Vineyard Good & Evil
A few years ago I was doing nothing in particular, wasting some time online, when a message popped up. It was from my friend Chris. She is one of my ‘wine industry friends’ from when I lived in Washington. We are both solo women of about the same age. We like a whole bunch of the same sports, and the same fantasy and science fiction, and all sorts of other hobbies in common. But in religiosity and several political topics, we are further apart. What she said was – I don’t know who else to talk to. Following all these mass shootings and unabashed public racism – What the hell is going on? Can we chat about good and evil? Three years since that message popped up, and there might have been no week since that she couldn’t have asked the same thing. The technology that keeps us in touch Is the same that exposes the wretchedness and is the same that connects the bad actors, lost souls looking for someone to fight. Do we just unplug forever, cover our ears and eyes? Or does God ask for another response?
In the religious smorgasbord of the ancient Mediterranean the most common story of how this all began starts with the world being wildly chaotic from the start; while not always evil from the start, certainly not good from the start. One group described the creation not only as trash, but trash that had been eaten by a wild animal and spit back up. Eww. While my friend Chris wouldn’t go that far, and while she is an upstanding and generous person, like those systems, she thinks that at its root the world isn’t good. The Jewish story was different. It stood out in declaring we began in a garden, a place of life and laughter and growth and peace. In the beginning, God made it very good. Our lesson from Isaiah springs from this understanding of the universe. This is all beloved, It demands endless attention and is vulnerable day in and day out. Chris’ question seems to assume a hidden ground of a belovedness, however, she focuses more on the terrible that is so close and so fierce all the time. She sees and hears and feels the destruction and decay of the garden – and her logic says it must be mostly bad, with a few sprouts of good here and there.
Our first lesson is an exploration of our preciousness and brokenness, a vision of the same hope we are fed by and the rot that floods our newsfeed today. The prophetic book of Isaiah is broadly believed to be the product of a house or tradition of prophets from at least three ancient eras: before, during, and after the Babylonian exile, which was around 600 years before the life of Jesus. Today in chapter 5 we are hearing from Isaiah of Jerusalem, before the Exile – but with the storm on the horizon. This person, according to the tradition, was a courtly, well-to-do, person of privilege, A prince like fella who was compelled by God to proclaim the very real and very hard-to-hear truths Into the heart of power, in a time of turning from God, reveling in injustice and fermenting fracture if it kept the powerful in power.
Grapes were first cultivated not far from ancient Israel, It is a vital lifegiving resource, one of the first things attacked by invaders. The idea of creation as a perfect lifegiving vineyard Is common in the Hebrew Scriptures, and one of the frequent times that vineyards are mentioned in the Bible is in instructions for fallow years. If you are talking about annual crops, giving the soil a sabbath is a life-sustaining wisdom. What is good for the earth is good for the bodies made of earth, fallow years echo the righteousness of people not being enslaved, formally or informally.
Yet, grapes are a perennial berry crop, how do they get a year off? How would you do that?Cut down the pollinator haven sycamores and flowers nearby? If you do that you cannot bring fruit back the next year. Do you go out to the vineyard and shout – ok – this year – you will not produce fruit?!? So if that’s not the point – what is? It isn’t about grapes, it is about us – humanity, creation, and God. It is our need for peace and sabbath. That we cannot continue to produce and grind day after day without rest and wellness and peace. Interestingly those references to vineyards and fallow years – are always in the context of grain. In the ancient world fermented beverages cleaned the water for safer drinking. And just as now, everyone needs daily bread – and God provides enough for all. This lesson is about the loss of the base of the hierarchy of needs. A real loss when crops and vineyards are burned, a real loss when lives are abused and wasted.
This lesson is obviously a scolding for geo-political injustice. It is also advocating for the infrastructure that a just and peaceful society requires. This message is for the powerful and the choices they make. This message is for the commoner and it is about basic needs like can openers and pencils and backpacks.
The truth of Isaiah still sings out forcing us to pay attention to good and evil, things done and left undone, willful ignorances and looking the other way. We are precious we need to act knowing the ground and roots and branches and fruit are for good.
So do you think my friend Chris is right? What would you say in response – and does it echo Jesus’ words and actions? The evidence for the terrible is not hard to find. Just listen to the news. Since she first sent me that note I have thought more and more about the pervasive reality of evil and its manipulation of humanity. The prophet speaks to just these exact things, naming the destruction that embracing ignorance ferments. Isaiah names the terror of environmental neglect and greedy extinction, the prophet sees the path the devastation that is the direct descendant of our choices. The prophet sheds his privilege and speaks truth to power. And he calls us to lean into trusting that God loves loves loves this good amazing beautiful vineyard. The wildness that is lamented is the misuse of power – the wildness is an image of God’s own creative freedom, the grief is how we use it for our own demise.
In Jesus God has embodied this complex image of a beloved untame vineyard becoming freedom for all in a life we can follow. He comes to our devastations and holds up a mirror so bitterly in his crucifixion. Yet in the very next moment a moment of surprise and love that only God can offer – he is changing us into his very lifegiving self. The body and blood of Christ is one of humility, transformation, and refreshment. This is our hope.
So what do you see and feel in the vineyard? Can you bring your thoughts and feelings about the state of the vineyard To a long loving look at the real, to a place of prayer and intention this week? And will you listen for where God is inviting you to become humility, or transformation, or rest? God’s beloved vineyard is divided and degraded with violence at every layer, yet we will not let that trample our witness to Jesus’ loving way. I don’t believe that it has to be such bad news every day. Evil and brokenness is strong – but it isn’t the start and I trust that it will not be the end. Jesus invites us beyond the now and into God’s just vineyard with his whole life, death, and resurrection. And here at table time after time, we recommit in a small feast of the basics – and it is very good.