Do You Have An Horizon Of Hope?
Good Morning Friends,
Our God has many qualities. God is loving and patient but in today’s scripture, God is also watching and is expectant. The dynamic experience of the Christian life reflects the image of these qualities in our memories, in the spirit of a future promise and a belief in something beyond a selfish reality. Do You Have An Horizon Of Hope?
Scripture: Will anyone rob God? Yet you are robbing me! But you say, “How are we robbing you?” In your tithes and offerings!
Malachi 3:8 (NRSV)
Then he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a pit for the wine press, and built a watchtower; then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the season came, he sent a slave to the tenants to collect from them his share of the produce of the vineyard. But they seized him, and beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. And again he sent another slave to them; this one they beat over the head and insulted. Then he sent another, and that one they killed. And so it was with many others; some they beat, and others they killed. He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Have you not read this scripture: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’?” When they realized that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowd. So they left him and went away.
Mark 12:1-12 (NRSV)
He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. I will make it 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 5:2-6 (NRSV)
From the day that your ancestors came out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day; yet they did not listen to me, or pay attention, but they stiffened their necks. They did worse than their ancestors did.
Jeremiah 7:25-26 (NRSV)
Message: Friends in today’s parable we have the disturbing image of the People of God, the image of the Church and also the image of our soul. I do so love the parables of Jesus for they point to just how special we are but also sometimes how foolish. Here we discover that our relationship with God is to be the foundation and cornerstone upon which everything else is built. In today’s scripture Jesus addresses the Priests, Scribes and Pharisees with the parable of the murderous tenant-farmers. Jesus has just had a confrontation with these leaders about his authority, and stumped them with his response. And now he begins to teach in another parable. It is an innocent story at first, sounding a lot like a passage from Isaiah. It is dealing with a common problem that everyone would have been familiar with, but then Jesus completes the story with a biting ending and a surprise. The tenants decided to revolt, insulting, beating and killing first the servants the master sent to reclaim the land and collect his due, and then, at the climax of the drama, murdering the only son of the owner – wrongly believing that such an act could earn them a right to inherit the vineyard. The killing of the master’s servants and of the master’s own son is a Biblical image of the prophets and of Christ Himself. It shows an institution corrupted and closed in on itself, one not open to the promises of God. It describes a people that fail to wait for the fulfilment of God’s promises, a people without memory of a proper tradition, without prophecy and without hope of an honest and healthy relationship. Friends, we are called to be servants in God’s vineyard recognizing that the Lord of the harvest will return. But know this, if we do not do the work, God will find someone else. Love always finds a way even in the face of pain and suffering.
Pray the Lord give us the heart and work ethic of a servant. Pray we realize that there is great responsibility and eventually accountability when entrusted with God’s resources. Pray we not lose the memory of our mission. Pray as gentiles that we serve if only to make other jealous of the divine in our lives. Pray we stand on the cornerstone of Christ for we live in an age of shifting sand. Pray we see that Jesus is the cornerstone that holds scripture all together. Pray we understand that Jesus is the cornerstone of the building blocks of life itself. Pray that even though we do not know what is over the horizon, we can trust that God knows. Pray we have hope in a better future as adopted heirs to a Kingdom that honors God…to a Vineyard that produces good fruit for God shared. Pray we have hope beyond the horizon. Pray we believe in the redemptive act of Christ for the world.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 