Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda/United Korean Presbyterian Church
World Communion Sunday 2008; Rev. John An and Rev. David Williams
(preached in English and Korean)
Scripture Lesson: Isaiah 5:1-7
Sometimes a bright idea just doesn’t turn out the way you hoped.
Take, for example, the introduction of kudzu into the United States.
It’s a lovely flowering vine, brought to America in 1876.
It could be used as an ornamental plant.
The blossoms are rich and purple and vibrant.
And it’s really, really easy to grow.
Even I could probably grow it.
It has lush, broad leaves and deep taproots.
For that reason, Americans thought that it could prevent erosion.
So in the 1930s until the mid 1950s, farmers were encouraged to plant it.
Then they noticed something.
It really, really liked to grow.
And it grew a lot.
In it’s native Japan, where it was called kuzu, it had natural predators.
It was also limited by Japanese winters.
But in America’s South, growth conditions were perfect.
There was nothing to stop it.
At the height of a Virginia summer, kudzu vines grow a foot a day.
One.
Foot.
Every Day.
Kudzu now covers over seven million square acres of the South.
It strangles trees.
It smothers fields.
It covers crops.
It’ll overrun houses if you’ll let it.
Where once it was planted, now farmers fight against it.
They spray it and root it out.
It is the most invasive of the wild vines.
If you don’t fight it, starve it, or poison it
It will consume everything around it.
The prophet Isaiah also preached a great deal about wild vines.
Today, we heard his proclamation to the people of Judah.
Isaiah was preaching from Jerusalem, and to Jerusalem.
He had the ears of leaders.
He had the attention and respect of kings.
Many people in that position would have spoken easy platitudes.
They would have insured their position and spoken nothing hard.
But it was the time of the rise of Assyria.
Eight hundred years before Christ
Isaiah saw around him the flaws of his people.
He saw their complacence
He saw how the powerful in Jerusalem celebrated
Even though great threats faced them from the outside.
He saw how the wealthy in Jerusalem helped themselves to riches
Even when the poor scrabbled for a living.
He saw how everyone in Judah was utterly convinced that they could do no wrong.
They were God’s people!
God would protect them.
It didn’t matter how they lived.
It didn’t matter how they acted.
God would protect them.
In the face of that, Isaiah heard God’s challenge to the people and conveyed it.
Today’s passage expresses that challenge.
Isaiah spoke it in terms that all his listeners, rich and poor, would understand.
He spoke of a vineyard owned by a ruler.
That vineyard, though carefully prepared, was overrun with wild vines.
It yielded nothing of worth.
In the face of their injustice and unrighteousness,
Isaiah warned Judah of how land that wouldn’t yield would be treated.
That pleasant planting would be given over to ruin.
It would be an arid waste.
Because what growth there was was bitter and worthless and wild
The garden would be yielded to desolation.
It did not matter that the people were sure they were God’s people.
They had supplanted the harvest of righteousness
With a harvest of bloodshed.
They had supplanted a harvest of justice
With cries of despair and conflict.
Soon, with Assyria’s armies storming down from the north
Much of what Isaiah proclaimed would come to pass.
God would not stand by while his garden was overrun with wild vines.
He would tear down the walls that protected it.
He would make the garden a ruin.
As we each look to our own lives
We have to ask ourselves how deeply our hearts are overgrown.
We are all God’s gracious planting.
It is easy for us to personally assume, like those in Jerusalem, that God is always on our side.
We naturally believe that no matter what we do
God must be on our side.
But, like those whom Isaiah challenged, we have to always think:
Do our lives bear the fruit of God’s goodness?
Each and every one of us is called upon to show God’s grace in all we do.
How deeply do we show our Creator’s care to those around us?
How eagerly do we bear the fruit of righteousness?
How richly do we show God’s justice to the world?
How deeply do we manifest that highest fruit of the Holy Spirit
The self-sacrificing love that Christ showed to all?
Or are we overgrown?
Do our own desires tangle as heavy as kudzu on our souls?
Does our own pride
Pride in our position
Pride in our job
Pride in our spiritual superiority
Pride in our worldly wealth
Blind us to God’s love for others?
Does it try to strangle the good and gracious Gospel planting in us?
It is not the pride of others that should be our concern.
It is our own.
When we ask those questions, we must answer:
Of course it does.
None of us escape that temptation.
None of us.
Not a single person here today.
We all struggle with it.
So hear Isaiah, as Jerusalem heard and repented.
Hear that prophet’s word.
Bear good fruit, and be that pleasant planting.
Showing posts with label struggle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label struggle. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Perspective
Trinity Presbyterian Church of
08.31.08; Rev. John An and Rev. David Williams
Scripture Lessons: Psalm 90; Romans 12: 9-21
How long did this summer seem to you?
It seems like only yesterday that school was getting out.
Kids were feeling happy.
Kids were finally free!
No school!
Yay!
Parents were trying to figure out how to juggle them and work.
Parents were trying to get kids to summer programs and into camps.
No school!
Boo!
And now another summer is over.
When you’re an adult, those few months of summer are gone like the blink of an eye.
For that, we are truly grateful.
But when you’re young, a summer can seem like forever.
Those few months stretch out to the far horizon.
The distance between June and August is unimaginably large.
But when you’re young, your sense of time is very different.
Even a single afternoon can seem like an eternity.
Especially if you don’t have cable.
It is a matter of perspective.
As you become older, every day represents a slightly smaller fraction of your life.
Because of this, they seem to pass more quickly.
When you’ve seen more of life, time itself seems to grow smaller.
It’s a bit like looking down at this church.
It seems like a big place when you’re standing on the roof clearing the gutters.
It’s less so when you’re at 10,000 feet.
It so tiny as not to be visible at all when you’re in orbit.
It’s a matter of perspective.
Today’s reading from the 90th Psalm is all about perspective
It’s an interesting Psalm for many reasons.
The Book of Psalms is a collection of 150 individual praise songs.
Those 150 songs are divided up into five separate collections.
Some scholars believe this is to match the five books of the Torah.
Psalm 90 begins the fourth collection of Psalms.
Of all of the Psalms, the 90th is the only one to be attributed to Moses.
It describes human life, but not from our viewpoint.
This song, this prayer, is about how God sees us and all we do.
For God, a thousand years are as “yesterday when it is past.”
“Yesterday when it is past” is another way of saying no time at all.
Even the rise and fall of great nations, of whole civilizations, are less than a blinking of an eye to God.
The Psalmist tells us.
This will give us wisdom.
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