For the second week in a row, our readings invoke the vine that runs through our stained glass windows. It tells a story that runs through time, and like history, it rhymes.

The vine of my family is long and its roots run deep in the soil and bedrock of America, a land they did not own when they arrived. When the fruits of their efforts began to disappear and their belief in God was repressed in Sweden and England in the1600s and in Germany in 1856, my maternal and later paternal forebears emigrated to this land. 

In 1639, Sweden was a European empire, seeking to expand its reach into North America and other parts of the world. Empire building is expensive and Sweden needed people to develop new land and send back tobacco and fur to fund it. That year, the forebear of my maternal grandmother was a 27 year old Swede named Peter Gunnarsson. He boarded a ship called the Kalmar Nyckel in Sweden, bound for what is now Wilmington, Delaware, then known as New Sweden. On ship with Peter was the first Lutheran priest in America, Torkel Reovius, as well as convicts who exchanged their sentences for this form of exile. Peter enjoyed great success in America, even after the Dutch came down from what is now New York and overtook the Swedish colony by force. You might say Peter was a “self-made” man.

Historians tell us that by the time my paternal great grandfather came to the US in 1856, the self-made man was a myth that had taken hold in American politics. With the myth came the belief that individual liberty and equality must be nurtured only by white male landowners through a burgeoning market economy, and protected from the intrusion of any government. There was no need to ask for help from God; to ask anyone or anything for help or guidance betrayed independence and reduced a man to dependence on the unearned charity of others. That myth is very much alive today. We know this is true every time we look into a mirror – we see what we believe we have made of ourselves; we don’t see those on whose shoulders we stand, nor do we see God as our maker, on whose love we depend.

This myth echoes throughout the Bible and in today’s readings.

Our first reading is from Isaiah. God is frustrated with the people of Israel. They are likened to a vineyard in which God as landowner dug a wine press and built a watchtower. The winepress consisted of two vats in which grapes were crushed under foot and the juice collected; it symbolizes God’s expectation that His people would produce from His vineyard the fruits of righteousness and justice. The watchtower is a stone structure built in the middle of the vineyard that served as a practical guard post; it represented God’s protective care. But instead of producing patiently grown grapes of faith from which God expected the Israelites to release and share the wine of devoted love, the Israelites were like wild grapes that instead exploited and shed the blood of others.

In Psalm 80, the librettist sings of a people in exile. God has delivered the Israelites out of Egypt and planted them in fertile ground where he expected their faith to grow deep. But unbelievers came and stole from the vineyard. This is a song of regret that ends with a prayer for a return to God.

The Second reading is from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. He writes from jail to close friends in Philippi whom he had visited three times and who had supported him generously. In this passage, Paul is writing to a small-town congregation in which two women have had a falling out. It is splitting the church, and Paul entreats them to stop focusing on themselves, and instead learn to love one another more. He bases his appeal on the bedrock example of Christ’s own humility in putting others’ interests first, even at great personal cost.

And in the Gospel, we have the parable of the landowner who planted a vineyard with a winepress and watchtower, and entrusted it to the care of tenants to whom he had leased it. When he sends his slaves to collect his produce at harvest time, the tenants kill them to keep the bounty for themselves – after all, they earned it, right? So the landowner sends his own son, rightly expecting the tenants will respect the son; instead, they kill the son.  Matthew asks, “What will the owner of the vineyard do to the murderous tenants when he comes?” The answer?: He will take from them what they hold most dear – their lives – and give the vineyard to other tenants who will produce the fruits of the kingdom and share it with others – out of an abundance of faith and love, of hope and charity, of righteousness and justice. Not only does Matthew preview Jesus’ crucifixion, but he teaches that humans will go to great lengths to protect their sense of “ownership” if confronted.

The parable and the Isaiah passage both present a forceful challenge to our sense of being self-made, of being entitled to what we “own” or hold in our hands. We should be asking in what areas of our lives - personal, communal, global, in the church - do we go to great or even violent lengths to protect our sense of ownership and entitlement?

So, what is the “good news” for us in these passages? Of course it includes the graciousness of the owner, God, who keeps sending his prophet messengers. Surely it is Jesus who, though rejected by people, God makes the “chief cornerstone” of a new way of life. But it is also found in the joy that comes with sharing our abundance. After all, belief in Jesus, like the fruit of God’s vineyard, is meant to be shared. And doesn’t it always feel better to give than receive?

In each of these readings we hear of people transplanted into vineyards who forgot their charge and lost their focus. They have come to believe that the fruits of the vine are the result of their own efforts, not gifts from God bestowed upon them by grace for sharing. Thousands of years after the Garden of Eden, they are still making the same mistakes and needing forgiveness to go on living.  It is not different now, is it?

We all trace back to such times, and we all resemble our forebears. Well, at least much of the time. Until I had learned of my Swedish ancestry, no one could have convinced me that I was of that heritage. Look at me. But there were clues. Whenever we gathered for Schwab family reunions, all of our cousins were tall, blond haired and blue eyed. The DNA in my mother’s English roots shown through – we were darker haired and “less tall.” They never said it, but I know my cousins were thinking, “where did you come from?”

Many in the US today are fortunate to be descended from others who came to America hundreds of years ago, when taking land away from others for little or no consideration was the MO. Today we herald such settlers as self-made men, overlooking their often greedy and violent ways. But we forget that history when others come here looking to escape violence or looking for new opportunity, betting their lives on an uncertain journey into a land they have not seen. We forget that history when we ask them to prove they are entitled to be here. And we forget that history when we say “you haven’t earned the right to be here or to take from me what I have earned.” It is so easy to forget that the wind at our backs easing us forward is at the same time howling in the face of others, impeding their progress.

The words “vine” and “vineyard” are metaphors that appear 7 times throughout the Bible. They remind us that God planted us here with a purpose; that true religion finds its expression in moral lives and social justice; and that faith is strongest when it grows deep despite challenge. You may know that the tender roots of burgundy grapes grow many feet deep into the bedrock of the Willamette Valley, Oregon. They produce a wine that reflects and tastes of the rock.  Matthew reminds us that the rock of Jesus is our cornerstone and that we are to use it to produce and share the fruits of God’s kingdom.

2026 has been a year-long celebration of the semi-quincentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a reminder of the victory of liberty and equality over the Old World’s class-structured society and the relegation of place beneath merit. At times the celebration has sounded quite secular. For example, little attention has been paid to the fact that it was in their churches that the colonists in 1776 heard from their pastors about how religion and politics intertwine. The Declaration was a carefully crafted, much debated document that speaks of “Nature’s God,” “Creator,” “Supreme Judge of the World,” and “Divine Providence.” As another historian reminds us, Thomas Jefferson included the word “sacred” to reflect an association with God, to levy an admonition that these United States merited reverence and protection, and to remind every reader of the Declaration that we must shoulder the strongest possible moral commitment to its principles of liberty and equality.

We should not forget that today’s secular belief in me over Thee, of my now over Thou, must not displace either our need for community or our need for one another as more than consumers of what we make or do, but rather as stewards of God’s vineyard.

The church – you and I – are to keep our eyes on the watchtower in the vineyard. Sometimes the watchtower takes the form of sanctuary. Not to keep others out, but to ensure that the fruits of God’s creation are shared with those who need them most – need them most, not covet or want them more.

At Ascension, we – you and I – are what our forebears hoped for. We are most mindful of the needs of others. We share out of our abundance through Refugee Resettlement, soup kitchens and the Food Pantry, Night Ministry, Habitat for Humanity, Holy Family School, God’s Work Our Hands, two concert series and so much more. As a congregation we more than tithe with our treasure, time and talent. In each of these ways we are acting as God intended.

For all that, we still haven’t “arrived” have we? No, not until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. This is our charge as Christians, our call to action. And Jesus is the bedrock into which our vineyard is to grow deep.