"Change?????" A sermon based on Isaiah 5:1-7 preached at York Pines United Church August 18, 2019

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 God 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!

*****************************************************************************
A New York City businessman moved to the country and bought a piece of land. He went to the local feed and livestock store and talked to the proprietor about how he was going to take up chicken farming. He then asked to buy 100 chicks. "That’s a lot of chicks," commented the proprietor. "I mean business," the man replied. A week later the new chicken farmer was back again. "I need another 100 chicks," he said. "Boy, you are serious about this chicken farming," the man told him. "Yeah," the man replied. "If I can iron out a few problems." "Problems?" asked the proprietor. "Yeah," replied the man, "I think I planted that last batch too close together."

My husband, not a born gardener, has a soft spot for any growing thing. He’d rather let it grow all over the place, than prune back. Hence the cedar trees outside the house in Japan got so huge they threatened the neighbour’s house – so he then had to go up a ladder and do some really severe cutting. He laments that the pear tree just doesn’t produce pears – well of course not – the branches are allowed to grow wherever. And way down the end of our yard here in Ontario – I wondered why the bamboo was starting to hang over – when I really looked I discovered that the grape vines from the neighbour’s yard had come across the fence and begun to grow all over the back end of our yard – so wildly grown, but no grapes produced. And very choked and bent bamboo.

It’s clear in the text today that Isaiah isn’t really talking specifically about a vineyard, or about growing and farming – but instead tells us God is using an allegory to make a point. God through Isaiah  is talking about people and society and the way they choose to live. Remember last week, God’s anger over the pretense and form of worship scrunched into one hour each week, instead of the substance which highlighted the importance of justice and righteousness all the time?

Both of these crucial words appear again in today’s text. It begins as a love-song – God sings about “my beloved”. Yet as we read on we see that God is the owner of the vineyard – the vineyard is God's people. Israel and Judah. The text takes on a judgmental tone – a coming destruction, poignantly expressed as what God "hoped for" – and instead gets the failure of the people to enact and embody justice and righteousness.

In their own vineyard they didn’t expend the effort – trimming and pruning the vines where needed, working the earth, they didn’t keep the weeds out of the vineyard. Wild vines will mix with the grapes of the vineyard so they will not be as rich and full bodied as the pure vine. In Isaiah’s story the people were content with taking what they could get with little effort. They were content with their life; they had what they needed. They were content with their religious rites and rituals with no actual concern for God. They were so content that they made God into what they were, instead of doing the work to become what God hoped they would be.

We have to assume that the people are free to respond faithfully, or not. Such freedom is absolutely necessary for true love to exist. God opens the passage singing of “my beloved”. But it is precisely freedom to choose which means things can go wrong. And so a tone of judgment, - but not God being punitive – that’s not what judgment means. Rather, judgment is the consequences of the people's own choices.

The good, fruitful harvest that God "expected" or "hoped for" is named with the two critical words "justice" and "righteousness." Even the Hebrew words used paint the stark picture of what God hoped for, and what happened, are laid out. Instead of the "justice" (mishpat) that God "expected," there is "bloodshed" (mispach). Instead of "righteousness" (tsedaqah), God hears "a cry" (tse'aqah). Instead of the goodness that God expects the people to enact and embody, there is violence that leads the victims to cry out for help.

Comfort and luxury seem to be our chief requirement of life even today. Our society is very slack in effort. It is easier to go with the flow of life. It is easier to go along with our friends and sometimes even our enemies than to go against the flow and do what is the right thing.

The Hebrew word translated "cry" is particularly important and revealing. When God's people were being victimized by Pharaoh in Egypt, their response was to cry to God for help. This word also appears in 1 Samuel 8, Samuel's warning to the people about the "justice" of the soon-to-be-established monarchy. Samuel is clear that the "justice" of the kings will be nothing but oppression. The people "will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves." In short, the warning is that the monarchy itself will re-create the oppressive conditions of Pharaoh's Egypt. The last verse of the Isaiah reading notes that God’s people have chosen a system that creates victims and evokes their cries for help.

Chapter 5 of Isaiah  - going on from verse 7 - paints details of the oppressive conditions -- joining "house to house" and adding "field to field" , displacing poor farmers from their land and livelihood, resulting in both homelessness and hunger. Excess, greed, and conspicuous consumption are supported by corruption and manipulation of the legal system. The deplorable situation results from the rejection of God's "instruction" and "word". Although the poor are directly victimized, everyone eventually loses when justice and righteousness are not lived.

Violence, victimization, hunger, homelessness, greed, conspicuous consumption, corruption -- these realities sound all too familiar! Somewhere in our world, a child dies every four seconds from causes related to hunger and malnutrition.

So how do we address our overgrown and wild vineyard? The overgrown and non-productive parts need to be pruned away, the roots fertilised – so that the hoped-for fruits of the true vine are evident. There is much which we have, and from us much is required. God planted the garden, the vines, the people of Israel and Judah, us – to be fruitful in a way which serves justice, compassion, righteousness in the world, for all peoples. God’s true gifts, if recognised, can in fact change everything. God holds out the request, indeed the cry for repentance – an overused and wrongly use word so often – but a word which simply means ‘examining our lives and changing direction’. And this is the good news inherent in this love-song – love-story of  God. We can take a different path that to the productive place God hopes for – and that productive place is the realm of God, right here in the here-and-now. Jesus said “the realm of God is at hand”. At hand! Not somewhere else, but right here, if we choose it.

Sources:

1.      Vineyard of the Lord a sermon based on Isaiah 5:1-7 Guest Preacher, Rev. Roy Fowler Afton and Stone Dam UMC

2.   https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=646

J. ClintonMcCann, Evangelical Professor of Biblical Interpretation, Eden Seminary, Saint Louis MO. August 2010.