Capital Vineyard Church

Capital Vineyard Church releases the talks given at its gatherings, and several different speakers carry the recent episodes. A series titled 'Life in the Kingdom' works through the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 and 6. Michelle sums up its scope with a dry aside: after about two months in Matthew 5, the church had covered murder, lust, divorce, retaliation and loving enemies, which she calls quite easygoing topics. Each speaker reaches for a different tool. For Matt it is history, and he explains why the old law protected a poor person's cloak, which doubled as a blanket, while a wealthy person could still take the tunic. For James it is the building site. Recalling a hard day of groundwork before a booked concrete truck arrived, he argues that rock is a difficult place to build and worth the sweat anyway, and points to an old church set on rock in a French town. Michelle goes for theatre. She has one person hand a wad of Monopoly Junior money to another while the room cheers on cue, runs the scene a second time, and ends by having everyone say Psalm 51:10 together from the screen. The best place to start sits just outside the series, in a pair of talks on the cross and the resurrection. Rosemary's 'Good Friday' frames the day with four gardens: Eden, Gethsemane, the garden of the tomb and the garden still to come. She retells Jesus being sent to Herod, who wanted a miracle for entertainment and got silence, and then back to Pilate. She ends on the centurion's confession and a short charge to look and live. In 'Resurrection!', James thanks her and builds directly on those gardens. He casts Jesus as the grain of wheat from John 12 and lingers over Mary mistaking him for the gardener, calling Jesus both the gardener and the garden. Heard together, the two talks pass one image cleanly between two voices. The news gets a hearing too. James starts one talk from fuel costs and wars and sets them against the tension of Roman-ruled Jerusalem, while Matt names war and a fresh COVID wave before turning to the text. The tone is warm and unguarded. Matt admits one talk was loosely prepared, says so when a name escapes him, and opens 'Shine like lights - Philippians pt 2' by tangling himself over whether he had already started. That talk draws on N.T. Wright's biography of Paul to trace the journey to Philippi, a city named for the father of Alexander the Great. Most talks close in prayer, and Matt ends 'Life in the Kingdom - Image bearers (Matt 5:33-48)' with a word he felt was given during worship, delivered as a good shepherd inviting rest.