Read Isaiah 5:1-7
{i}The Song of the Vineyard
5 I will sing for the one I love
a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
on a fertile hillside.
2
He dug it up and cleared it of stones
and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes,
but it yielded only bad fruit.
3
“Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard.
4
What more could have been done for my vineyard
than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes,
why did it yield only bad?
5
Now I will tell you
what I am going to do to my vineyard:
I will take away its hedge,
and it will be destroyed;
I will break down its wall,
and it will be trampled.
6
I will make it a wasteland,
neither pruned nor cultivated,
and briers and thorns will grow there.
I will command the clouds
not to rain on it.”
7
The vineyard of the Lord Almighty
is the nation of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are the vines he delighted in.
And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;
for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.{/i}
This has been a difficult year for gardeners, especially in southern Howell County where the draught was worse than here. I talked with a friend this week who got almost no beans, her melons and squash didn’t germinate even though she planted them twice, and her okra plants aren’t even knee high.
I suspect she feels about the same way the farmer in Isaiah felt. It just makes a body want to tantrum, which is just what happened in Isaiah. If that had happened here in the Ozarks, what briars do you think would have grown up in the destroyed garden?
How about blackberries? Don’t you just love their sweetness when you pick them on a hot day in July, warm from the sun? But this year, they were just skin-covered seeds on our plants. Not even the birds would eat them.
It seems this year we can easily identify with the farmer in Isaiah, put ourselves there, looking at that non-productive plot. It is not so easy to understand why this tale has lasted almost three millennia. After all, it is so clear and understandable, but what makes it important? Perhaps a look at the gospel lesson for the day will help clarify this.
Read Luke 12: 49-56
{i}Not Peace but Division
49 “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! 51 Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. 52 From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. 53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
Interpreting the Times
54 He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. 55 And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. 56 Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?{/i}
Well, how do like that? “I brought you fire and wish it was already kindled.” Jesus came to bring division. And in Isaiah, God gave the people of Judah fertile ground, but it didn’t produce. How do these verses go together? The writers of the lectionary seem to have thought they do. Let’s think this through.
Isaiah was a prophet who was widely respected. Over about three periods of rule beginning in the 8th century BCE when the prophet Isaiah lived and taught through the end of Assyrian rule, the Babylonian exile, and Persian dominance, the teachings, and prophecies of others were added to Isaiah’s words to make the book of Isaiah.
The focus of this book is on Jerusalem and that city’s “relationship with YHWH, and the question of righteousness, both divine and human.” “Jerusalem is intended for a glorious future as the world’s center, the home of YHWH’s temple, the destination of nations who seek to learn the ways of peace.” (p.256)*
The people of Jerusalem were seen to make up a flawed society, “once righteous but no longer so.” The near destruction of Jerusalem is interpreted as “severe punishment from God in order to attain moral and ethical purity, to become the righteous city in which God delights.”
And then here comes Jesus a few centuries later, as Isaiah predicted. And what does he say when asked? He says he came to bring division, not peace.
Doesn’t that sound a bit like the citizens of the USA who want our society to be morally and ethically pure but have divergent ideas about how to make this happen?
Here we sit, a small gathering of people of God, like the people of Judah, trying to figure out what righteousness is and how to find peace through righteous behavior.
It seems to me the key words for consideration are righteousness and division. A simple Webster’s definition of righteousness is “morally good: following religious or moral laws” * clarified as Justice; equity between people.”
Division is defined as: “disagreement between two or more groups, typically producing tension or hostility.” It seems at first glance these two words stand in opposition to each other.
What I make of this is that righteousness is defined and redefined within the social context and language of a society and the process by which this happens is dialogue among persons with divergent ideas on the subject. In fact, the entire book of Isaiah focuses on defining righteousness and putting the definition into action.
Jesus came to his way of understanding first through dialogue in the temple, and then through dialogue with people he met along the way. He took time in the desert to think it all through. He taught what he learned in this way.
We examine ancient texts in the Bible translated into our modern language by persons who have studied history and archeology, theology and languages. They have done so with the goal of making this ancient wisdom understandable to us. Yet, we struggle to understand.
I had a teacher named John who said, “trust the process.” He was talking about how change and growth come about through dialogue among persons which considers both information and emotion.
For example, a mother and teenage son were in conflict about the son’s changing need for privacy. John asked each to describe the problem as they saw it, then to notice the feelings they had as they were talking. This led to development of a very simple solution that both mother and son thought would work well. The next time they met with John, they said it worked just as they had hoped.
We as people of God are part of a conversation that has been going on for millennia. It didn’t start with Isaiah, and it didn’t end with Jesus. We gather to participate in the conversation, and we will not end it. This discussion among ourselves and with God will continue long after we are gone.
We need to trust that the interactions among us will be fruitful. Even after tearing up the garden in Isaiah we figured the land would still be productive. Remember the blackberries?
We need to keep at it even when we can’t see harvestable fruit this season. God didn’t abandon the people of Jerusalem and didn’t abandon the people around Christ and God won’t abandon us.
The prophets interpreted calamity as God punishing his people in order to teach them. A lot of people today think that way, too.
I think the calamities we experience are just what happens under certain circumstances. We don’t have control of all circumstances and cannot be responsible for them.
God set things in motion and put us in the middle to live just as the animals and plants around us are here to live. Life is the gift and difficulties become our teachers when we take the time to notice the information within the difficulty and our feelings about it.
When we talk these things over with others, we improve our chance of developing an accurate picture. When we shut people out who are sharing the difficulty, or persons struggling with a different problem, we weaken our learning.
We need to listen to each other. We need to examine the nature of the problem with all intellectual tools available to us. In this way, our wisdom may look different from that of a previous or a next generation. It is, nevertheless, wisdom and it can guide us into righteous behavior. We need to trust this process and understand the problem is a gift as much as the solution is a gift.
*Newsom, Carol A., Sharon H. Ringe and Jacqueline E. Lapsley Ed., Women’s Bible Commentary, Third Edition, Rev. and updated, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, K Y, 1992, 1998, 2012.
bethene318 