Managing what has been entrusted
Commentary
In many congregations October is stewardship month. It's time to get the financial pledges of people for supporting the church for the coming year and for the appropriate committees to put together a budget. Stewardship has thus become for many an unpleasant word that stimulates mental pictures of an outreached hand with palms up.
Our lessons for today challenge us to consider stewardship in a sense broader than money alone, perhaps even to make our own pledge that next year stewardship will be a weekly theme that has to do with how we live our lives as God's people in the world.
Isaiah 5:1-7
As we read the opening words about a lover singing for his/her beloved a love-song, we get the feeling we have just returned to the previous book in the Bible, the Song of Solomon. There, indeed, the setting for some of the romantic scenes is the lover's vineyard or garden (see 2:15; 4:16-17; 6:1-3; 8:12). We would expect, therefore, that the stanzas to follow would ooze with soft and intimate "sweet little nothings" similar to the Song of Solomon.
Instead the three stanzas turn out to be structured according to the form of an accusation. The three stanzas contain (1) a description of the previous history culminating in the expectation imposed on the vineyard (vv. 1b-2), (2) a call for the jury consisting of the inhabitants of Judah and Israel to make a judgment between the owner and the vineyard (vv. 3-4), and (3) the owner's avowed intervention to destroy the vineyard for not living up to its obligation. Hardly a warm fuzzy!
The final verse (v. 7) identifies the players as well as the failed obligation. The owner of the vineyard is the Lord, and the guilty vineyard is Israel and Judah, the very ones called upon in verses 3-4 to serve as the jury. (The ploy sounds like that of the prophet Nathan, who told King David about the rich man who, eager to practice hospitality for a traveler, took the only ewe lamb of a poor man to serve his guest. The story angered David who cried out for capital punishment. Only then did Nathan reveal, "You are the man!" [2 Samuel 12:1-7].) The "wild grapes" of the song turn out to be the failure of the people of God to produce justice and righteousness and to yield instead bloodshed and cries for help in the face of injustice. This prophet has already announced the nature of these offenses in terms of failure to correct oppression, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow (1:17): both their words and their deeds are against the Lord (3:8), their partiality in the courts makes them a chip off old Sodom's block (3:9), and they devour the vineyards leaving nothing for the poor to glean (3:14-15). Enough already!
In fact, prophetic speeches about the vineyard as a metaphor for the people of Israel and Judah commonly end up in judgment for the vineyard's failures (Jeremiah 2:21; Hosea 10:1). Even Psalm 80 laments that the Lord has destroyed the vine brought out of Egypt and calls on the Lord to have regard for this vine that "your right hand planted."
The "beloved" of the Lord, as Israel was considered on the basis of the covenant made long before, could only tremble when the love-songs turned to vines and vineyards. The problem was that they were not faithful managers or stewards of what had been entrusted to them. What would it take for the song to take a different form?
Philippians 3:4b-14
Writing from a prison in Rome or Corinth or Ephesus or somewhere else entirely (1:12-14) and facing the possibility of execution for his ministry, the apostle Paul saw his whole life flash before his eyes. And intimate as he was with the congregation in Philippi, he shared with them his evaluation of the past and his hopes for the future. Those sharings comprise our pericope for the day.
As for the past, Paul indicated that he had broken his teeth on the Torah, and so had his parents. According to the law prescribed in Leviticus 12:3, he was circumcised "on the eighth day" and so was counted among the children of Abraham who bore this mark of God's unconditional covenant on their bodies (Genesis 17:9-14). He belonged to the tribe of Benjamin and was Hebrew by birth, not simply by conversion: "a Hebrew born of Hebrews." As regards the Torah itself, he was a Pharisee, that party famous and infamous for such adherence to the laws and statutes that they sought perfection through its observance. He demonstrated his zeal for Judaism by persecuting the church of Jesus, and he was perfect, that is, blameless, in his pursuit of righteousness under the law.
In the tape running before his eyes, he now realized that all of that on which he based his past was pure rubbish. What revealed the past as the content of Tuesday morning's garbage collection was Christ. Indeed, "knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" put everything else in perspective, including his own sufferings. Christ has become the goal of his life, but having stated that goal, Paul immediately corrected any impression that this knowledge of Christ and the relationship with Christ was the result of his own actions. It was all God's doing: a righteousness "that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith" (v. 9).
With the possibility of execution before him, Paul admits his desire "to know Christ and the power of his resurrection" and the willingness to share in his sufferings and become like him in death. His intimate sharings here demonstrated to his readers how this calm and confident faith in the face of impending disaster might become the means by which they, too, could face death either naturally or as a result of persecution.
Now Paul gives them another piece of his mind. As powerful as his testimony is, it is by no means the result of having achieved perfection. The goal is still ahead of him, and he pledges to "press on to make it my own." The reason why is he able to do so is that "Christ Jesus has made me his own" (v. 12). Contrary to much of our religious talk today, Paul does not claim to have found Christ. Rather he knows all too well that he has been found by Christ. Recall the words of the hymn: "I once was lost but now am found." This finding is truly not his own but God's act through Jesus Christ.
The goal that Paul presses toward is the "heavenly" or "upward" call of God in Christ. With that destination in mind, the apostle has indeed put his entire life in perspective. Perhaps there is a lesson here for all of us, namely, that the positions we tend to hold on a variety of issues -- ones that seem to be matters of life and death, positions that we would not compromise -- might just be the kinds of trash that Paul indicates he was able to toss away. His insistence that he has not yet reached the goal might help put in place many of our own so-called non-negotiables. Constantly pressing on toward the goal of knowing firsthand the power of Christ's resurrection might enable us to be more tentative about the far less important issues we swear we would die for.
What the apostle enables his readers in the first century and in our own to do is to manage our lives and our issues from the perspective of having been found by Christ to follow him through suffering to glory. Putting the garbage out for collection is a starting point for stewardship.
Matthew 21:33-46
The talk has turned to vineyards again, and on the basis of our discussion of Isaiah 5, that can only mean trouble. Moreover, the method Jesus uses to get across his point is quite similar to that of Isaiah's love song.
Back in verse 23 we learned that the audience for Jesus' words in the previous, present, and following paragraphs is the religious gang that came to him in the Jerusalem temple, namely the chief priests and the elders, to question the authority by which he did his wonders. That this parable is addressed to the same audience is essential for its interpretation.
Jesus used the common situation of absentee landlords in his day as the familiar setting for the story. A man planted a vineyard, set off its boundaries, and even built a tower to spot raiders, and then leased it to tenants while the owner went off to another country, possibly in those times Rome. Since the tenants paid their lease in produce, the owner sent his servants to collect at the time of the harvest, but one after another they were abused, even killed, by the tenants. At last the owner sent his son; the parallels in the other Synoptic Gospels call him "beloved son" (see Mark 12:6; Luke 20:13), the title used for Jesus at his baptism in all three Synoptics and at his transfiguration in Matthew and Mark. The tenants treated him no differently. In fact, since he was the heir to the vineyard, they killed him in order to acquire his inheritance for themselves.
Now Jesus uses the same method used by the composer of the love song in Isaiah 5 and by Nathan in 2 Samuel 12. He asks his audience, the chief priests and the elders of the people, to serve as the jury: "What do you think the owner of the vineyard would or should do to those scoundrels?" Their conclusion is the only one they could draw at hearing the story: capital punishment for those tenants and leasing to new tenants who would live up to the obligation of delivering the designated produce!
Jesus then cites Psalm 118:22-23 about the stone that was rejected becoming the cornerstone before he delivers the news expected from his method: You are those wicked tenants! "The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom." Their own verdict comes back on their own heads.
It is comfortable enough to end the matter there, allowing the church, today consisting almost exclusively of Gentiles, to celebrate the transfer of the "vineyard" from Judaism to ourselves. We could even call that the "good news" of the story -- good for us, bad for them. But if we take into account the issues Jesus was facing with the religious folks of his day, the covenant people, the "beloved of the Lord," and recognize that the problem was their failure to be the people God intended them to be, can the church of today or of any day be all that comfortable? If God expects the people chosen -- be they the people of the original covenant or the people of the new covenant -- to be faithful guardians of his word and to pursue justice for the most vulnerable in our society, then the same method might be used on us today: What do you think ought to be done with the people who have flaunted the entrusted treasure (see 2 Corinthians 4:7) and responsibilities for the needy?
Certainly such a question will not win any popularity contests. It did not in the days of the Bible and will not today. The son who was sent by the owner of the vineyard was killed not simply parabolically but actually -- precisely because he raised such questions within the religious establishment. The point is not simply to be angry preachers condemning other people; that's the point behind the biblical method. Rather the issue is how the people entrusted with the gospel and accountable for justice for the poor live up to our calling as God's people in the world.
While the gospel teaches that we do not have to do anything to become God's children any more than we have to do something to be born physically, there are responsibilities that come with being the family of God, just as children have responsibilities to their parents. Ultimately the question is this: Whose are we? And then right on the heels of that question comes another: How do we live out that recognition of whose we are?
It's a matter of managing our identity and the recognition we are tenants in someone else's vineyard. Such managing is what the church has come to call stewardship.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Our story of Israel has brought us to Mount Sinai, where Israel has heard that she is God's elected people, his kingdom of priests and his holy nation, set apart for God's purpose. Upon hearing of her election, she has promised, "All that the Lord has spoken, we will do" (Exodus 19:8). Now she learns what that promise entails. She is given God's commandments in this famous passage of the Decalogue (cf. the parallel in Deuteronomy 5:6-
21), and these ten commandments form the absolutely necessary requirements for the life of the people of God. As a result, Jesus quotes some of the commandments (Mark 10:19 and parallels), and lays all of them upon us Christians also, so that the Decalogue forms a summary of how we are to conduct our lives in responsibility to God.
It is exceedingly important that we include verse 2 of our text. Apart from it, the place of law in the scriptures cannot be understood. In that verse, the Lord reminds Israel of what they have seen and experienced: he has delivered them out of their slavery in the land of Egypt. In short, God's merciful act of grace has taken place first, before any commandment is given. Obedience to God's commandments therefore is to form Israel's grateful response to what God has already done.
In the same manner we Christians have been delivered from our slavery to sin and death by the cross and resurrection of Christ. Our obedience to Christ's commandments therefore rises out of our gratitude for what God has already done for us. God's grace is always prevenient. God's merciful act always takes place first. And Christian living is then a grateful and answering reply to God's love. "We love because he first loved us."
But, someone may ask: "Why should we be required to obey any commandments at all? Are we not justified and made acceptable to God by faith alone? We cannot work our way into God's favor. That acceptance is given as a free gift to those who believe. So why are we given commandments to obey?"
The answer is twofold, and again it concerns God's grace. We are indeed justified and assured of our salvation through the work of Jesus Christ. We now have a new status and a new life in relation to our God. But how are we to act in this new life which God has given us? How are we to act toward others, and how are we to act toward the Lord? Thanks be, God does not let us wander around in the dark, making up the answers as we go along. Instead, in his love, he continues to guide us. He points the way ("to point the finger" is the basic meaning of "torah" in the Bible). He says: "This is the way; walk in it. This is the way you can have abundant life. This is the way to joy and love and peace that passes understanding. This is how it will go well with you" (cf. Deuteronomy 5:29). God wants it always to go well with us, and so, in his love, he guides us by the paths that will lead to our highest welfare. For example, God knows that no marriage in which adultery occurs can be happy or good. And so he says, "You shall not commit adultery" (v. 14). That is a gift of his love and concern for us. And all of the commandments are given out of that concern.
How can we have abundant life? We can rest one day of the week, instead of working ourselves to a frazzle. How can we get along with our parents? We can honor them and respect them. How can we have goodness in our community? By being honest and not stealing and not testifying falsely in court against our neighbors. How can we preserve peace among all humankind? By not killing and not coveting others' territory or power or goods. How can we thank and serve God truly? By worshiping only him and by not making idols of anything or anyone else in all creation; by not trying to make him less than he is in accommodation to our thoughts and ways. God wants it to go well with us.
Another fact enters in. As with Israel, God also wants to use us Christians as his holy people, as his instruments to spread the good news of his love and to bring blessing on all the families of the earth. God has loved us because he loves all people, and he wants us to be his witnesses who tell others of that love. So God gives us instructions that will form us into a people who manifest his love. Then all of those around us can see and know what it means to be God's people. And they can be drawn into that community that lives by the life-giving love of God.
God has poured out his grace on us by redeeming us and by giving us his commandments. We respond in obedient gratitude to his mercy.
Lutheran Option -- Isaiah 5:1-7
God's prophet Isaiah, of the eighth century B.C., plays the part of a troubadour in this song of the vineyard. Like troubadours everywhere, he sings a love song, thereby drawing the attention of his listeners in Jerusalem. His song concerns a friend who planted a vineyard with great care, clearing it of stones, putting in it the choicest of grapevines, and setting a watchtower in its midst to ward off ravaging animals and thieves. The friend even hewed out a wine vat in a stone, expecting a yield of the choicest grapes ('anavim). But he was deeply disappointed. The vineyard yielded only rotten, stinking wild grapes (b'ushim).
Was there anything else the friend could have done? Isaiah's listeners are required to answer the question. And surely, they all agree -- "nothing." So the only solution is to pull up the vines and to let the weeds and thorns take over. The vineyard has proven useless. It deserves only to be destroyed. The listeners all concur. But suddenly they are drawn up short by the troubadour, whose song tells them that the friend will not even let rain fall on the vineyard. Rain? What human being can command the clouds and rain? Obviously, none. And so Isaiah can drive home his point from the Word of God.
The vintner is God, and the vineyard is Israel, his "pleasant planting." God showed every care for Israel, bringing them to a land flowing with milk and honey, guiding their life with his commandments and prophets, defending them from their enemies, pouring out his love and forgiveness repeatedly upon them. And God expected that in gratitude, Israel would respond to his love by forming a society of justice (mishpat) and righteousness (tsedekah). Instead, Israel's society is shot through with injustice and bloodshed (mispach), with cries of violence and alarm (ts'akah). All of God's loving care for Israel has been in vain, and God's only recourse is to do away with her rottenness by subjecting her to destruction by the armies of the Assyrian Empire.
That immediately raises burning questions for us, doesn't it? For we too are God's vineyard (Mark 12:1-12 and parallels). "I am the vine, you are the branches," Jesus tells us. And he warns us that every branch of his that bears no fruit is taken away (John 15:5, 2). In other words, God's patience with us can be at an end. God is not mocked, as Paul tells us, "For whatever a man (or woman) sows, that he (or she) will also reap" (Galatians 6:7). We cannot impose on the forgiveness and mercy of God forever. He can destroy us. And we risk our eternal lives when we believe that God only forgives and forgives and overlooks our disobedience and indifference toward him.
To be sure, God has no pleasure in the death of anyone (Ezekiel 18:32). He wants us to live eternally. And he has provided the way to life through his son Jesus Christ. But perhaps this word from the prophet Isaiah tells us, before it is too late, that our repentance and turning are overdue.
Our lessons for today challenge us to consider stewardship in a sense broader than money alone, perhaps even to make our own pledge that next year stewardship will be a weekly theme that has to do with how we live our lives as God's people in the world.
Isaiah 5:1-7
As we read the opening words about a lover singing for his/her beloved a love-song, we get the feeling we have just returned to the previous book in the Bible, the Song of Solomon. There, indeed, the setting for some of the romantic scenes is the lover's vineyard or garden (see 2:15; 4:16-17; 6:1-3; 8:12). We would expect, therefore, that the stanzas to follow would ooze with soft and intimate "sweet little nothings" similar to the Song of Solomon.
Instead the three stanzas turn out to be structured according to the form of an accusation. The three stanzas contain (1) a description of the previous history culminating in the expectation imposed on the vineyard (vv. 1b-2), (2) a call for the jury consisting of the inhabitants of Judah and Israel to make a judgment between the owner and the vineyard (vv. 3-4), and (3) the owner's avowed intervention to destroy the vineyard for not living up to its obligation. Hardly a warm fuzzy!
The final verse (v. 7) identifies the players as well as the failed obligation. The owner of the vineyard is the Lord, and the guilty vineyard is Israel and Judah, the very ones called upon in verses 3-4 to serve as the jury. (The ploy sounds like that of the prophet Nathan, who told King David about the rich man who, eager to practice hospitality for a traveler, took the only ewe lamb of a poor man to serve his guest. The story angered David who cried out for capital punishment. Only then did Nathan reveal, "You are the man!" [2 Samuel 12:1-7].) The "wild grapes" of the song turn out to be the failure of the people of God to produce justice and righteousness and to yield instead bloodshed and cries for help in the face of injustice. This prophet has already announced the nature of these offenses in terms of failure to correct oppression, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow (1:17): both their words and their deeds are against the Lord (3:8), their partiality in the courts makes them a chip off old Sodom's block (3:9), and they devour the vineyards leaving nothing for the poor to glean (3:14-15). Enough already!
In fact, prophetic speeches about the vineyard as a metaphor for the people of Israel and Judah commonly end up in judgment for the vineyard's failures (Jeremiah 2:21; Hosea 10:1). Even Psalm 80 laments that the Lord has destroyed the vine brought out of Egypt and calls on the Lord to have regard for this vine that "your right hand planted."
The "beloved" of the Lord, as Israel was considered on the basis of the covenant made long before, could only tremble when the love-songs turned to vines and vineyards. The problem was that they were not faithful managers or stewards of what had been entrusted to them. What would it take for the song to take a different form?
Philippians 3:4b-14
Writing from a prison in Rome or Corinth or Ephesus or somewhere else entirely (1:12-14) and facing the possibility of execution for his ministry, the apostle Paul saw his whole life flash before his eyes. And intimate as he was with the congregation in Philippi, he shared with them his evaluation of the past and his hopes for the future. Those sharings comprise our pericope for the day.
As for the past, Paul indicated that he had broken his teeth on the Torah, and so had his parents. According to the law prescribed in Leviticus 12:3, he was circumcised "on the eighth day" and so was counted among the children of Abraham who bore this mark of God's unconditional covenant on their bodies (Genesis 17:9-14). He belonged to the tribe of Benjamin and was Hebrew by birth, not simply by conversion: "a Hebrew born of Hebrews." As regards the Torah itself, he was a Pharisee, that party famous and infamous for such adherence to the laws and statutes that they sought perfection through its observance. He demonstrated his zeal for Judaism by persecuting the church of Jesus, and he was perfect, that is, blameless, in his pursuit of righteousness under the law.
In the tape running before his eyes, he now realized that all of that on which he based his past was pure rubbish. What revealed the past as the content of Tuesday morning's garbage collection was Christ. Indeed, "knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" put everything else in perspective, including his own sufferings. Christ has become the goal of his life, but having stated that goal, Paul immediately corrected any impression that this knowledge of Christ and the relationship with Christ was the result of his own actions. It was all God's doing: a righteousness "that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith" (v. 9).
With the possibility of execution before him, Paul admits his desire "to know Christ and the power of his resurrection" and the willingness to share in his sufferings and become like him in death. His intimate sharings here demonstrated to his readers how this calm and confident faith in the face of impending disaster might become the means by which they, too, could face death either naturally or as a result of persecution.
Now Paul gives them another piece of his mind. As powerful as his testimony is, it is by no means the result of having achieved perfection. The goal is still ahead of him, and he pledges to "press on to make it my own." The reason why is he able to do so is that "Christ Jesus has made me his own" (v. 12). Contrary to much of our religious talk today, Paul does not claim to have found Christ. Rather he knows all too well that he has been found by Christ. Recall the words of the hymn: "I once was lost but now am found." This finding is truly not his own but God's act through Jesus Christ.
The goal that Paul presses toward is the "heavenly" or "upward" call of God in Christ. With that destination in mind, the apostle has indeed put his entire life in perspective. Perhaps there is a lesson here for all of us, namely, that the positions we tend to hold on a variety of issues -- ones that seem to be matters of life and death, positions that we would not compromise -- might just be the kinds of trash that Paul indicates he was able to toss away. His insistence that he has not yet reached the goal might help put in place many of our own so-called non-negotiables. Constantly pressing on toward the goal of knowing firsthand the power of Christ's resurrection might enable us to be more tentative about the far less important issues we swear we would die for.
What the apostle enables his readers in the first century and in our own to do is to manage our lives and our issues from the perspective of having been found by Christ to follow him through suffering to glory. Putting the garbage out for collection is a starting point for stewardship.
Matthew 21:33-46
The talk has turned to vineyards again, and on the basis of our discussion of Isaiah 5, that can only mean trouble. Moreover, the method Jesus uses to get across his point is quite similar to that of Isaiah's love song.
Back in verse 23 we learned that the audience for Jesus' words in the previous, present, and following paragraphs is the religious gang that came to him in the Jerusalem temple, namely the chief priests and the elders, to question the authority by which he did his wonders. That this parable is addressed to the same audience is essential for its interpretation.
Jesus used the common situation of absentee landlords in his day as the familiar setting for the story. A man planted a vineyard, set off its boundaries, and even built a tower to spot raiders, and then leased it to tenants while the owner went off to another country, possibly in those times Rome. Since the tenants paid their lease in produce, the owner sent his servants to collect at the time of the harvest, but one after another they were abused, even killed, by the tenants. At last the owner sent his son; the parallels in the other Synoptic Gospels call him "beloved son" (see Mark 12:6; Luke 20:13), the title used for Jesus at his baptism in all three Synoptics and at his transfiguration in Matthew and Mark. The tenants treated him no differently. In fact, since he was the heir to the vineyard, they killed him in order to acquire his inheritance for themselves.
Now Jesus uses the same method used by the composer of the love song in Isaiah 5 and by Nathan in 2 Samuel 12. He asks his audience, the chief priests and the elders of the people, to serve as the jury: "What do you think the owner of the vineyard would or should do to those scoundrels?" Their conclusion is the only one they could draw at hearing the story: capital punishment for those tenants and leasing to new tenants who would live up to the obligation of delivering the designated produce!
Jesus then cites Psalm 118:22-23 about the stone that was rejected becoming the cornerstone before he delivers the news expected from his method: You are those wicked tenants! "The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom." Their own verdict comes back on their own heads.
It is comfortable enough to end the matter there, allowing the church, today consisting almost exclusively of Gentiles, to celebrate the transfer of the "vineyard" from Judaism to ourselves. We could even call that the "good news" of the story -- good for us, bad for them. But if we take into account the issues Jesus was facing with the religious folks of his day, the covenant people, the "beloved of the Lord," and recognize that the problem was their failure to be the people God intended them to be, can the church of today or of any day be all that comfortable? If God expects the people chosen -- be they the people of the original covenant or the people of the new covenant -- to be faithful guardians of his word and to pursue justice for the most vulnerable in our society, then the same method might be used on us today: What do you think ought to be done with the people who have flaunted the entrusted treasure (see 2 Corinthians 4:7) and responsibilities for the needy?
Certainly such a question will not win any popularity contests. It did not in the days of the Bible and will not today. The son who was sent by the owner of the vineyard was killed not simply parabolically but actually -- precisely because he raised such questions within the religious establishment. The point is not simply to be angry preachers condemning other people; that's the point behind the biblical method. Rather the issue is how the people entrusted with the gospel and accountable for justice for the poor live up to our calling as God's people in the world.
While the gospel teaches that we do not have to do anything to become God's children any more than we have to do something to be born physically, there are responsibilities that come with being the family of God, just as children have responsibilities to their parents. Ultimately the question is this: Whose are we? And then right on the heels of that question comes another: How do we live out that recognition of whose we are?
It's a matter of managing our identity and the recognition we are tenants in someone else's vineyard. Such managing is what the church has come to call stewardship.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Our story of Israel has brought us to Mount Sinai, where Israel has heard that she is God's elected people, his kingdom of priests and his holy nation, set apart for God's purpose. Upon hearing of her election, she has promised, "All that the Lord has spoken, we will do" (Exodus 19:8). Now she learns what that promise entails. She is given God's commandments in this famous passage of the Decalogue (cf. the parallel in Deuteronomy 5:6-
21), and these ten commandments form the absolutely necessary requirements for the life of the people of God. As a result, Jesus quotes some of the commandments (Mark 10:19 and parallels), and lays all of them upon us Christians also, so that the Decalogue forms a summary of how we are to conduct our lives in responsibility to God.
It is exceedingly important that we include verse 2 of our text. Apart from it, the place of law in the scriptures cannot be understood. In that verse, the Lord reminds Israel of what they have seen and experienced: he has delivered them out of their slavery in the land of Egypt. In short, God's merciful act of grace has taken place first, before any commandment is given. Obedience to God's commandments therefore is to form Israel's grateful response to what God has already done.
In the same manner we Christians have been delivered from our slavery to sin and death by the cross and resurrection of Christ. Our obedience to Christ's commandments therefore rises out of our gratitude for what God has already done for us. God's grace is always prevenient. God's merciful act always takes place first. And Christian living is then a grateful and answering reply to God's love. "We love because he first loved us."
But, someone may ask: "Why should we be required to obey any commandments at all? Are we not justified and made acceptable to God by faith alone? We cannot work our way into God's favor. That acceptance is given as a free gift to those who believe. So why are we given commandments to obey?"
The answer is twofold, and again it concerns God's grace. We are indeed justified and assured of our salvation through the work of Jesus Christ. We now have a new status and a new life in relation to our God. But how are we to act in this new life which God has given us? How are we to act toward others, and how are we to act toward the Lord? Thanks be, God does not let us wander around in the dark, making up the answers as we go along. Instead, in his love, he continues to guide us. He points the way ("to point the finger" is the basic meaning of "torah" in the Bible). He says: "This is the way; walk in it. This is the way you can have abundant life. This is the way to joy and love and peace that passes understanding. This is how it will go well with you" (cf. Deuteronomy 5:29). God wants it always to go well with us, and so, in his love, he guides us by the paths that will lead to our highest welfare. For example, God knows that no marriage in which adultery occurs can be happy or good. And so he says, "You shall not commit adultery" (v. 14). That is a gift of his love and concern for us. And all of the commandments are given out of that concern.
How can we have abundant life? We can rest one day of the week, instead of working ourselves to a frazzle. How can we get along with our parents? We can honor them and respect them. How can we have goodness in our community? By being honest and not stealing and not testifying falsely in court against our neighbors. How can we preserve peace among all humankind? By not killing and not coveting others' territory or power or goods. How can we thank and serve God truly? By worshiping only him and by not making idols of anything or anyone else in all creation; by not trying to make him less than he is in accommodation to our thoughts and ways. God wants it to go well with us.
Another fact enters in. As with Israel, God also wants to use us Christians as his holy people, as his instruments to spread the good news of his love and to bring blessing on all the families of the earth. God has loved us because he loves all people, and he wants us to be his witnesses who tell others of that love. So God gives us instructions that will form us into a people who manifest his love. Then all of those around us can see and know what it means to be God's people. And they can be drawn into that community that lives by the life-giving love of God.
God has poured out his grace on us by redeeming us and by giving us his commandments. We respond in obedient gratitude to his mercy.
Lutheran Option -- Isaiah 5:1-7
God's prophet Isaiah, of the eighth century B.C., plays the part of a troubadour in this song of the vineyard. Like troubadours everywhere, he sings a love song, thereby drawing the attention of his listeners in Jerusalem. His song concerns a friend who planted a vineyard with great care, clearing it of stones, putting in it the choicest of grapevines, and setting a watchtower in its midst to ward off ravaging animals and thieves. The friend even hewed out a wine vat in a stone, expecting a yield of the choicest grapes ('anavim). But he was deeply disappointed. The vineyard yielded only rotten, stinking wild grapes (b'ushim).
Was there anything else the friend could have done? Isaiah's listeners are required to answer the question. And surely, they all agree -- "nothing." So the only solution is to pull up the vines and to let the weeds and thorns take over. The vineyard has proven useless. It deserves only to be destroyed. The listeners all concur. But suddenly they are drawn up short by the troubadour, whose song tells them that the friend will not even let rain fall on the vineyard. Rain? What human being can command the clouds and rain? Obviously, none. And so Isaiah can drive home his point from the Word of God.
The vintner is God, and the vineyard is Israel, his "pleasant planting." God showed every care for Israel, bringing them to a land flowing with milk and honey, guiding their life with his commandments and prophets, defending them from their enemies, pouring out his love and forgiveness repeatedly upon them. And God expected that in gratitude, Israel would respond to his love by forming a society of justice (mishpat) and righteousness (tsedekah). Instead, Israel's society is shot through with injustice and bloodshed (mispach), with cries of violence and alarm (ts'akah). All of God's loving care for Israel has been in vain, and God's only recourse is to do away with her rottenness by subjecting her to destruction by the armies of the Assyrian Empire.
That immediately raises burning questions for us, doesn't it? For we too are God's vineyard (Mark 12:1-12 and parallels). "I am the vine, you are the branches," Jesus tells us. And he warns us that every branch of his that bears no fruit is taken away (John 15:5, 2). In other words, God's patience with us can be at an end. God is not mocked, as Paul tells us, "For whatever a man (or woman) sows, that he (or she) will also reap" (Galatians 6:7). We cannot impose on the forgiveness and mercy of God forever. He can destroy us. And we risk our eternal lives when we believe that God only forgives and forgives and overlooks our disobedience and indifference toward him.
To be sure, God has no pleasure in the death of anyone (Ezekiel 18:32). He wants us to live eternally. And he has provided the way to life through his son Jesus Christ. But perhaps this word from the prophet Isaiah tells us, before it is too late, that our repentance and turning are overdue.
