Few images are more evocative of life and fruitfulness, mystery and joy than vineyards. All over the bible we can find vineyards, literal and figurative. Today, let’s go to the vineyard depicted in Sunday’s reading from Isaiah – a place of cultivation and care, which yielded a surprising crop:
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 watch-tower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.
In the gospel passage set for this week, we find Jesus in “scorched earth” mode, speaking of the fire he has come to bring upon the earth, wishing it were already kindled. There is historical context for his divine and righteous rage in this prophetic poetry of Isaiah’s, which tells in a few short lines the whole history of God and God’s people. It speaks of this world as a vineyard carefully cultivated by God in a fertile place, cleared and planted, with structures for protection and wine-processing.
So might we see God's creation – a beautiful world prepared for us, a place of fertility, with everything provided so that we might thrive and produce good fruit. It even has a watch-tower – an image of God’s vigilance protecting God’s beloved from evil. And this creator is also named as beloved. It’s all set up to enable humankind to produce vats of wonderful, life-giving, joy-inducing wine.
But – there’s always a 'but' in a good story – the choice vines (chosen people?) did not yield cultivated grapes. What grew were not smooth, sweet wine grapes, but wild grapes. Wild grapes might have some virtues, but they’re not reliable and often bitter. What a great metaphor for what theologians call original sin – a hard-wired proclivity toward self-gratification that results in thoughts and actions that do not honor God, neighbor or even our truest selves. God expects us to be sweet grapes, and often we can be wild, destructive.
This is the wrong Jesus came to right, the condition he came to heal, the conversion he came to empower. Because of Jesus, we are not stuck in “wild grape” mode; we can become fruit-bearing, life-bringing grapes. As we actively participate in God’s mission to reclaim, restore and renew all of creation to wholeness in Christ, we attach ourselves to vines that carry that mission into every place and person in pain and need. Where is that vine leading you today?
Our story of salvation is the story of God’s restoration of that vineyard. God invites us to be a part of bringing that work to completion, until the Creator’s intention is reflected in our world. That is worth raising a glass to.
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