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Bible Readings for Sunday, October 2nd, 2011

– The Week of The 16th Sunday After Pentecost *Click on each bible passage to expand the text. Isaiah 5:1-7 1. 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! Psalm 80:7-15 7. Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

8. You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it.

9. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land.

10. The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches;

11. it sent out its branches to the sea, and its shoots to the River.

12. Why then have you broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?

13. The boar from the forest ravages it, and all that move in the field feed on it.

14. Turn again, O God of hosts; look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine,

15. the stock that your right hand planted. Philippians 3:4b-14 4. Even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more:

5. circumcised 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;

6. as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

7. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.

8. More 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

9. and 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.

10. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death,

11. if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

12. Not 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.

13. Beloved, 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,

14. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Matthew 21:33-46 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.

34. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce.

35. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.

36. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way.

37. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’

38. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’

39. So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.

40. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

41. They 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.”

42. Jesus 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’?

43. Therefore 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.

44. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”

45. When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.

46. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

Turn again, O God of hosts; look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand planted. – Psalm 80:14-15

More 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 – Philippians 3:8

Therefore 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. – Matthew 21:43

….they realized that he was speaking about them.

Those friggin’ temple priests and scribes. What a bunch of jerks! What idiots!

How long were they going to sit there and listen to Yeshua tell this tale about the tenants that rejected the son of the vineyard owner without realizing it was about them, the whole time!

Ah, man, that’s rich, really, rich. *wipes tears, laughing*

I mean are they really that blind to their own reality that they were honestly not connecting the dots?

Hmmmmm… let’s see: Yeshua said, “… he leased it to tenants…”

Gosh, could that be the leaders of Israel? Could that be those directly responsible for the people, proverbial “vine” brought “out of Egypt”? I think so!

Yeshua continued, “…he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way.”

Would it have been any easier if Yeshua had just said “prophets” instead of “slaves” and just spelled it out for them? Probably not…

I can just imagine those idiot temple priests listening intently, their consciences free of realization, none of them making the connection, their brows furrowed deep in sage-like thought as they obliviously listened to a story about them!

Yeshua then began to get louder, “Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.”

Finally, to top it off (this is the best part), Yeshua then asks the very people about whom the story is focused, “Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

And those sick little puppies, those violent little men answer with no hesitation, “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.”

Wait…

…wait a minute… oh, man. That isn’t good.

I’m just now realizing that the answer that the “foolish”, “blind”, “violent”, “cold-hearted” and “oblivious” temple priests and scribes gave to Yeshua… that answer which leaped effortlessly from their calloused hearts…

…the answer of those rotten men who would reject the son, the word, the cornerstone of God…

…their answer is my own.

My heart is answering, “God’s gonna kick their ungrateful asses and give the riches of the ‘vineyard’ to those that actually deserve it!”

…of course, those that “actually deserve it”, is me and people that agree with me!

And that’s the problem… don’t you see?

I called them idiots for not realizing they are the tenants who would assault the messengers of God. I called them jerks for rejecting the cornerstone of truth right in front of them. I called them “violent little men” for leaping to the obvious and violent answer… and yet their answer was the same as my own. Their oblivion is mine.

I am the idiot. I am the jerk. I am the one who rejects the son. I am the bad tenant in the vineyard of the Lord.

And so are you.

Sweet, sweet oblivion…

“What do you mean it’s me, too? I haven’t done anything wrong!” you protest.

Really?

We Americans live lives of relative decadence compared to the rest of the world, clearly reaping all the advantages as tenants of the Lord’s glorious vineyard. We consume the crop with abandon, we are gluttons on the ripe fruits of the vineyard, and we are drunk on the wine we crush from the grapes.

The lord’s servants come and go and we treat them all the same. One of the more recent “servants” of the Lord came 55 years ago in the form of a unknown black minister from Montgomery, Alabama. He simply came asking the tenants for a fair share the fruit, that’s it. And like the tenants of the parable, we proceeded to kill him, too.

Do not kid yourself, we did this. We are all the wicked tenants today.

“How” you ask?

We forget our place. We think we’re the lords of the vineyard. We think this is actually all our own doing, we’re awesome and somehow owe nothing to anyone. There is no thanks. There is no gratitude. Especially to God!

Instead of dramatically reforming the system of the “vineyard”, instead of realizing that we are merely tenants and that everything belongs to the Lord, we simply pulled the hedge back a for a tiny bit and let more of the “others outside” enter the “vineyard”, and Lord, do they come running, ready to harvest their batch of the American Dream. Counterfeit lords beget ever more “fool’s gold” princes.

We read the word of the Lord, we hear Yeshua’s pleas to correct our hearts, but like the wicked then, we reject the son.

They key is not to think as lords anymore: we are simply fellow tenants, and none of this is principally ours to claim, and if we do take the crop we must only take enough to fulfill our needs, not our wants and desires. All the while remembering that it will not be ours forever, and that after we pass on, the vineyard should not only be still producing for later generations, but even more productively!

We cannot ravage the vine clean. We cannot drink all the wine today. We cannot neglect the soil of the garden.

We cannot let the Kingdom of God be continuously passed on to the hope of a more deserving future generation!

We must accept the stone again, throw ourselves against it, and crush the egos of our hardened hearts beneath it. We must shatter our pride against the stone we rejected.

It will be hard. It won’t be comfortable. And our fellow “false lords” are going to think we’re crazy.

They’ll probably reject us, too.

Great! I can’t think of better company to keep.