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“What Will You Do?”, Rev. Jason-Paul Channels, 5/3/15

“What Will You Do?”

A sermon preached at

Heart of the Rockies Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Fort Collins, CO

by the Rev. Jason-Paul Channels

Graduate Sunday May 3, 2015

9Jesus told the people this parable: “A certain man planted a vineyard, rented it to tenant farmers, and went on a trip for a long time. 10 When it was time, he sent a servant to collect from the tenants his share of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants sent him away, beaten and empty-handed. 11 The man sent another servant. But they beat him, treated him disgracefully, and sent him away empty-handed as well. 12 He sent a third servant. They wounded this servant and threw him out. 13 The owner of the vineyard said, ‘What should I do? I’ll send my son, whom I love dearly. Perhaps they will respect him.’ 14 But when they saw him, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Let’s kill him so the inheritance will be ours.’ 15 They threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What will the owner of the vineyard do to them? 16 He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.”

When the people heard this, they said, “May this never happen!”

17 Staring at them, Jesus said, “Then what is the meaning of this text of scripture: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone? 18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be crushed. And the stone will crush the person it falls on.” 19 The legal experts and chief priests wanted to arrest him right then because they knew he had told this parable against them. But they feared the people.

Graduates, today is a special day. As we mark this time in your lives, this time of transition and new beginning, we are excited and encouraged by the possibility and promise which lies ahead for each of you.   The church has taught you, loved you, supported you, and challenged you. And now the church sends you out into the world. The church has tried to give you the roots needed for this next part of your journey, but what you do with them is up to you.

This is part of why today’s text—of a land owner who planted a vineyard then turned it over to the tenants—is a good fit for our celebration of Graduate Sunday.   We, like the landowner planted the vineyard for you to grow in. But you must tend these vines, fertilize the ground, harvest and process the fruit for both enjoyment and profit—which is no easy task.

In our text today, things did not go as planned for the landowner, and they may not for you either.   One way that the church, your Sunday School teachers, your youth leaders have tried to prepare you for this moment was to expose you to the reality that faith, like life, is not always lived in certainty with clear understanding or assurances.   It is not always lands of milk and honey and rains gently watering the fields of abundant harvest. Sometimes our journeys lead us towards questions, uncertainty, new perspectives.   Other times they lead us to places of drought, of heat, of struggle of dust.

It was the same for the landowner in Jesus’ parable. As he decided to check in on the progress, to collect the bounty and fruit of this endeavor, he found that the vineyard he had planted was no longer the place of possibility and promise it once was. It had become a place where people wanted to control and hoard and stake claim to what they had produced and grown in the vineyard. It had become a place that no longer made sense, no longer fit the plan, was no longer as orderly and clear and clean as the rows of vines planted in the ground.

The tenants of the farm seemed to miss the point that they would be called upon to share the fruit of what they had produced with another. That the ones who were there in the fields and had worked so hard to produce the fruit were not the only ones who were going to benefit from the bounty. Plans began to change, ideas developed, that this could all be theirs to keep if they just made sure no one else could gain access to what they had grown and cultivated in those fields. Maybe it started as a conversation in the fields after a long a grueling day of trimming and cutting in the heat. Maybe they dreamed of what they could do if they just kept all the bounty and fruit for their own profit, and were enthralled with what they imagined. Maybe it was something talked about with intentionality and forethought about how to make sure they got what they wanted, how they could get “theirs” in the end.

Or maybe it was a sudden, almost unexpected urge to hold on in the face of change. Maybe when after such a long absence the presence of the landowner’s servant there to collect their hard work they just snapped! They freaked out, that what they had begun to think of as theirs would have to be shared with another. Maybe it was just one person that first time who met the stranger on the road and heard what he wanted and just reacted. But by the time the second and the third servant came and lastly the son it was clear that the group had come together to form a plan, to share consensus, to make it clear that what they had was not available for the sharing with others. They were going to keep what they had even if it meant killing the son.

It was clear in the parable what Jesus meant to say to the people he was speaking to. In fact, this parable is a rare instance of Jesus actually giving the meaning of a parable himself. The listeners knew that Jesus was talking to the religious leaders who were wanting to crush the true recipient of God’s bounty by claiming the inheritance of Jesus for themselves. They disregarded prophet after prophet who had come to bear witness to the bounty of the vineyard belonging to God, not the priests. And even when faced with God’s son Jesus, they still were claiming it to be theirs, even if it took killing to make it happen.

But with such a specific and time-centric audience and message what does this parable mean for us? We can not be looked at in the same way as the religious leaders trying to kill Jesus. We are not in a position to claim God’s power and bounty and blessing for ourselves? Are we?   We are not in a position to lay claim to knowing the will of God or the outpouring of his blessing and mercy? Are we? We are not hoarding the good news and grace that God has shared with us, keeping it for ourselves or just those that we have deemed worthy of working the vines with us?   Are we? We aren’t in the position of power like those legal experts and chief priests to block people, prevent people, exclude people, deny people, shun people, disparage people, from encountering the fruits that we think are for us? Are we?

The occasion of Graduate Sunday should remind us that we find ourselves as the church called to act differently than these tenants. As we send out these graduates it is brought into focus that our role is share the fruits and the bounty again and again and again with the knowledge—and dare I say hope—that some of that fruit will leave our vineyard. That it will be given back to God, shared with the world, used to fertilize and propagate and nurture the harvest in vineyard after after vineyard.

On this day we are reminded that we want you Lauren, and Caroline and Carolyn to continue to grow in your faith your whole lives. What will you do? As much as we might want you to always be here to share in worship, to share in the joys of youth group and mission trips it is time for you to take root on your own. Will you bear fruit and serve as cuttings that grow and spread in places we can not imagine or dream?   What will you do? Will you choose to seek out opportunities to worship and study and be in Christian community, to give of yourselves to others? Or will you choose to hold tight to these experiences of faith and church you had as a child and youth and make sure to keep them all to yourself in the years ahead? What will you do?

We as a congregation who send you out must risk the possibility of failure, for the reward of fruit that can be grown. As we spend hours teaching our children, working with our youth, supporting them, challenging them, calling them and holding them up we are doing so not for us (and maybe not even for them). We are not tending the vines so that we might keep the harvest. We are not building programs to have programs, seeking numbers to have numbers, adding spaces to rosters to fill pews or pay bills or erase our debts. We are not planning programs and teaching moments to keep kids from being disruptive in worship or keep them out from underfoot or keep them out of the way of what the real church wants to be doing. We are not welcoming and knowing new friends or leading classes or youth groups or shaking hands at the door in order to fill our needs for volunteers, to make our Sunday School classes bigger, or get things done around the church that we just don’t have the people to do anymore.

These were the reasons that kept the tenants doing their work. But when we come to love God and understand that God’s call to us is also a call to serve another we reject the motivations and desires of the tenants. We will rejoice in the opportunity to teach, share, preach, and give of ourselves so that others might know the bounty of God too.

As God’s people our role is to help what God had planted to grow and bear fruit. And for those vines to be nurtured and to continue to grow and spread and mature for many more years to come.   But we must do our part in recognizing that the fruit that has been grown, the fruit that these graduates in part represent, the fruit that we see around us each week as we gather in worship, was never intended to be for our gain, but for the gain of God. Amen.