St. Luke’s, Jamestown, NY

October 2,2005

Proper 22 A: Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80; Philippians 3:14-21; Matt 21:33-46

Guest Preacher:  Adam T. Trambley

Good morning.  I’m glad to be here this morning.  For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Adam Trambley, the rector of Trinity Church in Warren and the Chair my Diocese’s Stewardship Task Force.  A few months ago, when I was speaking with Father Eric, he offered me an invitation to come up during your annual stewardship campaign.

I’m also thrilled to be here this morning because we have all of these great readings about vineyards and grapes, so it is truly right and a good and joyful thing to be in New York wine country, in a church with a beautiful grapevine border which also symbolizes the parishes focus on “answering God’s call.”   This symbolism is most appropriate because God’s call in today’s readings is quite straightforward—yield good grapes.

We start in Isaiah’s readings this morning.  The prophet Isaiah is telling the history of Israel’s relationship with God using the idea of a vineyard.  The opening verses tell us how this beloved vineyard owner took such care in planting a vineyard.  Fertile ground was chosen and prepared.  Stones were cleared out.  The necessary buildings were erected and winemaking equipment was set up.  Everything that could possibly have been done was done.  But when the harvest came, the vineyard didn’t yield good grapes.  This vineyard, so carefully loved by the vineyard owner, yields a putrid, nasty, quite possibly poisonous grape that is good for nothing and noxious to be around.

For Isaiah, the fruit being born by the people of Israel of his time does indeed smell to high heaven.  He calls for an end to the dishonesty and cheating in the markets of his time. He attacks the rich who buy up the land and houses of poor people to increase their own estates while creating displaced refugees, those who spend all their energy worrying about their own self-indulgent pleasures while others starve. And he calls upon the political leaders to stop making international alliances and fighting wars in the interests of security and to start trusting in the Lord and taking care of the widows and orphans.  Isaiah demands justice instead of bloodshed and righteousness instead of the cries of the poor.

Now Jesus had read Isaiah.  In fact, much of Isaiah is about Jesus in some way or other.  And when Jesus is in Jerusalem during the week before his death, he uses this vineyard image in Isaiah and in Psalm 80 to highlight the faithlessness of the religious and political leaders in Jerusalem.  In Jesus’ retelling, God’s vineyard does bear good fruit.  The problem is that when God wants to use the fruit for his good purposes, the leaders of the political and religious establishments, the vineyard tenants, kill the messengers, even when the messenger is to be Jesus, God’s own son.  Jesus parable in Matthew ends with the leaders indicting themselves, saying that the tenants will be killed and the producing vineyard given to other tenants.  Jesus’ ending is actually more merciful than Isaiah’s ending, which depicts the destruction of the entire vineyard.

Now there is probably a great fire and brimstone sermon to be preached about producing good fruit for God or being put to “a miserable death.”  But trying to act in such a way that we can manipulate God into being nicer to us is probably not going to be very helpful in the long run.  We can’t manipulate God, and God doesn’t play games with us.

Isaiah’s vineyard story does tell us some things about God, however, that might help us to bear a sweet, ripe fruit, perhaps even to produce a grape worthy of the wine we bring to the altar to become the body of Christ.  In the opening verses of our reading from Isaiah, we are told that God provides us everything we need to produce fruit worthy of the kingdom.  Nothing is left undone that we need.  We are planted in a fertile place and provide for lovingly and lavishly.  What was true for Isaiah’s time is no less true for us.  God provides abundantly for us.  God gives us everything we need to bear good fruit.  The question we are confronted with is whether or not we really believe God has supplied what we need.

So before we even talk about bearing fruit, we need to talk about what God has done for us—all that God has done for us.  And, when we are honest with ourselves, God has, in fact, done an unbelievable amount, especially for those of us sitting in these pews this morning.  I know that you have been listening to a variety of folks talk about what St. Luke’s has meant to them, and this place is truly a blessing with a solid facility, loving pastors who preach the gospel and good ministries.  Beyond that, each and every one of you probably has more material wealth than almost anybody Jesus ever met.  Probably all of us have more wealth and purchasing power in the bits of cash in our wallets and purses at this moment than anyone in the world had before the seventeenth century.  I’ll bet no one sitting here this morning is in real danger of freezing to death this winter, no matter how high natural gas prices rise, no one is in real danger of going to bed hungry tonight.  Beyond that God bothered to create us at all, he sent his Son to reconcile us back to himself, and the Holy Spirit dwells among us to guide and comfort us.  We are God’s choice vine.  The first step in being able to bear good fruit is to trust the vineyard owner.  If God has blessed us so abundantly in the past, and given us what we need to bear good fruit, than there is no reason to believe God will provide anything less in the future.  Our job is simply to bear good fruit, which is the natural result of accepting the great abundance God has already given to us.

One way to talk about bearing good fruit is to talk about stewardship, to talk about bearing fruit in time, talent and treasure.  But giving back to God time, talent and treasure doesn’t mean just more business or more money.  Stewardship means living into God’s abundance with our time, talent and treasure.  Bearing good fruit means allowing what God has blessed us with to flow out of us so we can bless others, confident that God will continue blessing us.  Since we are not the United Way or Public Radio, asking you to give time, talent and treasure back to God is not the same as providing a list of things you can do for the church.  Instead, time, talent and treasure can be thought of as Sabbath, Spiritual Gifts and Tithing.

Bearing abundant fruit with time is Sabbath.  Sabbath is the opposite of how we normally think about using our time well.  We think good use of time is being efficient, but Sabbath is about being inefficient with our time.  Sabbath is a way of acknowledging that God provides us with abundance.  Sabbath recognizes the vineyard owner has done enough to make us fruitful and we don’t have to try to hoe the ground around ourselves with our vines or fertilize ourselves.  Without Sabbath we are constantly trying to take over God’s job and we twist ourselves in knots, and a knotted up vine isn’t going to bear good fruit.  The best way to take Sabbath is to take time that is not economically productive.  Sabbath time is time for prayer and bible study and family, but it is also time for sleep and for rest and for sitting around in your jammies and not worrying about what the next thing on the palm pilot is or where the next soccer game is or what this or that person’s expectations are.  Sabbath is the time when we say that whatever God has provided during six days is going to be enough for us.  Certainly, we might not have as much.  The church might not have as much. The kids might not have as much.  But we will live richly on what God provides.  Because the nutrients that God provides us are what we need for bearing good, healthy fruit for our lives, the lives of our families, and the life of the church.  The nutrients we try to feed ourselves on that day when God is resting, however, are generally not as good for us as what God provides.  Sabbath is about getting the nutrients we need from God, and part of that is taking Sabbath time to be present to God in worship and bible study and small prayer groups, the kinds of spiritual disciplines that give help us get our nutrients from God. 

Stewardship is also about giving our talent, and the best way to talk about stewardship of talent is by discussing spiritual gifts.  St. Luke’s is beginning a process of spiritual gifts discernment throughout the congregation and discovering our gifts is important.  Once again, the vineyard owner has blessed us with the ability to bear good, but, to mix metaphors a bit, we can’t all bear the same kind of fruit.  If an apple tree tries to bring forth oranges, all that will happen is the fall opportunity to harvest healthy apples will be missed while all the tree’s energy goes into trying to prepare oranges for the winter and come winter, there will be no oranges either.  But trusting God’s abundance, if the apple tree really focuses on producing apples, God will provide another orange tree so we can both keep the doctor away and have a full day’s supply of vitamin C.  Our job is not to be running around on our Sabbath trying to do everyone else’s gift, but to be humbly and joyfully offering the gifts we have back to God, whether within these walls or in the wider community. 

Stewardship is also about money, and one strong biblical understanding adopted by the Episcopal Church for stewardship of money is tithing.  Tithing means quite simply that ten percent of the financial wealth you receive is given back to God.  How we give that back to God can take different forms.  The most important element is that we are giving money away generously.  Giving back to God doesn’t mean giving with strings in order to have some sort of influence or power as a result of our financial gift.  Neither does God award coffee mugs, tote bags or Peter, Paul and Mary CD’s.  Tithing means taking ten percent of our money and putting in other people’s hands who need it for some good purpose to use as they think best.  If we want to have churches, at least part of our tithe needs to go to our parish community, but we don’t give to make church budgets.  We give because we need to give. The only way we can hope to live into the abundant blessings God wants us to have is by blessing others with what God gives us.  When we bear good fruit as a result of all the good things God has graced us with, if we keep it all for ourselves, much of it will decompose and rot.  Not only won’t we get to use it all, but it will hinder our own ability to live a full life.  But when we give it away, God sends down plenty of soft rain and fertilizes the ground for us to grow more fruit, in good season, for when we need it.  Tithing is based on the belief that God provides enough and that we can choose to live into God’s abundance.  And I have never heard of anyone tithing who didn’t have enough.  Certainly their lives occasionally got reordered.  Giving money away isn’t a way to manipulate God into giving us more.  But at the same time, almost everyone I know who has taken as chance on God’s abundance has been more than well paid.  So I would encourage you to take a chance on God this year.  Make a commitment to tithe, or if you can’t bring yourself to tithe yet, increase your proportional gift back to God.  A proportional gift is like a tithe but at a different percentage.  So take a look at what you have given away over the past year and see what percentage of your income that was.  Then decide this year to increase that amount by at least one or two percent.  Then, every time you get a paycheck or some other kind of money, make the first check you write a check that gives the percentage of that money back to God.  My guess is that you will not find that you have missed that money.  Even if you have to cut back in other places or stretch somewhere, I am sure that your life will be richer, maybe even financially, than it otherwise was.  And if it is, make a decision next year to increase what you are giving by a few more percentage points until you are tithing. 

I have never known the vineyard owner abandon those who trust in him instead of themselves.  When we trust in God’s goodness and abundance in our lives, we bear good fruit.  When we are taking Sabbath, using our spiritual gifts, and tithing, we produce fruit that feeds one another and allows us to be healthy, fruitful vines in God’s gracious vineyard.

410 North Main Street, Jamestown, New York 14701

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