This morning I want to invite you to think about something rather important. And, as my sermon title, implies, I'll frame it as a question: "What's the bottom line?" What's the bottom line for life? What exactly is it all about? When you strip away the peripherals stuff, why are we here.

This month, we gather with our stewardship theme, "Love God and neighbor with heart and soul." What does that look like? The bottom line for Jesus, he said, is summed up in the act of love.

But what does that look like? When all is said and done, what is the bottom line for us as a church, as followers of this Jesus? As we make preparations for ministry here and abroad next year, what is the bottom line? We gather for worship. We serve on teams and committees. We sing. We enjoy Christian fellowship. We give. We pray. We read and study Scripture. Why? Why are we doing this - what's the bottom line?

One Christian writer, Mike Yaconelli, pondered this question by stating that: "The most critical issue facing Christians is not abortion, pornography, the disintegration of the family, moral absolutes, MTV, drugs, racism, sexuality, or school prayer. The critical issue today is duflness. We have lost our astonishment. The Good News is no longer good news, it is okay news. Christianity is no longer life changing, it is life enhancing. Jesus doesn't change people into wild-eyed radicals anymore, He changes them into "nice people."'

In our text from Matthew we are encouraged to ask the question, when all is said and done, what's the bottom line. What is our ultimate purpose for living? What is God looking for? If we believe there is a God, what are God's expectations? What is the objective of faith? Why worship? Why be in community? What is the point of a relationship with Jesus?

What's the bottom line, really? What is God looking for? What is the harvest that God, the landowner, is expecting to receive when the season is over?

The text in Matthew is a parable about a vineyard. The owner sends servants to collect the harvest from the tenants. But the servants are treated shamefully. Instead of fruit -beautiful and tasty grapes in abundance - there is violence and death. To help us understand this parable, it is good to be familiar with the first lesson for today from Isaiah 5, where we have another story of a vineyard.

It's helpful to remember the setting for Isaiah, God chose a people, the Jews, and he said to them, "I want to bless you, and by you, through you, I want to bless the whole world. You are the instrument that I will use to restore - bring back into harmony what I have created in beauty and splendor. "

So God established a covenant with this special nation called the Hebrews. I will give you this and this and this. I will do this and this and this. So that you will be a blessing to the whole world, I will provide you with everything you will need. I will be your God; you will be my people. And, here are my expectations...

Every once in a while God has a review with Israel to see how things are going. Are they still in focus? Do they understand what is expected, what the bottom line is? Isaiah 5 is one of those reviews. The audience listening to Jesus tell this parable was very familiar with the song of the vineyard in Isaiah 5. Here's how it starts:

"Let me sing for my beloved a love song. " Doesn't that sound romantic? It makes you want to read on. God's love is set to music, a love song. It is because of God's love that we have this story. Remember this setting because as we move into the story, we may wonder where love fits in. The lover, who is God, has planted a vineyard. To have the best harvest of grapes, to make sure the grapes are good, sweet, tasty and high quality, the lover who owns the vineyard pulls out all the stops. Notice what is done for the vineyard.

A very fertile hill is chosen, a hill with potential, a hill that has promise, a hill with rich soil. It is cultivated. It is cleared of stones. The owner now goes to the nursery and looks for the best, choicest vines to plant. He doesn't care how much it will cost. He wants the best. Every effort is made to make sure that the grapes will be top quality, sweet juicy grapes.

Fertile soil, good cultivation, stones cleared out, choice vines planted. How can you go wrong? But more is done to ensure the desired results. He builds a watch tower so all dangers can be detected ahead of time. There is protection from enemies. A wine vat is built close by to get ready for the harvest. The owner does everything to make a good harvest possible.

Now the author of the story brings us into the picture. "What did I leave out," God asks. What more should I have done? Did I forget anything? And then asks, "When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?"

The term wild grapes in the Hebrew language means very bitter grapes, grapes that rot your teeth, grapes that make you want to vomit, just terrible tasting grapes, repulsive - not just mediocre or inferior, but bitter. Not acceptable at all. Of no value to anyone.

What happened? What did I do wrong, God asks. Why did this happen? I worked so hard and I looked forward to those sweet tasting grapes. Why did the vineyard produce wild grapes?

The key to the whole story is found in verse 7 of Isaiah 5. Here is the application. The story of the vineyard is pretty clear. The application is very revealing. It is heavy. The vineyard is the house of Israel. The men and women of Judah are God's pleasant plantings. In other words, the chosen people of God are the recipients of all the good things God did in order to produce the fruit looked for. They were blessed to be a blessing.

What was God looking for from Israel? What was the bottom line? "God looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed. Righteousness, but behold, a cry." In the Matthew parable we have the same image of a vineyard. The owner is looking for a harvest, but instead, violence and bloodshed. The two stories are linked.

What God is looking for is justice and righteousness. The Hebrew words are mishpat and zedekah. They are constantly used together in the Old Testament. In fact, these two concepts permeate all of scripture. They are what the kingdom of God is about. The meaning is there even when the words are not used. Everyone who is serious about the Bible must be very familiar with the Hebrew terms mishpat and zedekah. Without an understanding of these two concepts, you will never understand God nor God's expectations, not the God of the Bible.

You may know about all the things God has done for us. God has cultivated the soil of your life, cleared it of stones, planted a choice vine. Yes, God so loved the world that God gave his Son. Yes, God gave us the scriptures, the sacraments, the Holy Spirit, the church. The vineyard has been provided with every good thing.

But what good does it all do if the harvest produces wild grapes? What good is knowing all that God has done and promises, if we don't know what mishpat and zedekah (justice and righteousness) are. Did you notice what the text says will happen when these are not present? The owner said, "The kingdom will be taken away from you and given to a people producing the fruits of the kingdom."

What kind of grapes is God looking for? What do we know about these words mishpat and zedekah? What do they mean? One simple definition is that justice and righteousness means the right ordering of relationships and resources. God made this world to work. It works only in the right ordering of relationships and resources, when people learn to cooperate instead of compete, love instead of dominate.

It involves our relationship to God. It involves our relationship to the earth. It involves our relationship to one another. It involves our relationship to ourselves. When any of these relationships and resources are broken, weakened, distorted, neglected, that's when injustice j occurs. The world doesnt work. God calls us and redeems us, so that justice and righteousness might restore those relationships and resources. The kingdom is about healing and making whole that which has been broken. It is about mishpat and zedekah.

When mishpat and zedekah are absent God brings judgment, When there is no harvest of good grapes the kingdom is taken away and given to someone else. God's love abounds so that justice may happen, so that the world may work for everyone, not just a few.

In some religious circles today you might get the impression that the bottom line is emotional stability, having a good feeling inside of us, being at peace with God, knowing our sins are forgiven. Is that the bottom line? No. The inner peace we experience is God's gift so that mishpat and zedekah can happen. Some religious groups stress correct doctrinal statements. Having right beliefs - pure teaching, correct liturgical forms- good preaching from God's Word is stressed as central. All this is great, but that's not the bottom line. Justice is. In other words, faith without works is dead.

I think that even this morning, God asks us:

• "What more is there for me to do for you that I have not done?"
• "Have I not over and over again granted forgiveness even when you have not been deserving? Why then do you withhold forgiveness from others?
• Have I not over and over again been merciful to you? Yet, you have held grudges against others.
• Have I not been generous in providing for you? Yet you live at the edge of your means and find no room to be truly generous with the poor.
• Have I not fed you? Yet how often have you pushed your chair back from your feasts and felt an urgency to feed my lambs?
• Have you not enough of a roof over your heads? And yet you too often forget the homeless.
• Is not my creation of utmost beauty and grace? And yet you consume more than your portion, without so much as a thought for others, to say nothing of your own children or grandchildren.

When right living and justice-centered lives are at the heart of our faith and of our relationship with God, we are impassioned to pursue mishpat and zedekah. When they are not, we are only agitated at hearing about the demands.

God loves each one of us unconditionally. God grants us the promise of eternal life through our faith in not what we but what Jesus has accomplished in his death and resurrection. And God has drawn us into the adventure of being agents of compassion, people of prayer and mercy, counter-cultural lovers of the poor and the lost, folks who declare and live in a way that gives others a glimpse of this immeasurable and tenacious love of our Savior God.

What's the bottom line? Is it that we are blessed? Almost. It is that we have been blessed with a purpose-right and just living. Workers in God's vineyard. People of grace and yet bold compassion and action.

This month, you are invited to make a pledge for the work of Christ here in this place. It is a work we do together. It is a work which we empower others to do on our behalf all over this world. Feeding hungry people. Bringing Christ into broken lives. Pursuing the lost to declare to them that in Jesus they are found. Bringing in the harvest.

May it be said of us that we were fruitful in our work.

Amen.