between vineyards and a cornerstone?

         Jesus is quite specific about the vineyard the landowner planted.  The landowner put a fence around it.  He dug a wine press in it.  And he built a watchtower.

A cornerstone is a stone uniting two walls at an intersection.

         A cornerstone defines where one wall ends and the other one starts.  A fence also is an intersection where the vineyard starts and ends.  One side of the fence is not the owner’s property and the other side is.  In the parable, the tenants have gotten confused.  They had come to believe that the vineyard was theirs because they worked there and they believe the death of the son would eliminate the owner’s claims.  When we baptize our children or when we are baptized, we define ourselves as wanting to be part of God’s vineyard.  We no longer belong to the world and the evil one no longer has power to control us because the Holy Spirit has taken up residence in our heart.  We may experience harassment from evil but evil can no longer owns us.  Baptism and faith are fences that define us as belonging to God.  Jesus is the cornerstone that defines how far evil can go.

         So one of the challenges of today’s text is to ask ourselves what confuses us and deceives us into misunderstanding the fences of our faith?  Why do we look at the Jell-O and miss the elephant that makes the footprints?  What are the fences that define us?  The social media would like us to think it is our political party – red or blue – or our ethnic heritage – American, Norwegian, German – or our family business – farmers, medical, missionaries.  All these titles are part of our identity and in fact are often used to create social hierarchies.  The titles help us know the good guys from the potentially bad guys.  But those are footprints in the Jell-O.  Jesus is the elephant of faith that is important.  The church spelled with a capitol C, not a small C, the church universal not the local meeting of believers, is defined by the fence of faith in Jesus.  How we baptize, if we speak in tongues, or even on what day of the week we meet are not the big issues but faith in Christ is.

         So where do the Ten Commandments come in?   Our baptism, our confirmation, and our faith define our fences.  But I think the law, the Ten Commandments, help us know when we are in danger of leaving the protection of the vineyard.  God sends prophets, preachers and his Son to speak into our lives and remind us where our boundaries are.  The Holy Spirit is our advocate that speaks to our consciences and convicts us when we are stepping out of bounds.  Sometimes we act as if being a part of God’s vineyard is like a ‘get out of jail free” card.  We think of God as love and we think we can leave the refrigerator door open and there will be no consequences.

         The cornerstone tells us when we have come to a corner and we need to turn if we want to stay in the building.  The cornerstones warn us of potential danger when we can get into trouble.  When our anger drives us to motor mouth criticisms we are in danger of hate and murder.  When our Saturday night partying leads us to exhaustion and skipping spiritual fellowship, we are in danger.  When our “wants” leads us into credit card debt and covetousness, we are in danger.  The fence is there to define us and to protect us.  When we leave the refrigerator door open, we will have problems! 

³⁴When the harvest time had come,

he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce.

         The second thing the landowner built after the fence was a wine press.  The vineyard had a purpose.  The cornerstone often is laid and marks the place where the building will be built.  It might also say something about the purpose of the building and acts as a maker, identifying the future use of the building. When God created people, you and me, he did not just roll dice letting genes determine our fate.  As a youth, I can remember bemoaning my curly brown hair that was not blonde and straight like my sister’s and wondering what God had in mind.  I have listened to the moans of my mother lamenting that if she had had an opportunity to go to college during the Depression she would have written a book.  I have sat by the bedside of my four year old son as he was frozen in the pain and fever of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and asked, “Why, Lord?”  I remind God now that I prayed to go to Alaska and not Africa and that I was suppose to die first not my husband so that he could help me be brave walking the valley of death.  I look at the giraffe in my refrigerator and question why it is not an elephant.  I look at the footprints and wonder where some of them came from.  But that does not change the fact that I have a purpose and a job to do.  Keep the Jell-O from melting.  Be a preservative for what God places in his refrigerator.  Likewise, when Jesus is the elephant in our refrigerator we will have footprints of the presence of the Holy Spirit.

         Psalm 139 is a comfort to many

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
² You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from far away.
³ You search out my path and my lying down,
    and are acquainted with all my ways.
⁴ Even before a word is on my tongue,
    O Lord, you know it completely.
⁵ You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is so high that I cannot attain it.

God knows our names and wrote them in his book of life.  Ephesians 2:8-9 says we are saved by grace, through faith.  It is a gift.  And then it says, “¹⁰ For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”  The cornerstone does not only define each one of us, we are given purpose in life.  We are the grapes that in the process of being stomped produce wine and praise to God.  The cornerstone defines you as important, valuable and part of God’s purpose for his vineyard.

So the watchtower?

How do we cross the river full of crocodiles?

         According to the Internet, the watchtower was “by the side of city gates in the East, in which a watchman was stationed to observe what was going on at a distance, especially in times of danger.”  Watchmen have perspective.  Jesus as our watchtower watches for crocodiles and warns us.  Watchmen on the tower looked for danger from the outside or potentially explosive issues on the inside and sound the alarm.  Jesus as the cornerstone of our lives acts as a watchtower because he has perspective and he is “the way, the truth and the life.”  He has walked in our steps and stands on the watchtowers of our lives to guide us.  The watchtower does not prevent danger or evil but sees it coming and can give warning.  That is different from just defining where the vineyard begins and ends.  That is different than telling us the purpose of the vineyard.  The watchtower is the warning system, the truth telling system in our lives.

         Jesus, as our cornerstone, tells us we are his.  His fence is around our lives and we live in his vineyard, the kingdom of heaven.  Jesus, as our cornerstone, desires for us to have productive, fruitful lives to his glory.  He does not design evil to hurt us.  He delights when we produce fruit of the Spirit.  Jesus, as our cornerstone, is our Geek Squad, our Norton Virus protection plan.  He is our watchtower that keeps us healthy and productive by being diligent for problems. 

         So let us end with our riddle.  How do we know what kind of elephant is in our refrigerator?  We can look to see the footprints in the Jell-O or butter.  We should find footprints of Jesus in our life, telling us who we are, why we are, and how we are doing.  If there are no footprints, we need to check to see if the refrigerator door was left open. 

Let the people of God say, “AMEN!”