Audio recording Sermon manuscript: It is a part of our human nature that we like to fix things. Wherever there might be a problem, let’s figure out a way to fix it. So if you’re naked, go make some clothes. If there is pain with childbirth, let’s give an epidural. If there’s oppression against women, let’s start a movement. If the work is heavy or boring let’s get some hydraulics and robotics. If thorns and thistles come up let’s spray some Roundup. If there is sweat on our brow, let’s fire up the air conditioner. If we are to turn back into dust go get the formaldehyde. Whatever the problem might be, we figure there must be a way to eliminate it or at least make it easier. Because we are more or less successful in eliminating problems, we come to believe that we must be doing alright. Our civilization is doing quite well. All the different parts keep humming along. The future looks bright because just look at all the problems that we’ve been able to solve in the past. Surely we will be able to solve some more in the future. But all of this problem solving only has to do with one side of life. It has to do with created things. We manipulate the created things of this world in order to bring about our desired outcomes. What about the things that have to do with our Creator? Are there problems there? Certainly. But here we can see another way of dealing with things besides fixing them. We can also ignore things. This has been the natural strategy with God from the beginning. As soon as Adam and Eve came to believe that there was no way that God could be their friend, they tried to put God out of mind. God had said, “You will surely die.” The devil had said, “You won’t surely die.” Adam and Eve hoped the devil was right. Then they got busy fixing what they took to be problems. First things first, let’s cover up this nakedness. That will make us more comfortable and secure. Then let’s figure out other ways to make ourselves more comfortable. When God started to walk through the garden in the cool of the day it sounded horrible to Adam and Eve. They worked harder at ignoring God by climbing into some bushes. This is so typical and programmatic for how we deal with God, particularly when we have fallen into sin. When we feel and know our sin we want to stay away from God just like a criminal wants to stay away from the police station. The criminal doesn’t want to get caught. Sinners don’t want to get caught. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll get away with it. Let’s hope so. In the meantime, let’s get busy trying to get some more money so that we can buy ourselves some more comfort. Maybe if we can get more comfortable we can just forget about all this God business. But God still exists whether we ignore him or not. Whereas we might be very impressed with ourselves in the way that we can fix problems, God is not impressed. We might think that we are at the pinnacle of civilization, achieving great things, God is totally bored with our fumbling and bumbling. Like an adult watches a toddler play with blocks, that’s how God looks at us with our nano-technology and nuclear reactors. God has an expectation of us as his creatures, and it is not that we should know many things about many things or be able to do this, that, or the other thing with his creation. Of all the creatures God has created, human beings are the only ones who have been made in his image. Human beings are the only ones who can hear him, believe in him, and pray, praise, and give thanks. That is what God intends for his people, because God intends good things for his people. In our Gospel reading Jesus spoke about a landowner who planted a vineyard. He took good care of that vineyard. He put a wall around it. He dug a winepress for it. He built a watchtower to keep it safe. These words of Jesus’s would have been quite familiar to the Jews to whom he was speaking. The prophet Isaiah, hundreds of years before, used the same picture to describe the relationship that God had