13th Sunday after Pentecost
August 14, 2016
Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80; Hebrews 11:29-12:2
(Or watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bydp5FJ-pxE)
Our opening Scripture this morning describes a vineyard.
The gardener dug out the land for it, cleared away the stones, and removed the
weeds. He planted it with excellent vines and watered it and tended it. The
gardener built a tower to guard it and waited for for it to produce good
grapes, which was a reasonable expectation after all the hard work he put into
it. But…he was sorely disappointed. The grapes weren’t any good at all; they
were all rotten. It did not turn out at all how the gardener had planned and
what he had expected.
This year’s summer Olympics have seen a few upsets as
well, where the games did not go as expected. For example, Canada’s men’s
volleyball team, ranked #12, beat in three straight sets our American men’s
volleyball team, who was ranked 5th.[1]
Every Olympics there are athletes who have trained and put in significant amounts
of time and energy and money into becoming an Olympian, only to not qualify, or
to be injured, or for something to happen that prevents their dreams from
becoming reality.
For these Olympians and for the gardener with the
vineyard, it’s a bit like the saying of “when life gives you lemons.” I’ve been
hearing from a few of you the sense that you’re not sure you can handle life giving
you any more lemons. You’ve had enough plans upset and expectations unmet,
you’re not sure you can deal with being given yet another lemon. Life has not
turned out how you expected. Your family is not what you planned it to look
like. Your health is not where you thought it would be. Our country is not what
you expected it would be like in 2016. Our church is not what you thought it
would be like. Life has handed you lemons, so, what are you going to do about
it?
Well, you know the rest of the saying, you make lemonade.
The good news is that the other two ingredients for lemonade are not dependent
on “the changes and chances of this life.”[2] So
no matter how many lemons you have, the water and the sugar do not run out.
It’s kind of like the prophet Elijah going to the widow of Zarephath during the
drought. While he stayed with her, the
jar of flour and the jug of oil never ran out until the drought was over.[3]
They always had enough to eat, even if there wasn’t any variety in their food!
God provided food for them, and in the same way provides enough to sustain us.
So, first, let’s add some water. Lemons by themselves are
pretty sour and there’s not much juice.
To make it go further than a swallow or two, you need water. From a biological standpoint, water is the
essence of life. Literally, you cannot
have life without water. That is why it
was such a big deal to discover water on Mars.
From a Christian standpoint, water means baptism. It means new life. It means washing away the old and being made
clean. And the other thing that happens
in baptism is that you get a new name: beloved child of God. In the waters of baptism Christ claims you
and names you his own. Your primary
identity is no longer Baltimorean or male or wife or anything else; it is child
of God. Christian. And that doesn’t change no matter how many
lemons you get, no matter the state of your health or the size of your family. Your circumstances never make you give up
this identity. You stay who you are,
even if you have a new haircut or move to a different house or find yourself unable
to do things you used to do. In your
baptism God already claimed you as his, and that never changes, although you
may decide to ignore it.
We
hear some examples of the saints who never forgot their identity as God’s
children in our reading from Hebrews. “By faith the Israelites crossed the Red
Sea… By faith Jericho’s walls fell after the people marched around them for
seven days… By faith Rahab wasn’t killed with the rest…”[4]
And there’s a much, much longer list if you read the rest of chapter 11. By the
end, the author says, “I’d run out of room if I told about Gideon, Barak,
Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets.”[5] Through
faith they conquered, they shut the mouths of lions, they quenched fires, they
escaped, they found strength in weakness. Still others were tortured or
publicly shamed or imprisoned or stoned to death. And the end of that chapter,
after that long list, we are told that “All these people did not receive what
was promised, although they were commended for their faith.” They kept their
faith, even when life handed them lemons. They stayed faithful to God.
Did
you catch the cry of the psalm we read? “Turn to us, Almighty God! Look down
from heaven; come and save your people! Come and save this grapevine that you
planted, this young vine you made grow so strong! Restore us, O Lord God of
hosts! Let your face shine, that we may be saved!”[6]
That’s a faithful response, and that’s part of what we’ve been talking about
with all the horrendous news we’ve been hearing this summer. Turn to God with
your lemons. Throw them at him if you want. It’ll be a game of catch, he’ll
toss them right back at you, but he does invite us to come to him, we who
“labor and are heavy-laden,” because he will give us rest for our souls.[7]
So
whatever lemons you’re handed, make sure you don’t lose your faith and your
identity as Christian. Make sure you
remember your baptism, your identity as a child of God, and be thankful that nothing can take that identity
away. That’s part of why we don’t
re-baptize. You may lose your way, you
may get overwhelmed, you may reject God, but God does not reject you. He knows that you are still his beloved
child. In the Christian world water
means baptism, and baptism means becoming part of God’s family, regardless of
the number of lemons you have.
So, now you have lemons and water;
the last ingredient you need for lemonade is sugar. You have enough lemony water to go around,
but it’s going to be awfully sour unless you add some sugar. What makes life sweeter? God’s grace.
God’s freely given unconditional love that loves you no matter what you
do. God’s love that chases you down when
you run away, sometimes tapping you on the shoulder, sometimes hitting you over
the head with a 2x4, saying, “Hey, you, I love you. You are my beloved child.”
As
United Methodists we talk specifically about three kinds of grace. Prevenient grace is the grace that comes
before we even know God. It’s why we
baptize infants, because we recognize that God’s grace is already at work in
their lives, that God already loves them.
Justifying grace is the grace that saves us. It’s the love that made Jesus willing to die
for us on the cross. It’s being made
right with God through the atoning work of Jesus Christ. Being justified, like the words on a paper,
all lined up with God. But God isn’t
done with us there. Accepting the love
of Jesus Christ already at work in you through prevenient grace isn’t the end
of the story, because then there is sanctifying grace, becoming more like
Jesus. And sometimes this is done
through trials, through lemons.
And in God’s grace, we don’t do this alone. “Not one of
these people” listed in that Hall of Faith in Hebrews, “even though their lives
of faith were exemplary, [none of them] got their hands on what was promised.
God had a better plan for us: that their faith and our faith would come
together to make one completed whole, their lives of faith not complete apart
from ours.”[8] The faith of all those who
have gone before us along with our faith comes together. Their lives of faith
and our lives of faith are not separate and individual, but part of a whole,
all part of God’s kingdom, part of God’s family. Our lemons get combined with
everyone else’s lemons, God provides the water and the sugar, and together we
turn them all into lemonade. That’s God’s better plan. All those saints listed,
all the saints that you can think of,
“they were commended for their faith, [and
yet] did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better,
so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.”[9] We
are all in this together. Your lemons are my lemons and my lemons are yours. We
share each other’s burdens. And then we get to share the lemonade, too!
The
end of that passage from Hebrews says, “As for us, we have this large crowd of
witnesses around us. So then, let us rid ourselves of everything that gets in
the way, and of the sin which holds on to us so tightly, and let us run with
determination the race that lies before us. Let us keep our eyes fixed on
Jesus, on whom our faith depends from beginning to end. He did not give up
because of the cross! On the contrary, because of the joy that was waiting for
him, he thought nothing of the disgrace of dying on the cross, and he is now
seated at the right side of God's throne.”[10]
Jesus got handed lemons, too. You may think, oh, Son of God, he’s got it made,
he’ll slide right by. But no. His students abandon him. His friends betray him.
He is innocent, and yet he gets the death penalty. Jesus knows about lemons. He
knows about being overwhelmed and not sure you can handle any more. He knows
about feeling abandoned by God. And what does he do on the cross? He offers
grace. He turns to the thief crucified next him, who deserved to be there, and
says, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”[11]
If
you’re in a season of lemons, hold on, and remember that you’re in good
company. It means you’re being made more like Christ, you’re being sanctified,
by the grace of God. And you may be
thinking, like Mother Teresa, “I know God won't give me anything I can't
handle. I just wish he didn't trust me so much.” Don’t forget, all those other
saints in the Bible got handed a truckload of lemons, too. And none of them
received what was promised, because God had a better plan.
Most
of you know that I served with a mission agency in Nicaragua before seminary
and that I loved it! It was a dream come true. Some of you are aware that I
returned to the U.S. earlier than I was supposed to, partly because of the
rheumatoid arthritis I developed. To say
I was disappointed would be an understatement; I went through a period of
grieving the loss of a dream and the loss of normal health. However, I returned to North Carolina at the
perfect time to re-meet my husband. A
year earlier, he wouldn’t have been available, and who knows what would’ve
happened by two years later. Romans 8:28 says “We know that all things work
together for good, for those who love God, who are called according to his
purpose.” All things include
lemons. It’s not fun, no. It’s not what we would have planned for our
lives. But God says, Make lemonade. Take the sour lemons and your baptismal
identity and God’s grace and God’s family, and work with God and let God make
something good come out of it.
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