Sunday, August 14, 2022

Pentecost 12  Sermon presented at St. Edward’s, Beauharnois

                         Luke 12: 49-56

Isaiah 5:1-7

The Song of the Vineyard

I will sing for the one I love
    a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard
    on a fertile hillside.

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.

“Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah,
    judge between me and my vineyard.

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?

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.

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.”

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.

“What more could have been done”     Gordon McPhee

In the skillful hands of God’s prophetic workmanship Isaiah appears to be a fair poet. This prophetic song is the first instance in which Isaiah uses the first person, ‘I’ and ‘my’; “I will sing for the one I love”, “My loved one”, phrases that establish for his hearers his relationship to God. We learn he is a messenger from God, “my loved one … the one I love”. Like Moses, he sets his relationship with God as one who is on the Lord’s side. He is the beloved of God, his representative.

Isaiah begins this prophetic poem telling his hearers that he is going to tell a story, about a vineyard. This sets their minds and hearts to enjoy a familiar entertainment, they snuggle into their metaphorical lazy boy to hear what the bard has to say; they are disarmed. Now the vineyard is a familiar allegory both in the culture of the day and today, for us, because Jesus himself used it in a number of parables. The vineyard workers and the generous employer in Matthew 20, the vineyard loaned out to unscrupulous workers in Matthew 21 and Mark 12 and His reference to Himself as the true vine in John’s gospel. Psalm 80 is so similar that it would be amiss to not consider that Isaiah had it in mind when this present prophecy overcame him. And in the Song of Solomon the vineyard is mingled with the vision of a bridegroom and his bride; a correlation used both in the Old Testament and New to refer to the relationship between God and His people; Jesus and His church. This prophecy is about _ relationship.

Isaiah continues the story telling us of all that the owner did to prepare the vineyard. Nothing was spared. Even a watchtower, a great extravagance, was built to secure the vineyard. The list of preparations, a wall, a watchtower, a wine press, is so similar to that given in the parable recorded in Matthew 21 and Mark 12 it is sure that this prophecy from Isaiah was in the forefront of the New Testament author’s intentions. At the very least, these were the well-known and well agreed upon preparations necessary for a fine vineyard. But somehow it was not enough; the vines yielded only bad fruit.

Up until this last stanza, the prophetic poem would have left its hearers with a whimsical feeling of love and beauty; of an idyllic relationship between themselves and God, who has prepared and tended his vineyard, his people, Israel and Judah, so carefully. This sudden unexpected and harsh judgement “it yielded only bad fruit” would leave them wondering on the one hand who was being spoken of here and on the other, what the plot twist will be that restores the story to a happy ending. But there is no twist.

Much the same way that the prophet Nathan, using the allegorical story of the poor man with only one beloved lamb that was taken and killed to serve a guest by the rich, selfish, and uncaring neighbour , goaded David into pronouncing his own condemnation after having Uriah the Hittite killed to hide his adultery with Bathsheba, Isaiah asks the Israelite audience to divine their own judgement against the vineyard that yielded only bad fruit. “Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it?” The way this is worded draws the hearer into formulating their own righteous and just judgement of the wayward vineyard.

However, while this is being contemplated, Isaiah makes plain and clear what God’s judgement of the vineyard will be, leaving them to judge if it is too little or too much. “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.” God will remove his divine protection that has allowed the vineyard to prosper, if it would. “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.” God will remove his divine providence in which the vineyard was intended to flourish. These are the two judgements. God will remove His divine protection and His divine providence from His vineyard, and it will become a wasteland. But see, God is not making it a wasteland. It already is a wasteland without His divine intervention and will simply return to what it was.

Returning to speaking in the first person, in other words bringing his hearers back to the present reality, Isaiah concludes calling again, by name, upon the nation of Israel and the people of Judah, “The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines he delighted in” upon those who were asked to render judgement between God and His vineyard, to self-identify as that vineyard and those vines that yielded only bad fruit. We might think them thick headed that they need so specific a reference, and yet somehow that seems ingenuous. Are we all not likely to look to others for the sins of our own recalcitrant souls? When accused of unfaithfulness is not our first thought the exclamation “not I, you must mean someone else!” Yet, the prophecy for Israel and Judah is plain. As Nathan proclaimed to David “You are the man!” so Isaiah makes clear the mirror into which his listeners have been gazing.

And in case there may still be some doubt, Isaiah iterates in no uncertain terms the full nature of their unfaithfulness, the quality of the bad fruit. “He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.” the good fruit the master looks for is justice and righteousness but in their stead he finds only bloodshed and distress. Isaiah put to good use a play on words that we lose in the English. In the Hebrew, “justice” is the word mishpat and “bloodshed” is the word mispah, while “righteousness” is tsedeqah and “cries of distress” is tseaqah”. The 19th century Scottish publisher Robert Young insightfully noted “The assonance would seem to point to the fact that the worthless grapes bore at least an outward resemblance to the good ones. In appearance at least the nation seemed to be the people of God. … May we who belong to the church ever examine our hearts that there be no such hypocrisy within us, but rather may our lives bring forth the fruits of that righteousness which comes from God alone!” And I suppose I could stop there and go home justified that I had led us to conviction and repentance but that is not what Isaiah had accomplished here, although he adds nothing further to his story in song.

No, we need to return to Isaiah’s first stanza and the idea of relationship. In these last words righteousness is contrasted with distress and justice with bloodshed, and so righteousness is paired with justice, and likewise distress with bloodshed. righteousness and justice are vaguely and variously defined in our modern world but if you want to understand what Isaiah meant you need only address the rest of chapter 5. Justice is our right relationship with society and our fellow persons, and it is the natural extension, the evidence and outpouring, of our right relationship to God, righteousness. Without that right relationship to God all our fruit stinks, which is the literal translation of the term “bad fruit”. God did not abandon his people, his beloved vineyard, they abandoned Him. What more could He have done? Author David McKenna replies, “God was justified in his decision to leave them to their own devices and let them suffer the consequences of their sin as the only way to redeem them.” Redemption being exactly the point. Nowhere does the vineyard, God’s people, fall from being His vineyard, the “vines he delighted in”. Though it become a wasteland again, it is still fit for redemption, even if it kills God to accomplish it; which it did.

We are reminded of Jesus own words recorded in John 15 that he is become the vine and we are the branches. Think of this for a moment. God has, as we read in Psalm 80, “transplanted a vine from Egypt … drove out the nations and planted it … cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land.” But when the vines only produced stinking fruit Psalm 80 continues “you [have] broken down its walls so that all who pass by pick its grapes, boars from the forest ravage it, and insects from the fields feed on it.” What is God’s solution to this condemnation? His salvation and redemption is none other than to plant himself in that vineyard in the person of his only Son Jesus Christ. Jesus has become the vine in the vineyard, and we are but the branches; grafted on. God has shown us that even if everything is prepared for us and given to us to serve Him and be in right relationship with Him such that we should bear the good fruits of justice and righteousness. Even under the auspices of His full providence and provision we as the vines are capable of bearing nothing more than stinking fruit. Only when we are grafted into the vine of our Lord Jesus Christ will we produce fruit worthy of our Master. As Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

Unless you live in the Napa Valley you won’t ken to the nuance of an allegory about vineyards, but you can certainly grasp the clear understanding of Isaiah’s prophecy. Look to yourselves, your relationships with family and friends. Look to your church, your relationships with brothers and sisters. Look to your community, your relationships with neighbours and authorities. Pray God does not have to hold up the mirror of prophecy as he did for his people through Isaiah. Do you see justice and righteousness? Do you see love for your neighbour that satisfies all the law and the prophets? If not, then look to your relationship to Jesus Christ. Are you in the vine? Do you go to the scriptures daily seeking wisdom and truth? Do you always lift praise and thanksgiving to God in prayer confessing your sins and interceding for the world? Are you being pruned by the loving gardener so that you may bear more fruit or does your fruit stink, and you will be cut off and thrown into the fire.

Let me finish with the words of Psalm 80. “Let your hand rest on the man at your right hand, the Son of Man you have raised up for yourself. Then we will not turn away from you; revive us, and we will call on your name. Restore us, Lord God Almighty; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.”

Today my loved one has a vineyard on a fertile hillside, and He is the vine and we are the branches that live in Him.

Blessed be the Lord who redeems His people.

Amen