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.