Pastor John Wright

This week we begin a “Heritage Month” in our congregation with a multicongregational service that celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Church of the Nazarene. As a congregation – as any congregation – we stand within a particular tradition. As Luigi Guissani says in The Risk of Education, “There was a point in time when we did not exist. This means that each one of us arises from a preceding event, a complex of elements that constitutes our makeup and shapes us” (p. 87). Our congregation is the place where God brings us together with each others pasts to re-form us through the interaction with those who have gone before us in the Church of the Nazarene, and, beyond them, into the church catholic – as well as intersect us with those whom God will call to follow after us. To understand ourselves, therefore, we must understand our past – and our future. We always stand in the middle, between from which and through which God has called us in the particularity of this congregation, to which God calls us – God’s coming kingdom in Jesus Christ as the end of all things.

It is important for us to own our position in the way, not as in being an obstacle, but as being called from God, living through God and being moved to God through Jesus by the Holy Spirit within the very concrete interactions of our lives, particularly as they come together in worship and the works of devotion and mercy in our congregation. Our readings this week help us to find ourselves there, a humbling exercise for our sanctification. It may be helpful to begin with the OT reading, move to the Gospel, before turning to the Epistle reading from Philippians.

Isaiah 5:1-7

The song of the vineyard has a past and a future. Who is the first-person at the beginning of the passage? When does the passage move to when the “beloved” speaks? What is the relationship between the “Lover” and the “Beloved”? Between the Beloved and the vineyard? By the end of the passage, what is the future of the vineyard and its inhabitants? How is the future tied to the present? How is the future tied to the past? How does this speak of the promise and peril of the live of the church and particular congregations?

Matthew 21:33-43

Jesus retells and updates the parable of the vineyard from Isaiah 5. How does this story differ from the “parable” spoken in Isaiah? What does Jesus emphasize in his telling? How does the “landowner” and the “son” relate to the “Lover” and the “Beloved” in Isaiah 5? What does that landowner want out of the vineyard? Why must the kingdom be “given”, not “produced”? Why then is it important that the people produce “the fruits of the kingdom” and not the “kingdom” itself? Where do we find ourselves as a congregation and as individuals within it in this parable?

Philippians 3:14-21

Where does Paul find himself in his journey to the goal? What is this goal? Does that mean that the present in irrelevant? Why does he exhort those not to lose what they have attained? What are the obstacles that Paul sees in the way, for himself and for those to whom he wrote – and to us to whom he writes? What happens when our minds get caught up on “earthly things” that lose sight of the “goal”? What happens if we ignore the “earthly things” and solely focus on the “heavenly goal”?
There is an important distinction to make here. The heavenly goal is not collapsed into the earthly things; yet the earthly things are raised and transformed and perfected in light of our heavenly goal. How do we see this in Jesus, even within this passage. What does it mean to have our present “citizenship” in heaven? How does this make us pilgrims, sojourners, or aliens? What happens when we collapse all God’s revelation into the present world? What is our ultimate hope?
Maybe you could spend some time talking about “observing those who live according to the example you have in us”, those who don’t live as enemies of the cross of Christ, whose god is the Triune God, the Lover, Beloved, and Love, not the belly; and their glory is in their shame; who encounter “earthly things” as citizens of heaven, not as members of a particular contemporary political unit. How have they mastered the skill of “pressing on”? How do we as a congregation, and individuals within it, keep our proper place in the vineyard?
Maybe you can plan together how to support the multicongregation in the potluck following the service. Next week we will incorporate aspects of our heritage into our service and into membership classes following it.