Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Rez is a community where Jesus welcomes, shapes, and sends disciples for the good of our neighborhood. No matter where you are in life, this is a place for you.
Life Together In The Goodness Of God
you're with us this morning. Well, there's a lot going on in the season at Rez right now. We have our St. Francis Fest coming up this afternoon. Rain or shine, we're going to party. Join us at Nomadic. We've also had this formation hour that's been really awesome. We're all like, this is amazing. We have a creation care class going on. The kids are making breakfast, pancakes. Are you guys filled up on pancakes? How are they? Pretty good. We've got kid classes. Everything's amazing. Somehow, I'm going to have to learn how to pace myself with the coffee for an hour because I feel a little squirrely this morning. I have like 17 cups. It's fantastic. However, if you've been around Rez, also you'll know that this is a time of the year where we usually begin to talk about stewardship and generosity and giving. This question for us is, is not something that's really scary or awkward. Rez does it a little bit different. If you've been a part of a church that twists your arm or does something weird about that, I just want to cut the tension, relax. We're not coming after you like that. It's not going to be like that. The way we approach this question is to simply ask God, what is it you would have me do with what you've given me? The world has a clear answer for this. When I think you see the world's answer to this in context, it makes the church's answer so much better news. The answer that the world offers is you have what you have for your own security. You have what you have for you. You have what you have to be able to control the outcomes of your future and your life. You have what you have so that you don't need to depend on anybody else. Jesus has a different answer and it starts with the image of a vineyard. But this image of the vineyard that Jesus picks up, it's actually a callback to what Isaiah, the prophet, was telling us in our Old Testament reading this morning. It begins with a love song. God's beloved has a whatever. You get it, right? Built a watchtower, built a wine vat, everything laid out prepared. And then the song turns. The owner of the vineyard says, what more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done? The vineyard yielded wild grapes when it should have produced the best kind of grapes. It should have produced justice, Isaiah says. A cry of pain when it should have yielded righteousness. God did everything and yet the fruit was not there. What gives? So Jesus picks up that song from Isaiah in today's parable. And the question underneath it is still the same question. What does God actually want from the people God has entrusted with so much? Can I read that again? What is it that God wants from a people that God has entrusted with so much? When God says what he expected from the vineyard, the answer is not wine. God planted this vineyard to produce the fruit for those in need, the fruit of justice, justice for the poor, dignity for those being crushed, a community where God could be seen in the lives of a generous people. Liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez reads this parable in the same light, the same way. I love this. Listen to this. Says the tenants are not simply murderers because they kill the son. They are murderers from the moment they failed to produce the fruits of justice. Did you hear that? Not just because they committed violence, but because they neglected to do what was right. In the first century Jewish world, oppression of the poor was not merely wrong or sinful, it was homicide actually. To withhold justice, to ignore the cry of the oppressed is already a violence in and of itself. Now most of us were not born into this world without inheriting some broken systems, right? We stepped into this world and the grapes were already wild. The vineyard was already broken. We inherited a system that was quite broken. Like the tenants who arrived after the vineyard had been built and producing fruit, but yet still mismanaged. That's like where we're at, right? But Gutierrez want to let us off the hook this easy. He says to benefit from injustice and stay silent is already to participate in it. To benefit from injustice and to stay silent is already to be a participant complicit in it. So the question isn't, are we implicated? It is, what do we do next now that we know what we know? That's what we're responsible for. Amen. I know this is like intense. It's uncomfortable, but you're all right. Okay. We live in a world full of broken vineyards, right? We know this. A family, an average family in the U.S. pays about $27,000 a year for health insurance before a medical bill ever arrives at their house. One in four households cannot make it from paycheck to paycheck. Prices of groceries and rents and gas and childcare keep going further and further out of reach. We have spent trillions of countless dollars on wars that only served the powerful, needless wars that only served the powerful while the people who are caught in them and the most vulnerable around us pay the price. And the earth itself, this environment, this good creation that God has given us is being degraded and trampled and exploited. And the ones who bear that cost most are always the ones with the least. The world's vineyards are producing exactly what Jesus warned they would produce. Wild grapes, bitter fruit, the cry of pain where righteousness should be. But God does not abandon the vineyard. He sends his son to check in on the vineyard. And what happens to his son? His son is killed, right? We know that the vineyard now makes sense. So this is talking about the life of Christ. God does not respond with hellfire. Jesus quotes the Psalm, the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. God takes the one we threw out of the vineyard, the one we killed and made his body the seeds of a new vineyard, the foundation of a new fruitful vineyard. Not by burning the old vineyard down, but by building something new upon the body of his son, our Lord. And now today, friends, if you think this is maybe like spiritual theoretical talk, each one of us stand in that new vineyard this morning. This is the reality we live in. This is the vineyard our lives unfold in. Is this vineyard founded by the Son of God, sent to tend to the vineyard? We did not earn our place here in this vineyard. We didn't work our way into being accepted in this vineyard, but it was given to us. And check this out, it was given to us by the one we rejected who was raised and returned to hand us this vineyard in this way. What God builds on that stone is already, even for what I've just declared, right? A different kind of vineyard, right? Not organized around what you owe, what you should or shouldn't do. It's not organized around scarcity or extraction or exploitation. It's not asking who gets to keep what. What is yours and what is mine? But it's organized around mercy. It's organized around justice, the goodness of God. It's organized around, friends, what we can give to one another, generosity. And that means that the church, this church, the church, is called to produce a radically different kind of fruit than anything else we would see in the world around us, right? We know this calling. I know you know this calling because I've seen it in Rez. I perhaps have the greatest job in the world because I get this front row seat of what the generosity of God's collective giving does to people's lives. People reach out and ask, I don't have money. I need food. I need groceries. And I get to, with the staff say, we'll take care of that. We will give you food. People come to us with real problems. They're stuck and sometimes money can help unstuck certain problems, right? Sometimes it can't, but we're still there to help in other ways. I've seen the generosity of this church working in the lives of our own and even our neighbors. I've seen this money form the lives of children who are encountering a version of God that I think is more true and more beautiful, which is a good and trustworthy God. That's what the collective generosity of this church has been doing. I've seen the collective generosity of this church forming the future leaders of the church, impacting far beyond just our community. I've seen the generosity of our church send lay people and clergy and staff to visit the sick, to visit those who are with us and yet cannot be here on Sunday mornings. And I've seen the generosity of our church open up space for anyone in South Austin to come and encounter the love of God. I've seen this. I've got a front row seat of what you're giving, what your generosity because of this vineyard has done in South Austin. It's profound. It's beautiful. There's nothing like it. You may have been a part of a church where talking about giving or money is done in such like awkward ways, right? Such difficult, stressful rate. You could feel the tension in the room going and you're like, oh, here we go. Maybe we should leave. But Rez has done, I think a really good job from the beginning. We've really worked hard to not see our giving as like spiritual arm twisting. And can I just say God doesn't want that from you? Do you think God is that desperate for cash that he's going to twist your arm? Like that's not what this is about at all. We see giving, especially living in the vineyard that Christ has planted. We see giving as liberation. We see giving as power to execute the will of God, to build up the beauty of the our vineyard that God has given us to tend to, to steward. We never see giving as funding a budget or keeping the lights on or paying salaries or something. How boring, like utterly boring is that? Those things are important, but giving is so much more for us. It is a joyful expression that allows us to bless people like I've already told you stories of. And if you're anything like me and you're frustrated about the other broken vineyards in the world and the way economic sort of functions and dominates people's lives and expects things from me and makes me a monetary value, a net worth, right? If you look at the world and you see that and you're frustrated by it, then you might be like me and see giving as an act of defiance. In a world that disciples us in fear and scarcity, giving, putting out a little token, that wooden token, is like a heck yeah, dude. No way. I am not that. That is not what this is for. Wherever you find yourself in your relationship with the vineyard, with your money, with your wealth, with whatever God has given you, I want to invite you to find your way into the generosity of this church, into the act of worship, into the offertory. It all starts, I think, this is a really good question. It could start with any question you could think of, but here's a good one. I think not, for instance, how much should I give? I think it's kind of not the most helpful question to begin with. But maybe, God, what is it you want with my giving? Maybe, God, what is this vineyard for? What do I do with what you have handed me, Lord? I wonder what God's inviting you to do this morning. Again, please hear this, not as a burden, but an invitation to listen to what God is inviting you to do. Especially, friends, if you believe that God is good, that God loves you, that God knows your needs even better than you know yourself, then you can ask God this question and you won't hear some stingy, angry, judgmental God, but a loving Father, someone who cares for you. God, what do you want me to do with my money? Whether God is inviting you to begin, maybe for the first time, giving. Maybe you're new to the church or to the faith and you didn't know that this is what we do. We worship God with all of us, including our money. Maybe that's where you're at, beginning this journey of giving. Or maybe you're learning to give more consistently and not just sort of as you can or tips, like as you remember, but having some intention on plan your giving to the Lord. Or even if it's, you know, you're a little bit on autopilot and your giving's like going well and you hear an invitation, maybe you should stretch a little more. Why don't you give a little bit more if you can afford it? And all of those things, I don't know what your question is, but in all of those things, I would challenge you to pay attention to the invitation of a God who loves you, saying, God, where do you want me to grow in my giving? And if you're, I feel like these kinds of sermon, I always have to like air out my own dirty laundry because I'm like kind of, I've seen all of this in my own life. This question about my money seems to be the last question I ever want to ask in my life with God. And I think that's because I want to hold on to it so much because I need it. It does things in my life that actually need to happen. And can I say, if you're in a place where you don't have groceries, I'm not asking you to give. I'm asking the rest of us to give so that you can have groceries. If you're in a tight spot and you need help, this is exactly what this is for. Please come talk to me. Send me an email. Let us know what your needs are so that this community can produce the fruits of justice and mercy and righteousness. That's what this is for. And for the rest of us, we have this question to sit with the Lord, a question that requires some level of faith and trust that God knows, even in a world of broken vineyards, right? Where there seems to be less and less and less, God knows. We're not updating the Lord on the situation. God knows. Our decision is whether or not we can trust this God with the invitation he's offering us. And when we do, friends, when we take that step of trust, that step of faith to a God who is gentle and kind and merciful to us, I know we will become the kinds of people that reflect increasingly the life of Jesus. Generosity, mercy, kindness, the kind of person who would lay down their life for friends. That's the kind of people that I think we could become. Faithful tenants of a vineyard, a vineyard that always needed to have tenants like this, people tending to it in this way. And we don't join that vineyard alone, but your neighbors sitting next to you, they are co-laborers in this vineyard that God has given us. And all of us in our collective worship of God. We're living with intention. We know that when we participate in this, we're participating in the work of God. Not just the work of a budget, but something far beyond that, that changes lives and is eternal. Beloved, this is the fruit that the Lord is asking for. Do you feel that? Do you know the difference between guilt and shame and burden and an invitation into a new life? To become different kind of person? And especially right now in a world that is so screwed up, this is the light of the world when we begin to follow Jesus in these ways. The church, then Christians, then instead of judgmental people are known for their mercy. They're known for their justice. They're known for their righteousness and their generosity. The church we can count on will be the community that answers that cry of the oppressed and the poor and those needs all around us. The church would be known for that because that's who God is. We are the people invited to bear that call, to follow the son that the father has sent to tend to the vineyard himself, who gave his life for us so that fruit could grow, who with the spirit lives and reigns now and forever. Amen. Can we take a moment of silence?