Sermon 9/27/15
Isaiah 5:1-10
Fruitful: Just Fruit
Last week, I gave you some homework. I asked you to think
about the “so thats” that make up
what you do and why, and what we do here at Apple Valley and why. Apple Valley
is here so that what? We worship so that what? We act in ministry so that what? I hope you had an
opportunity to struggle and wrestle with these questions a bit this week. If
you haven’t yet, and you need another worksheet, or if you didn’t get one last
week, I have more right here for you! We spent some time at our Bearing Fruit
Book Study talking about these questions, thinking hard about how we answer
them. I’ve you’ve been finding it a bit challenging, I’ll give you a helpful
strategy. You can’t always settle for your first answer. You aren’t always
getting to the heart of the matter the first time you fill in the blank. So you
have to adopt the attitude of a curious child. The favorite question of a
curious child is “why?” But children don’t often just settle for your first
answer to a why question. They ask it again and again and require of you more
responses until they finally hear something real from you, something that is
more deeply satisfying. (Or, of course, until they get the dreaded “because I
said so,” but that’s not what we’re aiming for here!) Our so that question is really just a fancied up curious “why”
question. And we have to keep asking it past our first easy answers until we
get to the real stuff.
So if you’re trying to think of, for example, why we have
a music program, and your first response is that music makes our worship more
interesting, then I’m going to ask you why it matters that worship is
interesting. And if you say interesting worship matters so that people stay
engaged in what we’re doing in worship, I’m going to ask why it matters that
we’re engaged in worship. Do you get my point? I want you to keep asking
yourself they why/so that question
until you get to a compelling answer, like, “We have music in worship so that
music speaks to our spirits in a way that opens us up with more of our heart to
hear God’s message for us.” Now, I’m not saying that is the right answer. But it is one meaningful,
satisfying answer we might give to the question. And then, when we have a
meaningful answer, it helps us look at all the decisions we make regarding
music and make them in light of the fruit we’re looking for in that area of
ministry. Is it worth it to replace broken tone chimes? Yes, of course. Why?
Because through the tone chime ministry, we might in fact be creating a space
for people to open their hearts to God’s call. That’s why we’re playing, and so
it is worth it to invest in it. Or, it might help us assess what kind of music
we incorporate into worship. Which
music helps people open their hearts and souls to God? That’s a different
question than which is the most fun to sing, or which music is the most
toe-tapping. Knowing what fruit we’re looking for will help us figure out what
we want to plant and how we need to cultivate what we’ve planted. Knowing why
we’re doing what we do at Apple Valley, what so that we’re seeking will help us as we think about how we spend
our time and energy and resources.
Thankfully, we don’t have to come up with the fruit that we’re seeking after all on
our own. We’re not starting from scratch. We’ve already heard from God through
the witness of the scriptures some of the fruit that we’re meant to cultivate
in our lives. For example, the apostle Paul writes to the Galatians that we
should seek to cultivate the fruit of the spirit in our lives – love, joy,
peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and
self-control. In this case, we know the fruit, the so that already. Instead, our focus then is on how to cultivate
that fruit in our lives. I’m going to do what so that I develop the fruit of gentleness. What are you doing in
your life that helps you become a gentler person? What steps, what actions,
what practices are helping you with the “so
that I exhibit the fruit of patience”?
Today, we’re thinking about other fruit that God says is
must-have fruit. God says we are meant to bear the fruits of justice and
righteousness in our lives, in our world. We’ve heard our scripture reading
from Isaiah 5, and we’ll get to that, but I want to jump ahead in Isaiah a bit
first, to the text that formed our call to worship today. The prophet Isaiah
writes about God’s people when they fail to follow God’s commands, but Isaiah
also describes in beautiful imagery what happens because of God’s grace and
forgiveness and when God’s people return. Isaiah says “A spirit from on high is
poured out on us, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful
field is deemed a forest. Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and
righteousness abide in the fruitful field. The effect of righteousness will be
peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.” (Isaiah
32:15-17) Justice and righteousness go hand in hand in the scripture.
Righteousness means living in a way that we’re in right relationship with God
and everyone else. Justice is God’s vision for a world of set-right
relationships. They go hand in hand – God’s vision for a just world is
fulfilled when everyone lives righteously. Berlin and Weems, the authors of our
study book, say that the mark of righteousness in our lives is when we’ve been
transformed by our relationship with God. In other words, others should be able
to see the evidence of the righteous fruit in our lives. God says we’re meant
to seek the fruits of righteousness and justice. And so we have to ask
ourselves, what are we doing in our lives, how are we living, how are we
cultivating the garden of our soul so
that we’re producing the fruits of righteousness and justice?
When we turn back to Isaiah 5, we read a passage that is
known as The Song of the Unfruitful Vineyard. As I said, Isaiah describes what
happens when the people fail to follow God’s commands. In particular, this
passage is about what happens when God’s people fail to live and act with
justice and righteousness. In the text, God plants a vineyard, but is surprised
to find wild fruit instead of good fruit. The actual word in Hebrew where we
read wild literally means “stinky.” There’s a vineyard full of stinky fruit,
and God takes action in response. God says, “I will make [the vineyard] 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.”
Isaiah continues, “God expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but
heard a cry!” God criticizes the people for building huge houses and huge
estates so that there’s no room left for others to live. Earlier, God asks,
“What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor?”
Because God finds no fruit of justice or righteousness, God stops cultivating
the vineyard. And it’s clear from the text that God isn’t just abandoning a
vineyard that needs help. God sees that the people have willfully failed to produce justice and righteousness. They’ve
actively cultivated fruit that stinks by their failure to care for the poor and
oppressed, by their obsession with their own accumulation of wealth and riches.
Not only do they fail to produce righteousness and justice, but they have been
actively producing bad fruit that undermines righteousness and justice. This
kind of behavior – mistreatment of the poor and vulnerable – God hates.
Many of you probably took note of the news that came out
recently citing Syracuse as one of the poorest – and increasingly poorer still
– cities in the nation. It is not much of a claim to fame, is it? If you want
to see some stinky fruit, just read the comments online on any news article
about poverty, and you will find it filled with comments from people who seem
to just loathe people who are poor. What
kind of fruit of justice and righteousness would God find in Onondaga County? God
expects us to cultivate the fruits of justice and righteousness. God expects
that our lives will be transformed by our relationship with God, and that
because of that, we will work to set our relationships with each other to
rights as well, and we will work to ensure that others have access to the same
wholeness, the same abundance that we have experienced through our relationship
with God. What is it that we are doing so
that we produce the fruits of justice and righteousness?
I’m sure many of you have also been following the news of
Pope Francis’s visit to the US this week. He’s been speaking in every venue,
among other things, about the increasing inequality between the rich and the
poor. But he also encouraged people to cultivate hope: “A hope which liberates
us from the forces pushing us to isolation and lack of concern for the lives of
others, for the life of our city,” Francis said. “A hope which frees us from
empty connections, from abstract analyses or sensationalistic routines. A hope
which is unafraid of involvement, which acts as a leaven wherever we happen to
live and work. A hope which makes us see, even in the midst of smog, the
presence of God as he continues to walk the streets of our city.” (1) Our hope
is in God, knowing that we can’t create righteousness and justice on our own.
Instead, we’re laborers in God’s vineyard, working hard for the fruits of
righteousness and justice. And God’s hope is in us, as God waits to see the
fruit of our lives. What will we do, friends, so that God finds the fruits of
righteousness and justice at Apple Valley? “A spirit from on high is poured out
on us, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is
deemed a forest. Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness
abide in the fruitful field.” Amen.
(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/26/nyregion/pope-francis-visits-new-york-city.html?_r=0
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