The Rejected Cornerstone

Watch the sermon that arose from the below notes here:

When we first moved to the West Coast we were participating in the life of the L’Arche community in Tacoma, and I got to learn a lot more about the everyday rejection and fear that people with developmental disabilities and mental illness face. There was an opening in my heart as I got to know some of these people, and I learned about the ways I had mistakenly judged others’ value. Our society puts a lot of emphasis on ability and is very quick to push people who it thinks can’t, or won’t, contribute away from others. This rejection leads to all kinds of things, but God has a message for us to hear.

33 “Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. 34 When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. 35“The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. 36 Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. 37 Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said. 38 “But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ 39 So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. 40 “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” 41 “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.” 42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:

“‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone;

the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’[h]?

43 “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. 44 Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.” 45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. 46 They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.

• The builder and owner of the vineyard
• Renting the land has conditions
• The fruit: “22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.” Galatians 5:22-23
• The servants = the prophets who were killed when they convicted God’s people
• The tenants were self-centered and focusing on what benefitted them. This is of course completely unfamiliar to American culture right?
• The kingdom of God is for those who produce its fruit. Not the fruit of temporal wealth, position, privilege, or power, but the fruit of the Spirit which turns us to the benefit of others.
• The rejects of a society, the incarcerated, the mocked, the weak, the ill, the poor, the sinner, those unable to produce are the very people God has called to the center of his kingdom.
• Jesus was rejected and killed because of his understanding that God’s law existed to generate love of God and neighbor, the joy that comes from loving God and seeing his image in every face we encounter, the peace of right relationships that are based on love and not what is in it for us, the patience to seek out that image no matter what, the kindness to cultivate that image and forgive the inevitable mistakes when we don’t live into the image we bear, the generosity to share what we have so that others can have the resources they need to produce spiritual fruit, the faithfulness to keep pressing on to know the Lord and seek his face, the gentleness with ourselves and others that builds us up carefully, and the self-control to place the good of others above our own desires.
• God is looking for us to produce fruit for him. The cornerstone of self-sacrifice has been laid down and we are built upon it. All our desires and hopes have fallen to pieces and now we live in the glory of a life that is God-centered.
• As we enter into open worship let us ask God for the strength and grace to live into his values. Let us ask him to prune us so that the fruit we bear can be bountiful and that his glory will be revealed through our love for the bearers of God’s image who surround us. Let us fall on the cornerstone together that all within us will be broken apart that it can be rebuilt to the glory of God.

Bearing Good Fruit

Click here to listen to the sermon that came from these notes.

As we get into the tail end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is becoming more emphatic and is speaking to a broader reality. He has given some very specific instruction, and now is giving the disciples some warnings about what they are going to encounter when the training ends and their time of service begins. Last week we heard Phil speak to the reality that the world around us makes it easy to follow paths that lead away from God and the truth of who and what we have been gifted to be. This week, Jesus addresses how to spot those who are luring us to the easy path for their own ends.

15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. Matthew 7:15-20

• Agrarian society. How wolves hunt.
• The two types of wolfishness.
  1. Fear wolf. Throws the acorn at Chicken Little.
  2. No worries wolf. Prosperity, God just wants us to be happy and succesful.
• The wolves play off of each other for mutual benefit.
• Wolves are identified by behaviors that benefit them at others’ expense.
• The fruit we are looking for is fruit that is benefiting others and building them up.
• Paul in Galatians gives very similar teaching, reiterating what Jesus calls us to look for.

You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh[a]; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[b] If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever[c] you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:13-23

• There are no qualifying statements. One of the ways we can identify wolfish thoughts in ourselves is when we feel the need to qualify these characteristics and make exceptions.
• Jesus’ way is focused on others and how we can serve, and that is a narrow gate and a narrow path indeed. Let us ask God to give us wisdom in recognizing the messages of self-gratification that are used to entice us from His path and for the grace to confront ourselves when we give in to wolfish thoughts..

The Judgment Distortion

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Author’s note: I am switching things up a bit in that most of my post is audio and the words are my notes that I used to prompt myself. In my speaking I have decided to write out matters of introduction, then allow the Spirit to lead my speech. I would love to hear any feedback on how that went.

Gil

Today we are going to look at two teachings, one from the Sermon on the Mount and one from Paul’s letter to the Romans. One of the things I love about studying the scriptures is that when done prayerfully I pick up on themes and connections that I would normally miss and today we are going to talk about judgment. I am not talking about decision making here, but about passing judgment on how somebody else missed the mark. Being an armchair quarterback for someone else’s life usually doesn’t go over well. Jesus just finished cautioning his disciples on not putting up a pious front in public to appear more holy and now he takes them one step further down the path of self-examination.

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Matthew 7:1-5

Paul in the beginning of Romans runs down a long list of the specks and planks he saw active through his travels in the Roman Empire, especially among those who ruled, speaking of how the idolatry he witnessed led to all kinds of debauchery, lust, and greed. After running down the laundry list of what ways people missed the mark when their aim was on something other than God, he addresses the Christians living in the heart of the fully corrupt empire with these words:

Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? Romans 1:28-2:4

1. The danger of what appears to be true about someone else. (Story about friend.)
2. Work on our issues first, because often our issues cloud our perception and distort our vision.
3. The rebound effect of judgment.
4. Kindness and not judgment leads to repentance.