Vineyard
Isaiah 5:1-7; Luke 12:49-56
August 15, 2010
The vineyard is one of the peculiar Biblical images that has found a permanent place in the language and culture of the Church and synagogue, a metaphor that makes sense in its original setting, but most of us know about vineyards only from the Bible, not from actual experience.
Some of us are or have been farmers, but most of us haven’t been. The Bible is loaded with references to sheep and flocks and their pastors, but most of our experience of sheep has been at the Agribition. And vineyards? We have the general idea and a number of you have indeed walked among the rows of vineyards in one of those wonderful places in BC and the Niagara Valley, Napa Valley, France and Italy, and Australia. We hear the lectures on how it is done and then have the opportunity to sample the wine, the real reason we like vineyards!
Nevertheless, the idea of vines growing in the sun with grapes emerging and then picked at the right time still rings true. There is an important new Christian movement called the Vineyard Church that has spread all around the world. There is a branch of this charismatic evangelical church based in the Cathedral area of Regina. There is emphasis upon spiritual gifts, the fruits of the spirit, in this church which now has over 1500 congregations world-wide. Yet, vineyards are not always seen by the Biblical authors as fruitful as they should be. The church is and is not a vineyard just waiting to be picked. Just looking like a vineyard is not enough.
I supposed it is merely coincidental - and not intentional - that in the middle of the dog days of August, the Lectionary serves up these two woeful laments which leave little room for a positive light-hearted spin. We could avoid these unpleasant diatribes, talk about the saints or love or peace - after all, right now in the middle of the summer no one is listening. I hope you all know one of the basic assumptions of preaching: when you get up the gumption to challenge something that has not been going right in the congregation the people who most need to hear the challenge do not show up to worship that day. Ah, are you supposed to be here or not?
Some people have reread Isaiah 5 as God singing the blues, in an Old Testament prophetic kind of way. I love the blues because of their particular and genuine irony. The blues singer sings about unrequited love, down and out luck, tragedy, and yet, singing about these things just changes your attitude. If you really have the blues, there is nothing that will start your way back up better than singing the blues. As mournful as some of those songs sound, there is something deeply cathartic and resurrecting. One of the most important parts of a funeral or memorial service that keeps getting overlooked is the congregational hymn, especially for the bereaved family. None of this sitting down, stand up and sing no matter how sad you are and when you sit down, you’re still sad, but you’re not.
Maybe that’s why God sang the blues in Isaiah 5. Just to be clear, in the prophetic books of the Old Testament the idea is that Isaiah here is not making this up - he is proclaiming the Word of God, saying out loud what God is thinking.
God starts out as if this were to be a ballad, a love song, “Let me sing for my beloved a love song concerning his vineyard.” Such anticipation of a wonderful delicious harvest of sweet grapes. This is what we all think a vineyard should be - and it’s the description of choice about what the Church is supposed to taste like. Some of you are chardonnet, others burgundy, and as Canadians you have to be Eiswein, and then there’s a few who head downwards winter-time to be Sunkist raisins. That’s what we like to think this vineyard of the Church tastes like.
But then God sings the blues. He looked for all those succulent grapes and instead the vineyard yielded only wild grapes, sour and decaying on the vine. What could he do, but tear it down and trample it? “I will command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.” Sour grapes only produce more sour grapes. These are the blues because the veil is off: the vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel - and it’s worse than a lousy vineyard. It’s all in a pun, not unlike ours at their best and worst. “He looked for justice, and look, bloodshed. He looked for righteousness, but heard the moans of victims.” In each pair there is only one letter difference between the words. Those who heard it got the pun, and if they groaned it was because they knew the pun described them.
When Jesus most memorably used the imagery of the vineyard he declared that I am the True Vine, certainly referring back to Isaiah. Jesus was the real thing and not wild sour grapes. Just looking like a vineyard doesn’t make it a real vineyard; just looking like a church doesn’t make us a church. Serving one another in justice and in righteousness is what sweetens our wine.
We can’t run to the Gospel for refuge in a more positive spirit this week, for Jesus launches his harshest words, “I’ve come to start a fire on this earth - how I wish it were blazing right now! I’ve come to change everything, turn everything right-side up.” Another way of saying that he’s tearing down the vineyard of sour grapes.
None of us feel comfortable or comforted by having our vineyard trampled. Yet this is just as much a part of our faith tradition as any words of praise and optimistic thinking. What is always amazingly dangerous to hear is how the prophets and authors of the Bible do not hold back pointing out that the Israel, the people and nation of God, and the Church of Jesus Christ keep falling down. Most religions do not dare do that, for the leaders and the people are above sin and are always victorious and righteous. What makes us different is that we recognize that we are people on a journey towards an unreached destination, caught more often than not in between virtues, reformed and always in need of reforming. We insist upon justice for ourselves, but seldom for those who are not one of us, even while we know that Christ came to bring justice to all of humanity. Sure, we don’t want to hear these blues all the time, mostly because we are afraid of having to change and do things differently. But if we don’t hear the bad stuff enough, we tend to believe our own propaganda that we are good enough.
And that’s the blues of the vineyard. We are still here and God has brought us here today, so as bad as our blues are about the status of this world and the injustice and the lack of virtue and compassion - and don’t forget, our part in this mess - we can feel in the midst of our mourning and sadness a joy starting to sing inside us. There’s going to be sweet wine yet.
Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan