Lawsuits are very much in the news nowadays, especially in our nation’s capital. People are suing each other for every reason you can imagine, even over political and religious differences. You can’t keep track of who’s accusing whom of what without a score card, and even that has to be updated almost daily. But even with all the media hype, we still expect a reasonable amount of decorum to prevail in the courtroom itself. After all, the judge can control it just by clearing the room. We certainly do not expect the proceedings to begin with a song.
And yet that is how Isaiah begins God’s suit against Israel. He opens the scene with a love song - what some commentators think could have begun life as a wedding song for the best man, the friend of the bridegroom, to sing at the wedding itself. The vineyard is a metaphor for the bride, and the bride is of course a metaphor for Israel. And the song opens with the tender, careful, devoted courtship of the bride - telling of the gifts the bridegroom bestowed upon her, how he provided for her, and protected her.
But then, unexpectedly, the song turns into an accusation. And suddenly we are in a courtroom with the bride - the vineyard - on trial.
The jurors, many of them, are hill farmers, too. They live in Jerusalem, or nearby. They know what it takes to produce a good yield of grapes. I can see them, can’t you, listening intently to the plaintiff‘s case. They are being asked to say if there is anything at all the owner has left undone, if in any way the owner is at fault in his care of the vineyard, if there is any reason to hope that if the owner changes his methods or his fertilizer or anything else that the vines will begin to bear good fruit. He challenges them to find anything wrong with his care of the land.
But silence is the only answer. There is nothing the owner has left undone. There is nothing more he can do. There is no point in continuing.
Well, as I said, the vineyard is a metaphor for Israel. And the owner of the vineyard is, of course, YHWH God. And this is only one of dozens of courtroom scenes between YHWH and Israel, as he struggles to get them to see how, time after time, they’ve broken the covenant made with them, first at Sinai, and again a generation later when they entered the Promised Land, and then again practically every other generation since. God gave them everything they could have asked for.
He gave them laws to live by. Moses told the people that the surrounding nations would marvel at the wisdom of the law, saying “What great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law I am setting before you today?” [Dt 4:8]
God gave them land to live on: “houses filled with all sorts of goods that they did not fill, hewn cisterns that they did not hew, vineyards and olive groves that they did not plan.” [Dt 6: 11] He promised them rain and sun and harvests in season - if they would only keep their side of the bargain. They didn’t have to earn the land, just take care of it. As Moses reminded them later, “It is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God gave you the land.” [Dt 9:6]
God gave them leaders to follow. Throughout the book of Judges, whenever the people were overrun by one or another of the surrounding nations, they would weep and wail and repent and promise to behave IF ONLY God would save them. AGAIN. From Deborah to Gideon to Samson, God kept sending them people to pull them out of the hot water they themselves had jumped into. He sent them prophets like Samuel. And at last God gave in to their pleadings and gave them a king.
And all God asked for in return was for them to love him and obey his commandments.
But did they?
Of course not.
When Isaiah began his prophetic ministry most of the northern kingdom had already been gobbled up by Assyria. So Judah had the example right in front of their eyes of what happened to a people when God’s favor was withdrawn. And they still had Assyria on their borders to remind them of the danger, and they had Isaiah to tell them what it all meant. But did they get it? Did they connect with the possibility that what happened to the northern kingdom might happen to the southern kingdom if they didn't repent? Of course not.
Although Isaiah tells us the people continued to appear at the temple in Jerusalem to make the official sacrifices, and no doubt to display their Sabbath finery, they also worshiped Ba’al and Ashteroth on their rooftops and in the sacred groves. Their temple attendance wasn’t true worship, not the kind God had asked for; it was just a form of liability insurance - to make sure that whatever they did, they wouldn’t have to cough up for the damages. And besides, If Ba’al and Ashteroth only cared about the offerings, why should the Holy One if Israel be any different?
But as bad as that was, and as much as God hated their apostasy, what really put the icing on the cake was the way they ran the country. The first chapter of Isaiah lays out as clearly as can be just what they’ve been up to. “Your rulers are rebels,” he says, “companions of thieves; everyone loves a bribe, and chases after rewards. They do not defend the orphan, nor does the widow’s plea come before them.”
And so because of that, when they come to worship, God will not listen. “When you spread your hands out in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you, Yes, even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood.” Abuse of power, political corruption, influence-peddling, jury tampering, you name it, they did it.
And they had no excuse.
The king and nobles of Judah were not ignorant of what God required, they were not helpless actors in a corrupt system, they were not taking desperate measures in the face of a national emergency. They were simply, willfully, pursuing their own power and gain at the expense of God’s justice and the lives and well-being of the people who looked to them for leadership and protection.
The Israelites had been given absolutely everything they needed to produce a just and decent society, one that would have been a showcase for God’s righteousness, and they had blown it. No - “blown it” is too mild. They had thrown it away and trampled it in the mud.
The fruit God looked to receive from the covenant people was “justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.”
The parallels between the situation in Judah - what remained of God’s covenant people Israel - and our own day are many and obvious.
First of all, we have been given the law. Not only have we been given God’s moral law as expressed in his word, but our own political documents are masterpieces. They have, in fact, served as models for transforming nations around the world for the last 200 years, echoing Moses’ remarks to the Israelites 400 years ago about the reputation they would get because of the wisdom of their laws.
Secondly, we have been given the land. And we didn’t exactly earn it, we were given it. Yeah, we treated the native Americans abominably, stealing their land and breaking treaties right and left, but more of them died because of disease and alcoholism than by anything our ancestors did deliberately. The great Mississippi chiefdoms were wiped out by disease brought by the Spaniards before the Pilgrims ever landed. We should never have been able to win against the British, the Louisiana purchase was a bargain-basement deal, we acquired Alaska for peanuts, etc., etc. So really, when you think about it, the place darn near fell into our laps. We have been provided for and protected like - like - well, goodness, like a cherished vineyard. And now we are the richest nation in the world. And what do we do with it?
Dare I say that God has also given us leaders?
We have had great ones, of course. We have also had fools and scoundrels. There’s an old cliche that people get the government they deserve... We don’t appear to deserve much, do we. I wonder how that could have happened? I think there’s a lot of truth to that saying. Our leaders certainly reflect our values and our priorities - and our wisdom, such as it is, and our character. But there’s more value in recognizing that God raises up and casts down nations and leaders alike, for his own purposes.
Like Israel, we have been given absolutely everything we need to produce a just and decent society, one that could be a showcase for God’s righteousness. Have we blown it, too?
There are parallels between Israel’s sins and our own as well as between Israel’s gifts and our own. Public displays of piety accompanied by self-indulgence, abuse of power and political corruption are commonplace. Money trumps morality everywhere you look. Worship of false gods is all around us, even within our own denomination. Although Sophia’s followers have lost ground, the gods of political correctness and sexual freedom have grown in power. But I think you can all draw your own conclusions about the likely continuation of God’s favor. We don’t have a permanent guarantee, you know; far from it. Who knows but that the current rumblings in the world financial system aren’t harbingers of a general meltdown? We really don’t know, do we? What are we doing - what are you doing - to prepare yourself for the possibility that God will pull the rug out from under our nice, cushy situation?
And how did we get into this situation, anyway?
Hasn’t God given us everything we need? Hasn’t God taken care of us, protected us, provided for us - just as he did ancient Israel? Hasn’t God given even more to us than he did ancient Israel, in Jesus Christ, who died so that you and I might be reconciled to God and given new hearts so that we would be able finally to respond in love to God’s incredible generosity? What have we done?
Now you dwellers in Minnesota, you people of America, judge between God and the vineyard. What more could have been done for this people than God has done for us? When God looks for good grapes, why does it yield so much bad?
I think part of the answer lies in returning to the metaphor of the wedding, the bridegroom and the faithless bride. Because ultimately this is a love relationship, between ourselves and God, not a political or legal or business relationship. And this is a divorce court, not a criminal court, and the judge is biased in favor of repairing the relationship rather than severing it.
So let us take another look at God, and think of the rejected lover, the bride left at the altar, the abandoned wife, the betrayed husband. Unrequited love is something that everyone over the age of about thirteen has probably had some experience with. Maybe for you the closest you ever came was a crush on a high school hero, or a TV star. Maybe you’ve nursed a friend through the aftermath of a disastrous affair. I hope none of you has been fool enough - or emotionally needy enough - to build a whole romantic fantasy out of a couple of conversations and a smile, as I was in my youth. But there are some of you who have been rejected, abandoned, in acutely painful ways, by the breaking of a relationship that should have worked, in the breaking apart of two lives bound together not only by promises, but by shared experiences, dreams, confidences, love. That loss, that betrayal, is one of the most painful experiences imaginable.
We can, most of us, empathize with God in this situation, can’t we?
It’s harder to get into the skin of the faithless one.
It’s less common to be on the receiving end of an obsession. I’ve some experience of what it feels like, and let me tell you it’s quite uncomfortable. Being adored may sound nice in theory, but the reality of receiving unwanted gifts, phone calls, and extravagant compliments gets to be a very heavy burden. You find yourself resenting their demands on you. You wind up avoiding the person - even if it’s someone you would otherwise like to spend time with. And in a way that’s natural - because responding to someone else’s love means giving up some of your autonomy, entrusting part of identity to their care. And it’s especially risky if they’re the jealous type.
God is a jealous God. And he loves us with an unswerving longing that rivals any human desire. And for us to turn, to open ourselves to that passion goes against all our instincts of self-preservation.
There’s a poem by W. H. Auden that has always haunted me.
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it if stars were to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer, as I think I am,
of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
though this might take me a little time.
Think about it:
How should we like it if stars were to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
God burns for us with a passion we cannot possibly return - unless we surrender ourselves to the Holy Spirit. And even if we love God with all our hearts the more loving one will still never, ever be me. Or you. We will always be the debtor. And until we let go of our egos, and acknowledge the debt, and our helplessness to repay even part of it, it is indeed more comfortable to go without that love altogether. We’ve seen it happen on a grand scale in our own culture.
First, the 18th century deists who reduced God to a distant being who does not give a damn. And now in this century a vocal and growing minority has banished God altogether, and called it progress.
It also takes place on a personal level. We reduce God to a manageable size and call our response to that shrunken deity worship. Or we go without altogether, and call ourselves enlightened. We here in this church - we are here in response to God’s love. But many of us fight against that complete surrender that he asks of us. Some of us struggle actively, some of us are into passive resistance (that’s my specialty, dragging my heels, complaining and procrastinating but not actively in open revolt) and others of us haven’t opened the doors of our hearts wide enough even to be aware of how overwhelming, all-consuming God’s love actually is. Because of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, even our pale, timid affections are enough to begin with. But it’s only a short slide from shallow affection to actual indifference. And it’s less than a step from indifference to actual infidelity.
Let us each take a moment to ask God to show us the truth about our hearts. Give God permission to make the necessary changes, if you find yourself faltering, or lukewarm. Ask God for the power to return his love with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Ask God to enable you to open to the Holy Spirit so that he can begin to grow in us a love that does not falter, that can stand even amid the chaos of a crumbling society. There is nothing God would rather do for you than that.
Let God’s love song to us not turn into the opening argument in a divorce court.
