Sermon for November 17

The readings


Isaiah 5:1-7
5 Let me sing for my beloved
    my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
    on a very fertile hill.
2 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.
3 And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
    and people of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard.
4 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?
5 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.
6 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.
7 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!
 
Isaiah 11:1-5 
11 A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
    and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
2 The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
    the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    the spirit of counsel and might,
    the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
3 His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
    or decide by what his ears hear;
4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
    and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
    and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
5 Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
    and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
 
Mark 12:1-3 
12 Then he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a pit for the wine press, and built a watchtower; then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a slave to the tenants to collect from them his share of the produce of the vineyard. 3 But they seized him, and beat him, and sent him away empty-handed.


The message


(No Manuscript this week so here’s a short outline, I talked a lot about a dead plant)


When I first arrived here, the Church of Grace to the Fujianese, one of the churches that share our space with us, gave me this plant as a welcome gift (I brought the plant with me to church)

Over 10 years, this plant has endured a lot, it has thrived, grown, flowered.  After a while it even had a plant baby, a little shoot that grew next to it. I replanted that one in another pot.  It has dried out, almost died a few times and shrived up a few times too.  A few months ago it was at one of those almost dead times. I added compost, put it outside in the sun and watered it. It didn’t exactly work and it was down to a last leaf or two.  Then I went away for a few days and when I came back, both pots were empty (my wife saw a dead plant and dumped it).  A few days after that, some wild flowers sprouted in the pot.  At first freeze, they died too but a beautiful, odd looking frozen brown plant was left. 


1: I didn’t reach out to the experts when I knew the plant was in trouble  (the handful of people I know with advanced degrees  in botany, a pastor, who can grow vegetables in almost sand and who worked as a farmer for years before ministry and a contact at the Queen Botanical Garden would have been a few options). The people of Israel would not turn to the Lord for help, they turn to the Assyrians, to other empires, to their own leaders, to foreign deities like baal, turning to anything and everyone except the God who gave a child to Sarah and Abram, who brought them out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised land, who protected, cared for and brought improbable victory to them.   


2: I originally thought I would pass on the new plant to a new church, that it would be a constant part of how I see and understand ministry, perhaps it would grow when we grew and shrink when we shrink.  Now I wonder what will grow next and I have a good story to help share good news with.


The prophet Isaiah, Jesus (and lots of others) have used metaphors about the life cycles of vines, plants, trees etc as a way to talk about God’s love and presence in the world.  These metaphors, familiar to all people are drawn on to show our sins and failings but also that God’s promises are still good, God’s word will be kept (in a new, different and unexpected way)


 In church, work, life, we can often feel like a failure, like this plant, or fruitless like the vineyard Isaiah speaks of but we are all about the shoot from the dead stump, the reminder that God is not done with us yet,