(Is 42:1-4; Mk 12:1-12; Ps 22:16-19)

Lent 3 ~ 10:30 am, Sun, March 3, 2024 ~ FBCA

In our Vestry, out there, we have a large piece of hooked rug artwork by Deanne Fitzpatrick, The Grape Pickers. Look closely in that vineyard, and you can see the men and women who work those fields. It can be a lovely scene to ponder. Perhaps you will think of vines and grapes and a winepress when we come to the Table, later.

Jesus’ parable of the Vineyard, or parable of the Wicked Tenants - whatever we call it - is a far cry from peaceful. It is a scene of greed and violence, injustice and even murder.

I paired this Bible story with a song of a servant, in Isaiah 42, where God’s great servant is so gentle and quiet and determined, peacefully working for the good of the people. Mark tells this story, from Jesus, pointed against some of the religious officials. It is about the horrible workers in a good vineyard. Without difficulty, we see here an allegory about Jesus Himself, who is soon to be killed, like the son of the vineyard owner in the story. God’s great Servant who suffers for the sake of all the suffering people of the world.

We who are long in the pews have been trained to see Jesus’ death and its meaning to be all about sin and forgiveness. It is, but much more than this. It is for all the harms and hurts and limits we have in our lives, and that we see in the world.

Christianity does open our eyes to face our failures. There is such power and blessing in having these ways we seek and celebrate forgiveness. Our moments of confession and forgiveness are often very brief, on a Sunday morning, sometimes little more than the words in the Lord’s Prayer, which today were, forgive us our sins and impositions on you as we are forgiving all who in any way offend us. (D. Willard)

Along with our own failures and harm we’ve done, are all the hurts we have suffered from others, and simply from what we could call circumstances. Plus all the evil, big and small, we see around us.

The meaning of all this suffering is what Jesus reaches, and He does it like the son in the vineyard story, who actually gets killed. That is what is about to happen to Christ, just a few days after he told this story in the courtyard of the Jerusalem Temple. He enters pain.

There is so much that is meaningful in pain, problems, trouble, injustice. A lot of it, we can’t make sense of, yet there are plenty of times that our souls and bodies learn from the school of hard knocks, from our greatest errors and the simple limitations we have that we are not even responsible for.

About fifteen years ago a woman moved to Windsor, and into the Church where Sharon and I were. I’ll call her ‘Rose.’ I had gone all through school with Rose - Melvern Square Consolidated and then Middleton Regional High. She lived in my village. Rose is a special needs person, I don’t know why. She was one of those the rest of us kids treated as ‘different’ and did not associate with much. Once in Jr. High she was in ‘special ed’ as it was called then.

Fifteen years ago, she was about thirty, and her foster mother died. Rose had to move out on her own, for the first time. She got placed in Windsor. She came to our Church because she was a Baptist Christian. In her little village Church she had been faithful, and a hard worker in the kitchen with their events. Rose came to us and hoped to fit in. She did not socialize quite like ‘normal people.’ She was not a person who would ever have a car. No one thought of her as smart in any way. But she was kind, and loving, and fun.

Of course, Rose transferred her membership to the Windsor Baptist Church, and when she joined us, she was willing to speak and say something to the congregation about herself. I don’t remember the details of what she said, that Sunday, just some things about her life and her faith in Christ. This had a real impact upon people, it was very honest and people were deeply moved. Some of the other younger people - thirty years old - spoke about her and were quite touched and impressed by her that day. Rose came to us with heart, with faith, with trust, and with the deep need to belong & find home.

I find it quite profound that the spiritual teacher, Richard Rohr, speaks of how one great thing we can do with God, for the sake of our relationship with God, is actually to sin, or to be hurt, or be weak. To give our sins, take our problems, to the forgiving, healing Master. Rohr even has a book, titled, Falling Upward. We make the greatest progress in our personal lives when we fall, fail, are weak, go astray, have to be guided, or rescued, or healed inside.

I bought a book this week; and when it arrived in the mail this was the first quotation my eyes landed upon:

The church’s primary social and psychological task is to help people manage their experienced dependency upon God in such a way that they are better able to care effectively for the world. These two dimensions of dependency and caring define the needed human rhythm of life. The church is the only large-scale institution in society that is accountable for and capable of fostering such an authentic rhythm. (Tilden Edwards, in Embracing Rhythms of Work and Rest, Ruth Haley Barton, 2022, p. 117)

Dependency, and caring. We are dependent, needy, hurting, asking for mercy. We are caring, talented, loving, and capable of blessing others.

Under the grace of Jesus, in the economy of God, blessed by the Spirit, we end up reaping good things from everything that we sow. As we prayed earlier, when we rejoice today, we can stay humble and be true to God. When we fail, even if we are nasty, the amazing grace of God will flow. We learn much from our mistakes; we fall upward. And we get to be wonderful and beautiful, as we are created to be.