LIFE IN THE VINEYARD

A sermon by George R. Pasley

Isaiah 5:1-7; Matthew 21:33-46 

It’s a love song.

It’s a love song, pure and simple.

It’s a love song and it’s set in a vineyard, a place of warm sun, soft breezes and fragrance, birdsong and wine. What could be better than that, especially if you’re singing a love song?

Except.

Except this love song is a country western love song.

It’s a song about love gone wrong,

It’s a song about revenge.

Just listen:

My loved one is a vineyard,

Sweet, so sweet and glorious

But when I picked her grapes

They were sour

And made me grimace.

Friday night I watched a TV show about a young woman looking for love among all her ex-boyfriends. The first one she looked up was a lead singer in a rock band, and she went to hear him sing.

He sang a song about what a nasty woman she was because she had dumped him on his birthday. When she surprised him after the concert he kissed her firm and strong and then walked away.

So she knew she had to have him, so she lured him back.

She fell in love again.

He invited her and her friends to another concert.

He dedicated the first song to her.

It was a break up song, and the punch line of the lyrics was,

“Revenge is sweet.”

Love gone wrong is especially unsavory because it involves broken promises and crushed hopes.

So this love song by Isaiah was a love gone wrong song about God and Israel, and it s a love gone wrong song about God and us.

It tells all the hopes that God had when love began, and it tells how hurt and disappointed God has become.

God looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.

God looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;

God looked for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.

In chapter one, Isaiah defines justice with these words: “seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”

To say that God was looking for justice in those historical times is quite a statement. The governments of those times were not concerned about the oppressed or the poor. They were concerned about those who had power and wealth.

Israel was alone; she was to be a light to the nations. When the other nations looked to her, they were to see the character and nature of God in Israel’s concern for the poor and oppressed.

Consider her history: they were slaves in Egypt, oppressed and powerless. God heard them and rescued them and gave them a new way of life in which they were to remember who they were, and who set them free.

But it is so easy to forget and it is always hard to keep our eyes on noble objectives.

Israel forgot, and sooner or later so does every nation on earth.

On the occupied West bank, Israel is bulldozing olive trees that have grown for thousands of years. They do this to rob the Palestinian inhabitants of the land from their livelihood. Their aim is to drive them from the land, and steal it.

In the Darfur region of Sudan, the Sudanese government sponsors armed militia who destroy villages, burn homes, rape women and girls, murder the men, and drive hundreds of thousands into refugee camps

We all know our own history is filled with atrocities and tragedies and things that could have been done differently. But I tell you about these two situations today because our own nation’s financial interests are tied up with those foreign atrocities.

The Alaska Permanent Fund has money invested in companies that profit from doing business with Sudan. If you heard the debate Thursday night you heard our governor talk about those investments.

In fact, my own retirement fund has money invested the same way.

And a great many American companies are doing business with those who are bulldozing the olive trees in Palestine.

We can do better and God wants us to, in the same way those of you who are parents want your children to achieve goodness, and those of you who are in love want your lover to do things that make you proud.

But more than about the things we do- or fail to do- living in the vineyard is about a way of life.

Let’s begin to think about that way of life by considering the Ten Commandments.

Just ten rules, and from the very start people were thinking about ways of getting around them.

But just ten, four that have to do with our relationship with God, and six that have to do with the way we treat other people.

Don’t do this…listed six times.

That gives us an incredible freedom to think of inumerable positive ways that we might actually live out our love for our neighbor.

For example, do not commit adultery.

Do love your spouse, and leave them love notes where they will find them.

Do give them compliments.

One time on a trip I sat near a person who was making calls on her cell-phone. One call was to her spouse, and she left a message on his voice mail “This is my check in call to say I love you.”

Or how about this one: Do not covet.

At a family gathering I admired the tie my cousin’s husband, Jim, was wearing. He promptly took it off and gave it to me. My sister told me he does that every time someone admires his tie, and he has a great deal of fun doing it. My admiration for his tie was not an act of coveting, but his generosity was an act that will always proclaim “I love doing the anti-covet thing!”

The person living in the vineyard will think not about how to get the most, but about how to share the most. They will think about how they can do the most good with whatever it is they have.

Now, living that way is hard, especially when the world is filled with people who are not trying to live that way!

Bruce told me he planted seven rows of potatoes last spring, but next year he’s only planting two.

Why is that Bruce?

Weeds. Bruce loves his garden but he doesn’t love hoeing the weeds.

It’s the same with me.

It’s the same with every gardener.

It’s so much easier to just go to the store and buy some potatoes.

We can do that, but then we would no longer be gardeners.

We would only be consumers.

So Bruce will still plant some potatoes next year, and he might try mulching them.

Why? Because gardening is away of life.

It’s away of life that practices hope,

That develops discipline and responsibility,

And produces joy

And Bruce is not ready to give that up.

So look at this communion table.

It’s about a way of life that Jesus lived.

It wasn’t easy then and it’s still not easy.

But this communion table is something far more than a story about how to live.

It’s a love story, but specifically, it’s a love song about love gone wrong.

God loved us and we rejected it and abused it.

But this love song is different than any other one ever written.

This love song is about love gone wrong and made right once more,

Because he looked for justice, and gave his blood

Because he saw our sin, and lived God’s righteous way

And those who hear the song, and taste the sweetness of the wine,

Will produce the fruits of the kingdom,

Which are justice and righteousness. 

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.