SouthMinister's Musings

A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church

Boise, Idaho

August 15, 2010

Isa 5:1-7

Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
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.

And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
and people of Judah,
judge between me
and my vineyard.
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?

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.
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.

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!

I’d like to apologize for our Scripture passage this morning.

I didn’t like it any more than you did.

On first glance, it appears that Isaiah was having a no good, very bad day when he wrote this passage.
I thought about abandoning it in favor of something light and easy, like Leviticus or Judges.

But it wouldn’t let me go. This morning, I invite you to rest in the discomfort this text brings and together seek the Good News where it may be found.

“Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning my vineyard.”

We begin today with a love song. It is easy to forget this is a love song by the time you get to the end, with all of the trampling, devouring, and desolation. This oracle of doom takes place in a love song.

The owner of the vineyard puts love and care and back-breaking labor into this vineyard. Digging and clearing a field, investing in choice vines and the infrastructure needed to make wine are all signs of the owner’s love and of his hope for a future of prosperity.  And this isn’t just a garden of pretty flowers. This is a vineyard that will bear fruit—so that people can eat, so people can drink. It isn’t just for the benefit of the gardener. It is for the benefit of the community.

Many of you grow zucchini and other produce in the summer, and I know this because you leave them outside my office door. I’ve been warned not to leave my car doors unlocked in the summer, or my car will be filled with zucchini when I leave church. And let me state for the record that you would never hear me complain about too much zucchini.

But I digress.

Those of you who garden and farm know that the harvest is too much to only benefit one person. An abundant harvest benefits others.

Well-tended vineyards and gardens are illustrations of abundance, of how you live when your cup is runneth-ing over.

So the owner of the vineyard has done everything that can be done to assure that this vineyard will be a blessing.

But, as evidenced by the wild bitter grapes, there is clearly only so much that the owner can do to affect the harvest.  What else, he asks, was there for him to do for the vineyard that he had not already done?

Somehow the vineyard doesn’t produce the good grapes it should. There is no abundant harvest.

This really just doesn’t make sense.  Good champagne grapevines just can’t decide to disobey the gardener and grow into wild bitter grapes. And why would they?
When they could be champagne?

But of course this story isn’t about grapes. It is about us. “For the vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting.”

This story is about us.

We, who have been created in love, and put on this earth to be an abundant harvest of good things for the world, choose, instead to be bad grapes.

Much like the grapes in the story, it doesn’t make sense. Why don’t we, as humans created in love by God, live our lives as blessings to the world?

Love’s labor is lost when we don’t.

Before this story was about you and I, this story was being told about Israel. And God’s expectation, for all of the care and provision he had given Israel, was for Israel, God’s pleasant planting, to share the abundance of the harvest. A harvest of justice and righteousness. These two words function together in the Hebrew scriptures to remind us of a “society in which the rights of all, including the most marginalized, are respected. This is God’s reasonable expectation, given the divine provision.” (Anna Case-Winters Feasting on the Word Year C, Vol 3 (WJK, 2010), p 344.)

But this love song has gone terribly awry. Justice and righteousness were not what the people experienced. “He looked for justice but saw bloodshed. He listened for righteousness but heard a cry of oppression,” is another translation of verse 7. “Isaiah’s words…picture what happens when a people refuse the care and nurture lavished on them—or accept it, but keep it only to themselves.” (Stacey Simpson Duke, Feasting on the Word Year C, Vol 3 (WJK, 2010),p. 344)  Isaiah is telling Israel that the people can continue to live for themselves, instead of pursuing justice and righteousness, but if they do, God will leave them to it.

Listen again to the middle verse of our love song:
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.
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.

Israel, who had been carted off into exile by this point in their history, had seen Isaiah’s words come true. They knew what it meant to live through the devastation described.

Where do we see this story playing out in our lives today?

Isaiah functions under a model of retributive justice, as do most of the other writer’s of the Old Testament. We’ve heard it before. 
“Israel sinned and did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord and the Lord delivered them into the hands of their enemies.”

While this tactic does have the unpleasant side effect of kicking people who are already down—“Yes, you are in exile and dealing with destruction and let me also point out that the fault is yours”—It also serves to reassure the people that they are NOT where they are because God has abandoned them. God did not change his mind and get a new people. “You want to know who to blame for this mess you’re in?”, God seems to be asking them, “here’s a mirror.”

But when you are in the midst of crisis, it helps to take stock of your responsibility. When you feel you’re hanging on by a thread, it can be helpful to figure out which part of the problem is within your control. What role did you play in getting here and what can you do, now, to get through the day.

But I want to be clear that while there is a connection between our sinful behavior as humans and the judgment of God—not all suffering that we experience on this earth is deserved or caused by divine judgment.

In light of the world falling apart around him, Isaiah is wise enough to suggest that our response to God matters. God expects a right response to the love, care, and work that God has put into the people.

While the Israelites can’t immediately change the reality of the crisis they are in, they can start paying attention to justice and righteousness. They can take control of their own behavior. They can turn back to God.

And if they were to start being a good vineyard of righteousness and justice, it would look like a healthy vineyard at harvest time, with abundant fruit to share.

Here is the Good News, friends. Despite the brokenness of the world in which we live, despite the fact that we turn away from the goodness of God, God is still singing a love song for us. And we can yet choose to be God’s justice and righteousness in our world.

And, of course, we have already been doing this. The history of Southminster is a story of people standing for justice in the community and in the world.

But this is a story that ever needs to be told.

Each day we have to decide to stand for justice and righteousness.

Each day we have to seek the common good and the larger welfare of our community.

It begins, of course, with prayer. Opening ourselves to hear God’s voice and direction in our lives. This year, as we begin to focus on our Year of Prayer, I invite you to pray to bear fruit of justice and righteousness. I invite you to use the Prayer Center, either during worship, or during the week, to be called into prayer in new ways.
And after we pray, I invite you to be the harvest of God’s justice and righteousness in the world.

The Mission Committee would be glad to help you participate in this harvest. Whether it is helping out at Jazz in the Park in 2 weeks to raise money for CATCH, helping people get out of homelessness and back on their feet. Or whether it is supporting our neighborhood school, Grace Jordan, by being a presence in the life of a kid.
You can join Randy and others tonight at Brewed for Thought, as they continue a discussion about how the choices we make in our lives contribute to justice.

The Session is continuing the discussion of how we can continue to work for God’s justice and righteousness. I invite you to share with them your ideas. I invite you to join with them in making those ideas concrete actions.
Another thing to consider about vineyards is this—grapes don’t grow overnight—whether they are actual grapes or the fruits of justice and righteousness.

It takes a long time.

And even when you can’t yet see the fruit on the vine, you have to continue to water, prune, and care for the plants. God as the owner of the vineyard has done that for us. We continue to receive the nurture and care we need to become a harvest of justice and righteousness. So, as we work toward justice and righteousness in our community, we also need to remember it is a long process.

As we spend time with the kids at Grace Jordan, we need to remember that the fruits of that labor may not be seen by us. But we need to trust that it still matters. We need to trust that somewhere down the line it matters that people gave of their time to be present in the lives of these children. In 1850, abolitionist Theodore Parker said “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

As we seek justice, in whatever area, we need to remember this and not lose hope.

In yesterday’s New York Times, Gail Collins wrote a piece about the anniversary of Women’s Suffrage. Suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt, estimated that the struggle to give women the right to vote had involved 56 referendum campaigns directed at male voters, plus “480 campaigns to get Legislatures to submit suffrage amendments to voters, 47 campaigns to get constitutional conventions to write woman suffrage into state constitutions; 277 campaigns to get State party conventions to include woman suffrage planks, 30 campaigns to get presidential party campaigns to include woman suffrage planks in party platforms and 19 campaigns with 19 successive Congresses.”

The work to get women the vote took a long time and a lot of work.

But the people working for justice and righteousness never gave up hope. “Susan B. Anthony… never lost hope. The great day was coming, she promised: “It’s coming sooner than most people think.” She said that in 1895.” Women’s Suffrage wasn’t ratified in the Constitution until 1920.

So we work for justice and righteousness. And we do so in hope with an eye to the future, which is coming sooner than most people think. Because God is still singing a love song for God’s vineyard.

If Israel can face the devastation of exile, if we can face the devastations at play in our lives and in the world, “we might just be ready to submit again to the bruised and aching hands of the master gardener, who still dreams of—and sings for—a vineyard yielding fat, gorgeous fruit for the whole world.” (Stacey Simpson Duke p 344)
May it be so.

Amen

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