What are you growing?

In today’s Gospel passage we see Jesus in confrontation with the chief priests and elders. He has offended them yet again with another parable.

The parable of the vineyard paints these chief priests as bad tenants who don’t produce any fruit for the owner. But even worse than that, whenever the owner sends someone to inspect the vineyard and its harvest, the tenants attack them.

Jesus ends the parable by telling the chief priests: “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.”

The chief priests are offended because this warning from Jesus challenges the way they see themselves. As God’s Chosen People, as descendants of Abraham, they feel secure in their position as tenants. Just like the Apostle Paul did before meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus, these chief priests and Pharisees trusted in their family connections as proof of their closeness to God.

“Circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless….”

But the warning at the end of this parable shakes them at their foundations. Jesus is telling them that God doesn’t care about their long list of credentials. He’s not interested in our qualifications, he’s not interested in looking at our baptism certificate, he’s not focused on how eloquently (or not) we can deliver a sermon.

God wants a people that produce the fruits of the kingdom.

In the reading from Isaiah, which uses the same vineyard illustration as Jesus uses in the Gospel, God tells us that the fruit he is looking for, the fruit he expects to see in his people, is justice and righteousness.

He wants His people to be known as His people because of their actions, because of their love for others, and by their treatment and care of those around them.

We’ve all been given vineyards to take care of.

Our vineyards are the people, relationships, circumstances and events of our lives.

Our work colleagues, our family members, our church, our daily activities: God is looking at how we treat the people in our lives to see whether we are bearing the fruit of His Kingdom or not.

Are we just? Are we fair? Do we speak the truth in love? Do our actions resemble the way He asks us to live in the Bible?

God wants us to regularly allow His word to inspect us and the fruit we are producing in our lives and communities. He doesn’t want us to be like the tenants in the parable. He doesn’t want us to reject and push away those that He sends to warn us about our behaviour. He doesn’t want us to ignore that uncomfortable feeling of conviction when we know we have hurt someone through our words or actions.

And, although the parable can sound very damning when we hear it read, it is encouraging to notice how many opportunities the landowner gives the tenants to change their ways. How many people he sends to warn them, to call them back to the ways of His Kingdom.

In this story we see a God who is willing to send His only Son, to a fallen humanity that is producing wild grapes, destruction and bloodshed instead of justice and righteousness. We see a God who makes faith in Jesus, and not faith in our own efforts and credentials, the cornerstone and foundation of entry into God’s kingdom.

God calls us to fall on Jesus, this cornerstone, and to be broken to pieces. He wants us to encounter Jesus and lose our egos, shake off our self-righteousness and be found in Christ “not having a righteousness of our own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.”

That is the fruit God is expecting to see in our lives: The fruit of repentance, changed people, new creations, better actions.

So, today let’s examine ourselves and the fruit that we are producing in the vineyards God has planted us in.