Sermons

Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

Sunday 5 October at 10am

David Paton-Williams
Readings: Isaiah 5.1-7 and Matthew 6.25-33

"God is looking for Fruit"

What is your image of God?

The Bible offers all sorts of images for what God is like:
God is compared to the sun, giving life, to a shield or fortress, protecting us, to a mother hen gathering her chicks under her wings,
to a shepherd feeding and guiding us, to a judge, a father and so on.

Well today we are offered the image of God as a farmer. And that is fairly appropriate as we draw close to our harvest festival next week.

Both Isaiah and Jesus tell a story of a farmer who creates a vineyard, who puts a great deal of hard work into making it, digging it, clearing away the stones, planting the best vines, protecting it with a hedge and a watchtower, and digging the pit where all the grapes can be trodden.

It is clearly a story about God's relationship with his people.

And the key moment in each story arrives when the farmer comes looking for the fruit but finds none or is offered none.

And the question the two parables raise for us is this:
when God comes looking for fruit in our lives and our church what will he find? Because God is looking for spiritual fruit.

God came looking for it in Isaiah's day. And while he found a lot of religious people he found little spiritual fruit. all he found was sour, bitter grapes.

Despite all the blessings that he had given to his people the fruit that Israel was bearing was idolatry and injustice. People were worshipping things made by their own hands and in society the rich were getting richer on the backs of the poor who were exploited and oppressed.

That injustice had sown the seeds of the country's decay and downfall, and soon, Isaiah realised, hordes of Assyrian warriors
would invade their land and trample it down and the vineyard of God would become wild and overgrown.

And in our own day - the fruit of justice and compassion and meeting the needs of the oppressed is still on God's agenda

God still looks to us to be workers in his vineyard to play our part in creating a society full not of the sour grapes of injustice
but the good fruit of the kingdom.

And God came looking for spiritual fruit in Jesus' day.

Again he found a lot of religious people.

People like the Pharisees who wanted to keep themselves pure and untainted by the messy realities of living out the faith in the real world.

(And so they were not at all happy that the sinners, the outcasts, the prostitutes, the tax-collectors and the like, were being welcomed so freely into the kingdom by Jesus.)

Or people like the chief priests, who were benefiting from an increasingly corrupt religious status quo.

(And so they were not at all happy that Jesus was turning over tables in the temple and challenging the whole religious system.)

There were a lot of religious people but there was little spiritual fruit.

This was clear from three stories in chapter 21 of Matthew.

In one, Jesus sees a fig tree that is not bearing any fruit and he curses it, prophesying that it will never bear fruit again.

It is an acted parable - it seemed to him that Israel was like that fig tree and it was failing to bear the fruit God was looking for.
In the second story Jesus spoke about two sons who the father asked to work - in a vineyard

One said no - but later changed his mind and went The other said yes - but didn't do it

To Jesus, so many religious people in his day were saying Yes to God - but not actually working in the vineyard or producing good fruit in their own lives.

And then he tells the story we had today. So similar to Isaiah's story except that now the focus is not on Israel as a whole but on the tenants, the religious leaders.

Twice the farmer sends his servants and twice they are beaten or killed (and Jesus' hearers would have thought of the prophets)

And then the farmer sent his son (and now his hearers would have thought of the messiah - and there would have been shock and disbelief when they heard that even the son was killed)

In Jewish law if a landowner failed to claim his share of the harvest on three occasions then the tenants could try to claim the land as their own.

In other words Jesus was saying that the religious leaders were just using their faith just to benefit themselves, whereas God the farmer was asking them to work in his vineyard and help produce a harvest of good fruit. In later years, St Paul also told us that God is looking for spiritual fruit in the lives of Christians and in the life of the Church as a whole.

The sort of fruit God wants to grow in us is, Paul says, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self- control

A beautiful description of the character of Jesus

One reason is because fruit always has within itself the seeds of new life.

And God wants new life to spring up within us and he wants us to help new life spring up for those we live amongst and work with
and for those who share our city and nation and world.

And as Jesus says in John's Gospel we can only bear that sort of fruit if we remain united to him. if we are grafted into him like the branches of a vine. only in a close relationship with him can the sap flow into us bringing all the nourishment we need.

So, the sort of fruit we bear as Christians depends upon the relationship we have with Christ.

Our readings this morning are challenging ones.

They challenge us with the questions where is the fruit in our lives? where is the fruit in our church?

How are we engaging with the sorts of concerns that were there in Isaiah's day and are just as real in our own society?

How far is our faith just about serving our own interests?

How far are we prepared to share in Jesus' work of reaching out to those beyond our walls, expressing the gracious love and call of god to them?

And how far do the qualities of Christ find a home within us, bringing the promise of new life into our lives and enabling us to spread that life to others.

God the farmer is looking for spiritual fruit.

When he looks at us and at our church - what will he find?

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay