“Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. 2 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. 3 And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. 4 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? 5 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. 6 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. 7 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!” – Isaiah 5:1-7
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“By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned. 30 By faith the walls of Jericho fell after they had been encircled for seven days. 31 By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace.
“32 And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets– 33 who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 35 Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. 36 Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented– 38 of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.
“39 Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, 40 since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.
“Hebrews 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” – Hebrews 11:29 – 12:2
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Today I’d like to spend most of our time with the Isaiah passage because it builds on what we heard in Hosea a few weeks ago.
But I can’t let Hebrews 11 go by without saying a few words about it. Hebrews 11 is one of my favorite passages in the Bible. It starts off in verse one saying, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” It goes on to talk about men and women of faith down through the ages – Noah and Abraham and Sarah and Joseph and Moses – the list goes on. Some of these people were great leaders but others would never have been known if their names weren’t in the Bible. And it says “by faith” they did what they did.
These were people just like you and me. They weren’t saints in stained glass windows. They were human, they made mistakes, they weren’t always sure what God was up to. But they kept on keeping on because they knew God and they trusted God.
Then at the very end of the reading, at the beginning of chapter 12, the writer of Hebrews says:
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1-2)
When I read this, in my mind I see a huge arena – like an Olympic stadium – packed full with all the saints of God cheering us on as we take our places and run the race of faith. Those saints up there in the stands include our parents and our grandparents and our loved ones and all the people of faith who have entered God’s kingdom before us, from Genesis onward, and they are cheering for us.
It’s a vision to keep in mind, especially in tough times like these. When life gets rough and we find ourselves feeling discouraged, it helps to remember who is cheering us on.
It’s especially important to keep this in mind when we tackle passages like the one from Isaiah. These verses can be hard to spend time with because they’re dark; there is so little hope in them. Life in Israel during the years of Isaiah was not all that different from life in our world today.
In our reading from Isaiah chapter five, God sings a love song… but not the kind of love song we expect. It’s a love song of the broken-hearted. A somebody-done-somebody-wrong song.
God sings about his people. God says his nation is like a vineyard, a garden. God says he chose the best vines, and chose a fertile place to plant them, and cleared the land with care, and built a wall and a watch-tower for protection, and built a wine vat to make wine out of the grapes. But after all this work the grapevines produced wild grapes – and wild grapes are bitter, sour, not worth eating let alone making wine out of.
And God asks one question: “what more could I have done for my people?” Of course the answer is ‘nothing’.
In Isaiah God says: I will remove the protection from my vineyard, and tear down its wall, and stop weeding it and caring for it, and it will become an overgrown wasteland full of briars and thorns.
When Isaiah gave this prophecy, he was speaking in the Southern Kingdom of Israel. The Northern Kingdom, which we heard about in Hosea a few weeks ago, had recently fallen. The Southern Kingdom was now alone – just two tribes (Judah and Benjamin) remaining. Hearing these words must have made them stop and think: ‘Look what happened in the North. We only have two tribes left, and we’re not strong enough to stand on our own.’As it turned out, God protected the Southern Kingdom for many years before it finally fell; and when it did fall, God used non-believers to make sure a remnant of the people stayed in Jerusalem.
But back to Isaiah’s prophecy: Why is God saying these things? What was going wrong in the Southern Kingdom that troubled God so deeply? The first four chapters of Isaiah help answer these questions. God says in Isaiah chapter one:
- Verse 23 – “Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves… they love bribes, they run after gifts, and they do not defend the orphan, and the widow’s cause does not come before them.”
- Verse 27 – “Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and those in her who repent, by righteousness.”
- Verse 28 – “But rebels and sinners shall be destroyed together, and those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed.”
The people who were in running the nation were practicing extortion and bribery; and they refused to take care of those who were in need, particularly the orphans and the elderly.
God looks for justice – for leaders who have compassion on the powerless. And God looks for people who do right things. A nation that refuses to do these things is like a grapevine that produces bitter fruit – and isn’t that what we see in our news every day?
In Isaiah chapter two, God looks at the nation of Israel and sees a land full of diviners and soothsayers – people who claim to have ‘special’ or ‘insider’ information. God also sees a land full of silver and gold and treasure: people have ‘chariots in every garage’. God also sees a land filled with idols: people worshiping what is not God. God sees people who think they’ve gotten past the need for God. (I hear that just about every day on Facebook these days!)
In Isaiah chapter three God explains what will happen in the near future if the people do not change course and return to God:
- Verse 4 – “I will make boys their princes, and babes shall rule over them.” This could be taken either literally or figuratively. If it’s figurative, then God is talking about immature adults in leadership. If it’s literal – in a kingdom, if a king and queen pass away leaving a child on the throne, the kingdom is not secure. Without an adult on the throne, a kingdom is easy prey for conspiracies and invaders.
- Verse 5 – “The people will be oppressed, everyone by another, and everyone by a neighbor; the youth will be insolent to the elder, and the shameful to the honorable.”
- Verse 14 – “the Lord enters into judgement with the elders and princes of his people: [God says to them] It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor?” says the Lord God of hosts.
God goes on in chapter three to describe how people of privilege decorate themselves proudly with fine clothes and jewels while the poor go hungry. This kind of thing is so common in our society today I think we sometimes become numb to it. To give just one example: a poor person in America is more than twice as likely to come down with diabetes during their lifetime than a rich American. And that’s not because rich people don’t eat junk food, but because a poor person doesn’t have access to (or can’t afford) fresh, healthy, unprocessed, sugar-free food. Poor people too often live in “food deserts” where there are no supermarkets at all. (I was very pleased to see the local farmers’ markets giving tokens to people with SNAP cards, to help families afford the best of foods.)
Then we come to Isaiah chapter 5, today’s reading, where we hear God’s love song for his vineyard, and God’s lament. After the song, in verses 8 and 9, God says:
“…you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no-one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land! The Lord of hosts has sworn in my hearing: Surely many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant…”
But God does not leave us here, thank God. Isaiah continues to warn the Southern Kingdom that there’s trouble ahead. For now, though, I’d like to take us to a few other places in Scripture where God and Jesus talk about vines and vineyards. Vineyards are mentioned around 60 times in Scripture! Here are just a handful of the verses:
The first time a vineyard appears in the Bible is in Exodus and Leviticus, where God teaches the people about taking good care of the land. God says: plant vineyards for six years and in the seventh year, let the land rest. It’s like a sabbath for the soil, and it’s good farming practice. It allows the nutrients in the soil to build back up again. God also says: anything that grows by itself in the seventh year is to be left “for the poor and the alien”. In the book of Deuteronomy God says: when you harvest your grapes, don’t go over the vines a second time: leave the rest for “the alien, the orphan, and the widow.” When we see the word ‘alien’ in the Bible God is talking about foreigners: people from other countries.
Back in Old Testament times, foreigners and orphans and widows were particularly vulnerable because it was hard for them to make a living. We remember the story of Ruth, who did not allow her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi, to go home alone. Ruth – who was a foreigner and a widow – went home with Naomi, and took care of her, and worked hard to put food on their table. Imagine what might have happened to Naomi if Ruth had not done that. Even today widows and orphans and foreigners are often exploited, and targeted by scammers and violent people. We as the people of God need to help defend and provide for people who find themselves in these situations.
Moving on to the New Testament, Jesus frequently talks about vineyards. In one passage he says: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.” (John 15:1-4) So we need to stay connected to Jesus in order to grow and thrive.
The last vineyard story I want to share today is the parable Jesus tells about a landowner and his vineyard. The beginning of the story sounds a lot like God’s love song in Isaiah, but Jesus gives it an unexpected twist. He says:
“There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’” […] When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. (Matt 21:33-38, 45)
In this parable, the vineyard still represents Israel, and Israel is still God’s people, and the owner of the vineyard is still God. But this time we see tenants: people who God has appointed to take care of the vineyard and see to it that the vines are healthy and produce fruit. The tenants are paid by the owner and can expect to have a share in the harvest. God then sends his slaves – the prophets – to collect some of the produce… but the prophets come back empty-handed. In fact the prophets often came back beaten and tortured.
Finally the land-owner sends his son – Jesus – the heir, the King of Kings. And the tenants – the chief priests, the Pharisees, the Sadducees – know Jesus is the Messiah! They know Jesus fulfills the ancient prophecies. But they won’t admit it, because if they do, they’re out of a job. If the Messiah has come then people don’t need priests any more. So they say to themselves “let’s kill him, and the vineyard will be ours”. And that’s what they do. Verse 45 says “they realized he was speaking about them” and they killed Jesus anyway.
There’s just one catch to their plan: Jesus came back! There is no killing the Son. There is no claiming the vineyard for anyone but God. God wins in the end – and that means so do we. We grapevines, we who want to be fruitful for God, we who look forward to the great wine-tasting in God’s kingdom, we are safe in Jesus’ hands.
Which brings us back to Hebrews. By faith the saints of old did God’s will in spite of everything that was going on in the world around them. By faith the prophets spoke the truth. By faith we follow in their footsteps. By faith we bear fruit as we live in Jesus.
We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, cheering us on. So be encouraged: we are not alone. And the race has already been won. AMEN.
Preached at the South Hills Partnership of United Methodist Churches, August 2022
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