God's Vineyard

Text:   Isaiah 5:1-7; 11:1-5

Date:  November 22, 2015

Pleasant Street UMC, Waterville, ME

Thomas L. Blackstone, Ph.D., Preacher

God's Vineyard

5:1 Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. 2 He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. 3 And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. 4 What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? 5 And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it shall be trampled down. 6 I will make it a waste; it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. 7 For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!

11:1 A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 2 The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. 3 His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; 4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. 5 Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

 

Gain and loss, growing and pruning, nurturing and cutting back, innovation and evaluation.  These are the ebb and flow of gardening, farming, organizational life, and the history  of the church.  But before any of that, such is the language of love. 

So it is appropriate that today's text begins with a love song.  You know love songs, of course.  They're 90% of what we hear on the radio unless you're a public radio junky, but even then Saturday afternoon opera will bring it all back:  the joys and ultimate heartbreak of unrequited love and betrayal.  Back in 1580, the song was "Greensleeves,"  a plea from a man to his bored mistress. He is still enraptured by her but she appears not to love him anymore.  Frankie Valli sang, "My Eyes Adored You":  You couldn't see how I adored you.  So close, so close and yet so far…."  Elvis Presley:  "She wrote upon it, Return to Sender, No such number, no such zone."  Meatloaf!  (the singer not the entrée):  " She kept on telling me / I want you, I need you / But there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you / Now don't be sad / 'Cause two out of three ain't bad."  (Yes, that is probably the first and last time you'll hear Meatloaf quoted in a sermon).  Taylor Swift:  "Can't you see that I'm the one who understands you / Been here all along so why can't you see / You belong with me."  Lady Antebellum:   " Yeah, it's gonna take forever to get over you / Oh, and I don't think this pain's gonna go away / Oh, (the) scars left, when it's said and done, remain."  And Finally Gary Stewart, "She's Acting Single; I'm drinking double." 

Love is pain, at least in the lyrics of popular songs, and often in real life as well.  Isaiah's song, which was never on anybody's top 40 list but still made it into the Bible, is sung by a woman about her lover.  The readers of Isaiah, expecting a lyrical ballad, open up their hearts, drop their defenses, and settle back to hear her words.  A Love Song!  She sings of her lover's vineyard, of the care with which he planted a hedge, built a wine press, planted and dressed the vines.  He put up a watch tower so that the workers could spot animals who wanted to sneak in and steal the grapes.  He carved a deep wine vat to hold the sweet, succulent, juice.  If this sounds like it's getting a little sensual, then you're probably on the right track.  Every time I read this I'm reminded of the Steve Miller Band's lyric, "I really love your peaches, want to shake your tree."  Yeah. 

But then, into this garden of seduction, comes the unwelcome.  Wild grapes.  This is a problem agriculturally because wild grapes are sour and tart, lacking the sugar to become wine.  But they also symbolize infidelity.  If there are wild grapes in the vineyard, then someone planted them there, and it wasn't the vineyard owner.  To quote the Blues classic, "She's got a smile on her face and I didn't put it there." 

Well, the vineyard owner isn't going to tolerate wild grapes in his patch of earth, and in anger it's all going to be torn down.  The hedges, the watchtower, the wall.  The hard work of cultivation will stop, and the vineyard owner will even keep the rain from falling, which is our first clue that this is not an ordinary love song, given that the jilted lover can control the weather. 

I think you can see where this is going.  The hedge, and the watchtower, and the wall are all symbolic of God's protection over the people, and Isaiah--much like his contemporary Hosea from whom we heard last week--is warning his audience, the Southern Kingdom of Judah, that God has shown them nothing but care and nurture, and they have responded with infidelity.  They have chased after personal wealth and riches, they have neglected the poor, they have become indifferent and lazy about worship, failing to remind themselves that they are a covenant people with responsibilities to others.  They had forgotten God's words to Abraham in Genesis 12, at the very beginning of the Biblical story, " And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing…"   hear that again.  "I will bless you, Abram, so that you may be a blessing."  At the time Isaiah's singer sings her song, the wild grapes of injustice and indifference have taken over the vineyard.  Judah has been happy to be blessed and protected by God, but had forgotten the second word to Abraham, that along with great blessings comes great responsibility. 

And so there's going to be a break-up, and thanks to Neil Sedaka we know, "Breaking up is hard to do."  Isaiah writes these words as the Assyrians are preparing to dismantle the Northern Kingdom, torture its leaders, and dilute the Northern 10 tribes into the solvent of history, never to be heard from again.  And Isaiah's warning to the Southern kingdom is simple:  "Get it together, or you're next." 

I have to admit that my lighthearted introduction to this passage is out of sync with the effect that it has on my heart, during this week in which so many are hurting and feeling fearful of the unknown.  Our times are not unlike Isaiah's in which rumors and reports of our enemies and what they have done to our allies is causing us to want to focus on self-protection rather than self-less courage.  Judah's mistake, Isaiah reminded them, was to assume that their greatest threat was the Assyrians over the far hill someplace.  In fact, their greatest danger was in their refusal to be the people God made them to be, those who would be a blessing to others. 

Like ancient Judah, God has blessed our nation.  We are blessed with democracy, freedom of belief, incredible natural resources, and an innovative spirit, but it is understandably reflexive to feel vulnerable when the acts of madmen, intended to terrify us into inaction, do in fact frighten us.  For the last several months we have witnessed the largest movement of refugees in our lifetimes.  60 million people, according to a UN report last June, are displaced from their homes, that's one out of every 122 people on the planet, if you're doing the math, and half of those 60 million // half // are children.  Because, as every parent knows, when violence comes to our door, our first instinct is not to stand and fight, but to grab our children and run, lest we fall in the struggle and leave them unprotected. 

The debate the country seems to be having is whether our wealthy, powerful nation will welcome some of those victims of religious fanaticism (again, half of them children) or close up our borders like a tortoise in a shell, hoping that the storm will pass us by. 

We've been here before, of course.  Some of you are old enough to remember the journey of the MS St. Louis and the so-called Voyage of the Damned in 1939.  The ship carried 908 Jewish refugees out of Germany who came seeking asylum from the horrors of the Nazis.  After being refused entry in Cuba, the US, and Canada, the ship returned to Europe where at least a quarter of the passengers died in concentration camps.  "But there might be German spies on the boat," it was argued at the time, "they're not of our religion," said others, "they're filthy Jews," said some, "the dregs of Europe."  And so we turned our backs, and the weak and the vulnerable continued to suffer at the hands of evil.  It is a sin for which we cannot atone.

You know that I'm not a political person, and for me this is not a political issue, it's a question of human rights and responsibility.  But when I hear our Governor insist that Mainers would not welcome these men, women, and children into our communities, I know that he's wrong.  I know that he's wrong.  We are not a wealthy state, we are not a bottomless pit of resources, but there's not a person here who would not jump into the water to save the life of one of those precious kids clinging to one of those overturned boats in the Aegean Sea.  And having saved her from death we would instinctively wrap her in our warmest blanket, feed her the most nutritious thing in our house, even if it meant we would go hungry, and sleep on the couch until we could find her a bed.  I know we would.  

I know that because we're Christians, and because the person at the center of our faith is a child of refugees, who crossed a border in search of safety from a paranoid King.  It was about such a child, that Isaiah continued to sing in his writings, about a child who even in a hopeless situation would grow up like a shoot out of the stump of Jesse, Jesse being the father of King David, the ancestor of Jesus, and the grandson of Ruth, Ruth a widowed refugee from Moab who crossed a border in search of safety, and found it among God's people, who welcomed her, and took her in.

Yes, we've been here before, and what we've learned is that if our enemies make us forget who we are, then our enemies win, and the wild grapes of fear and insecurity and self-interest will be all that's left of our beautiful vineyard.  But there is still time, time to turn to God, embrace our identity, and advocate for those who are fleeing for their lives with their children in their arms.  Amen.

Text:  Psalm 18:1-13, 46-50

Date:  June 28, 2015

Pleasant Street UMC, Waterville, ME

(c) Thomas L. Blackstone, Ph.D., Preacher

Movies of Maine:  Charlotte's Web

Psalm 18

To the leader. A Psalm of David the servant of the Lord, who addressed the words of this song to the Lord on the day when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul. He said:
I love you, O Lord, my strength.
The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer,
   my God, my rock in whom I take refuge,
   my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised;
   so I shall be saved from my enemies. 

The cords of death encompassed me;
   the torrents of perdition assailed me;
the cords of Sheol entangled me;
   the snares of death confronted me. 

In my distress I called upon the Lord;
   to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
   and my cry to him reached his ears. 

Then the earth reeled and rocked;
   the foundations also of the mountains trembled
   and quaked, because he was angry.
Smoke went up from his nostrils,
   and devouring fire from his mouth;
   glowing coals flamed forth from him.
He bowed the heavens, and came down;
   thick darkness was under his feet.
He rode on a cherub, and flew;
   he came swiftly upon the wings of the wind.
He made darkness his covering around him,
   his canopy thick clouds dark with water.
Out of the brightness before him
   there broke through his clouds
   hailstones and coals of fire.
The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
   and the Most High uttered his voice.
The Lord lives! Blessed be my rock,
   and exalted be the God of my salvation,
the God who gave me vengeance
   and subdued peoples under me;
who delivered me from my enemies;
   indeed, you exalted me above my adversaries;
   you delivered me from the violent. 

For this I will extol you, O Lord, among the nations,
   and sing praises to your name.
Great triumphs he gives to his king,
   and shows steadfast love to his anointed,
   to David and his descendants for ever.

So there I was, sitting with the Worship Team a month or so ago, describing this great idea for a summer preaching series.  You know, summer, when nothing happens in the secular world, and so the church is free to reflect on the peaceful, relaxed side of Christianity, in which we all go fishing with Jesus, hang out at the Pot Luck supper with Peter, and sit at the Lord's feet with Mary.  So why not take a look back at a few of the many movies that are set here in our home state, in search of some meaningful religious lessons close to home.  Don't worry, I said.  The tourists will love it, and the local folks too. 

Well, the last couple of weeks have not been the summer I predicted. 

·                    It began with the horrors of the shooting rampage through our sister church in Charleston, and the resulting calls for the banning of the Confederate Battle Flag,

·                    It continued with the reaffirmation that thousands of Mainers, and millions of Americans will continue to be able to afford their health insurance,

·                    And finally there was the predicted affirmation Friday by the US Supreme Court that the Same Sex marriages of our members, friends, family, and neighbors are now legal, not just here in Maine and like-minded states, but throughout the United States of America, wherever our beloved Constitution holds sway. 

And so with all this going on, both good and tragic, you can imagine that I began to cringe in fear a little when I tried to remember what sophisticated film I had chosen for this first Sunday of our series:  Charlotte's Web.  But I have realized before that when I reach out in faith and tell you what I'm actually going to preach about on a given Sunday, God--more often than not--doesn't let me down, even or especially if it has not been an ordinary week. 

So Charlotte's Web, set in Somerset County, Maine, written by E.B. White, but filmed, sadly, in Australia to accommodate a winter filming schedule when Maine looks a little too much like Maine.  If you look closely, you can see that the trees around the barn have been painted orange to stand in for a New England Autumn.  That is a lot of effort to go to in my opinion, to recreate the Pine Tree State, but so be it. 

Our hero is Wilbur, the runt of a very large litter of pigs, saved by young Fern from a quick & merciful death by her promise that she will raise him, and he will be the best pig ever.  To do away with him just because he is small, she argues, is "unfair, and unjust."  Her plan is difficult to put into motion, and her father tries to release her from her promise, but she curtly replies, "I didn't make my promise to you; I made it to Wilbur."  Eventually, a deal is worked out with the neighboring farmer, Homer.  As Wilbur is dropped into his new home, the narrator reflects that sometimes bringing two very ordinary things together like a pig and a barn results in an extraordinary miracle. 

Well, Wilbur is going to need a miracle, because as you know Spring pigs have only one purpose, to ensure the winter supply of ham, bacon, and chops.  When apprised of that reality, Wilbur responds incredulously, but humans love pigs!  No, his animal friends assure him, Humans love pork; there's a difference.  Just about then a familiar "fear not" is heard from the rafters.  It is the voice of Charlotte, an exceptional spider with an exceptional gift.  You will not be sacrificed for food, Wilbur, I promise, she says.  And like Fern, Charolotte NEVER breaks her promises. 

To me, this is the turning point of the film, that an apparently small and helpless creature undertakes with boldness to change the world in which she lives.  If in fact the slaughter is unfair and unjust, Charlotte will have none of it.  She has heard the cry of the innocent, and she will use her gifts to deliver him. 

Is it a complete and total surprise that Charlotte's actions echo the spirit of our lesson from the Psalms this morning?  Remember those words…

In my distress I called upon the Lord;
   to my God I cried for help.
From his temple he heard my voice,
   and my cry to him reached his ears. 

No, not a surprise, because Charlotte's Web, like every good book or movie, has a messianic figure at its heart, an agent of change to use the language of family system's theory.  And when a change agent is on the loose, anything can happen.  Like any good Messiah, Charlotte is there to provide deliverance from evil, or at least the smokehouse, but how?  Even she doesn't know.  That night, however, as she goes about her business of web weaving, the answer comes to her.  The web itself will bear her message and express her belief in Wilbur's inherent worth.  Diverting from her usual web, Charlotte prepares the words above Wilbur's head, "Some pig."  Now, when the web is noticed, no one wants to talk about the spider, they all want to talk about the pig.  That's also a good strategy for Messiah's, by the way, keep the spotlight where it belongs, not on oneself.  Remember all those mornings when Jesus slipped quietly away?  Yeah, that's his Charlotte moment.  Let them talk about the miracle rather than the miracle worker. 

Well, in the morning, there are the words, "Some pig," up above Wilbur's head.  And people begin to notice that he IS in fact, some pig.  You see, that's Charlotte's gift, to only use her web to tell the truth about Wilbur.  Well, the farmer's family does what anyone would do when they hear of a miracle.  They call their pastor, who by all appearances is a United Methodist.  And the Pastor, in good pastoral fashion, chooses to say nothing, but rather refers people to his upcoming sermon on the topic in a week or two.  Ironically, it's the town doctor, a man of science, who understands the problem with all this, that the web was a miracle long before Charlotte started using it to send messages.  It's a thing of beauty and symmetry, he says.  How did you not see it before?

Well, even the miracle web is not enough to hold people's attention, and Charlotte's work continues every few weeks.  Soon the web reveals new words:  Terrific, Radiant, and finally, Humble.  With such words above his head, Wilbur captures the imagination of his world, and is allowed to live to see Christmas, and many Christmases after that.  As all this winds to a close, and Charlotte's many babies fly away on the winds, the narrator reminds us that because Charlotte showed the specialness of this pig, the community itself felt special, and because of that they treated one another with more kindness and affection, and because they did that, an ordinary miracle had come to town.  Yeah, Charlotte! 

And so there is that inevitable question, So what?  So what, that a loveable children's book has been brought to life in our midst?  And yet, I can't help think that there is a lesson in all this, even on this week when so much has happened.  There's was an editorial cartoon that captured my imagination this week, in which a Confederate flag on a flag pole is being slowly lowered out of site, and then rising to take its place is a rainbow flag.  No words, no slogans, just a comment left by a user, "There it is." 

You see, banners matter, symbols have meaning, and words can in fact (to quote Charlotte), change the world.  Charlotte was Wilbur's savior, his redeemer, his deliverer.  And he was saved by her choice to place above him words that reflected his true nature:  Some Pig, Terrific, Radiant, Humble.  Society puts banners above all of us, of course.  Not all of them are so kind.  Imagine some other words that would convey other messages, "outsider", "dirty", "lazy", "scum", freeloader, less than human.  Those who raised the Confederate Flag over South Carolina reinforced the message that black citizens are less worthy than others, that they are a danger, that they need to be controlled if not exterminated.  It wasn't intended as harm to others, perhaps, but it gave permission to a young man steeped in hate, that perhaps even the most heinous of crimes would be  forgiven, if it asserted the God given rights of a supreme white race.  But imagine if the shooter that day had grown up seeing other words in the webs above his brothers and sisters?  Imagine if he saw words like devout, kindhearted, forgiving, generous.  Perhaps then he would have spared the lives in the church that night, and allowed his own experience to rule his heart, rather than the narrow opinions and bigotry of his elders. 

Charlotte delivers Wilbur by changing how others see him, as his true self rather than his society-given reputation as a beast to be slaughtered.  I know it's just a children's story, but its importance is clear.  Words matter.  It matters that so-called "gay marriage" can just be "marriage" now.  That those who live with the stigma of poverty will have some options when it comes to caring for their bodies.  It matters when words like worthless, imperfect, and less-than, infect even our Christian vocabulary as we sit in judgment over others, a role that God never intended for us.  Rather, we are to build one another up in love, to perceive and name the blessings of our fellow human beings to deliver them from the spiritual  smokehouses of death all around us. 

However this week's news has affected you, let us be reminded that we have incredible power to be Charlotte to one another, to make promises that we mean to keep, and then do everything in our power to keep them, even if it is a matter of life and death, and sometimes it will be.  May you be amazed at the ordinary miracles in your life, and may you be the miracle that another of God's children is praying for, longing for some word of approval, praise, or acknowledgement, even from one of the least of these God's creatures.  Amen.