This Sunday,
our attention focuses on the Ancient Prophet Isaiah. Isaiah lived in the 8th
century BC and prophesized to the people of Israel. This portion of the book of the prophet was
written before the Babylonian exile, in a time when the prophet was trying to
call the people to change their ways and become faithful followers of God. Isaiah’s
language and prophesies used a lot of metaphorical illustrations. Hear the word
of God as it is found in Isaiah, chapter 5, verses 1 through 7:
Scripture Reading Isaiah
5:1-7
I will sing
for the one I love a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside.
He dug it up
and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.
“Now you
dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my
vineyard.
What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad?
Now I will
tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge,
and it will be destroyed;
I will break down its wall, and it will be trample
I will make it
a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and
thorns will grow there.
I will command the clouds not to rain on it.”
The
vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the nation of Israel,
and the people of Judah are the vines he delighted in.
And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for
righteousness, but heard cries of distress.
Here ends this reading of the word of God
for the People of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Prayer for Understanding
Lord, open our hearts and minds by the power of your Holy Spirit, that as the scriptures are read and your Word is proclaimed, we may hear with joy what you say to us today. Amen.
I am not much of a gardener. In the
little flower boxes next to my back door, I am growing many more weeds than
flowers. In the spring when the air warms up and everything smells and looks
lovely, I usually start out with good intentions….I buy plants, I put them in
the soil, I water them, I tend to them….but, then a few days or weeks later, I
get busy…or I go out of town…and I forget to water the plants…and I end up with
flower pots full of scraggly weeds.
Today’s scripture is about God
planting a vineyard, a figurative vineyard….God’s vineyard was planted in
fertile soil and was planted with strong grape vines. God tended it to and did
everything right. God remembered to water and pull the weeds, unlike me. Yet,
the vineyard only yielded bad fruit…only sour grapes. And, God wasn’t happy.
This word came down to the people of
Israel through the Prophet Isaiah. God
was disappointed because the people of Israel, the Jewish people, were not
faithful to God. They stopped worshipping God.
They stopped following God’s commandments. And, they didn’t live
according to God’s desires for them – instead of acting with justice to the
people and their neighbors, there was bloodshed. Instead of acting with righteousness
towards people who were suffering, the people were crying out in distress.
Our scriptures are full of a
give-and-take between God and God’s followers. God gives abundantly, and the
people respond welcomingly. But, then, gradually….the people stop noticing how
gracious God has been. And, they have trouble appreciating all that God has
done. And, things fall apart for the people. Finally, God rescues them and
gives abundantly. And, the cycle begins again.
Even though human beings have lived
on this planet for thousands of years, we haven’t evolved to be people who
always get things right. We make mistakes. And, we often make the same mistakes
over and over again, because we have trouble learning from our mistakes and
changing our ways.
Throughout time immortal, God has
responded to our mistakes with love. God keeps giving us second chances, and
third changes…and twenty-third chances. The story of our faith is the story of
a loving God and God’s wayward, flawed people. We get things wrong, and God
loves us anyway. We get things wrong, and God gently encourages us to do better.
God keeps believing we will yield
better fruit, more delicious grapes.
And, we are working to become
better.
One of the reasons we participate in
church is because we are working to become better people. We understand that we
are not perfect, that we have room for improvement. We want to do better and be
better. We are constantly in the process of recognizing we are flawed,
regretting those flaws, and trying to do better. Part of our work is internal –
we try to learn from our mistakes and make positive changes in our life. And,
part of our work is external – we are here to Worship God, appreciate God, and
to thank God for loving us and forgiving us.
Christians are expected to be life-
long learners. We bring our littlest children here to learn about God and God’s
gracious, forgiving love. And, as our bodies grow, we are also expected to grow
in our faith. We bring our children to Sunday school. This fall, we will have a
Confirmation class for our young adults, the first in many years. We have Bible
Studies and discussion groups for our adults, so that we can gather to learn
about God and how our faith is applied to our lives. We read the Bible. We pray.
God graciously love’s God’s people,
and God calls on us to do better. This week, we hear message from Isaiah about God’s
work to tend to God’s people. Despite our mistakes, and the weeds that grow up
in our gardens, God loves us, forgives us, and encourages us to do better.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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