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What's mine is my own! · Exploring The Holy Scriptures with Rev Dr David Wright

• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, sisters and brothers, and peace be with you.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: May the words on my lips and the meditations in our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: What's yours is mine, and what's mine is my own.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is a famous satirical proverb and literary line used to describe selfishness.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: The exact phrasing appears in James Joyce's nineteen twenty-two novel Ulysses, but it is based on a traditional sentiment found in William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: What's mine is yours, and what's yours is mine.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: So Joyce twists a romantic or communal ideal of sharing into a greedy individual claim.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: I begin my message today with these quotes because what if we question them by saying that they aren't simply about what belongs to me, but rather by asking, what have I been entrusted with and what am I doing with it?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: That is the question sitting at the very heart of Jesus' parable in Matthew chapter twenty-one, verses thirty-three to forty six.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus tells the story of a landowner who plants a vineyard.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: He carefully prepares it.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: He puts a fence around it.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: He builds a wine press and constructs a watch tower.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Then he entrusts the vineyard to tenants, who turn out to be really wicked.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the rest we know.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: They beat one servant, they kill another, stone another, and finally they kill the landlord's son.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: It is a truly disturbing story, and Jesus isn't talking about farming.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: He is talking about God and God's people.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: The vineyard represents God's kingdom and God's work in the world.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: The tenants represent people who've been given responsibility for God's people.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: The servants represent the prophets whom God repeatedly sent to call his people back to faithfulness.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, the Son represents Jesus Himself.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that the religious leaders listening to Jesus understood exactly what he was saying.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't simply a story about bad people somewhere else.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: It is a parable that questions all of us.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: What have we been entrusted with?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: We've been entrusted with time.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: We've been entrusted with relationships.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: We've been entrusted with opportunities.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: We've been entrusted with gifts and abilities.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Some have been entrusted with leadership, some with care of children, some with the responsibility for a congregation, some with wealth and possessions, some with influence.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And all of us, as followers of Christ, have been entrusted with the good news of God's love.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: The great danger that Jesus is pointing out is that we can begin to confuse stewardship with ownership.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: We start saying, My time, my money, my faith community, my ministry, my position, my way of doing things.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And slowly, without even noticing it, we can forget that everything we have ultimately comes from God.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: The tenants in Jesus' story made the same mistake.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: They forgot that they were tenants.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: They began behaving as though they were the owners.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when the owner came looking for fruit, they resisted.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: The owner doesn't ask the impossible.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: He simply comes looking for fruit.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Fruit is evidence that the vineyard has been cared for.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout the Bible, fruit becomes a picture of the life God desires from his people.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: What fruits?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Simple.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: The fruits of love.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: The fruits of justice, of mercy, of compassion, of faithfulness, of generosity, of forgiveness.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: These are the fruits God looks for in us.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that gives us something important to think about.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: We can come to church.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: We can sing hymns.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: We can say prayers, we can know the Bible, we can talk about faith.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus challenges us by asking where is the fruit?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Where is the love?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Where is the mercy?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Where is the generosity?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Where is the forgiveness?
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Where is the concern for the lonely, the poor, the forgotten, and the outsider?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Where is the evidence that God's vineyard is producing something beautiful?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the most challenging part of the parable is what happens to the sun.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: The tenants reject him because they want to control the vineyard for themselves.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yet Jesus turns the whole story upside down.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: He says the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: The one rejected becomes the foundation.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: The one cast out becomes the center.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: The one killed becomes the source of new life.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: That is the heart of the Christian gospel.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is rejected, crucified, and buried.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: But rejection is not the end.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Death is not the end.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: God raises him to new life.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the risen Christ becomes the cornerstone on which the church is built.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: So perhaps today Jesus is reminding us that the vineyard is not ours, and he is inviting us to make a simple change in perspective.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of asking what is mine, ask what has God entrusted to me.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of asking what do I deserve, ask what fruit can I offer?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of asking, how can I protect what is mine?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Ask how can I make God's vineyard flourish?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because the vineyard belongs to God.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Our faith communities belong to God.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: The gospel belongs to God.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Our gifts belong to God.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Our lives belong to God.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And one day the master will come looking for the fruit.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Not perfection, not success, not impressive achievements, but fruit.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: The fruit of a life that has learned to love.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: The fruit of a community that has learned to welcome.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: The fruit of disciples who have learned to serve.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: The fruit of people who have placed Christ at the center.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: So let us remember that God's vineyard is not ours.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: We are its caretakers.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that God gives us grace to care for it faithfully, to share its fruit generously, to build our lives upon Jesus Christ, the rejected stone, who became the cornerstone.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.