November 22, 2015
God As a Gardener
Isaiah 5:1-7; 11:1-5
Pastor Vern Christopherson
This Week’s Big Idea: God is good gardener who tends the vineyard and promises new
growth.
Spend time listening to popular music on the radio and you’ll soon hear a love song. Keep
listening and that love song might be followed up by one involving heartbreak. Pretty much
every song of Taylor Swift seems to involve some sort of heartbreak, including “We’re never
ever ever getting back together again…like ever.” And this past week we heard that Carly
Simon’s song from 1972, “You’re so vain; you probably think this song is about you,” is at least
partially about Warren Beatty and their break-up. Simon gives voice in the song to the
heartbreak she was feeling: “You gave away the things you loved and one of them was me.”
Our reading from Isaiah is a love song…and it’s got some heartbreak too. If they had radio
stations back then, the song might have made the top-ten list. Like any love song, the story is
meant to drawn people in. The prophet Isaiah – in the 8th century BC – plays the role of a
minstrel for the people of Jerusalem. He sings about someone he refers to as his “beloved,”
which can also mean “friend.” As the song begins, we’re not exactly sure who this friend is. All
we know is that the friend has a vineyard and he cares for it deeply. The friend has cultivated
the land, planted the best stock of vines, built a protective watchtower. Along the way, though,
something has gone terribly wrong. The vineyard has yielded only wild grapes.
Our sweet love song is about to turn sour. The prophet continues to sing, but the words are
suddenly not his but the owner’s. And they’re harsh. Expectations for the harvest have not
been met. The owner is bitterly disappointed. What more could I have done? Why did my
vineyard yield only wild grapes? You can imagine the audience leaning in. The pain and
anguish is palpable. Truth be told, if the pain goes on too long, this couple might be headed for
a break-up.
The owner threatens to remove the protective hedge, allowing the vineyard to be ravaged by
the wild. He will allow briars and thorns to overtake the vines. He will stop tilling the soil and
pruning the vines. The scene is one of utter devastation. Think Boston or Paris or Nigeria or
Kenya.
What’s going on? The listener is in for a surprise. This love song isn’t about just any owner or
any vineyard. The owner says, “I will command the clouds and hold back the rain.” The owner
is God. God has been jilted, and Israel is at fault. Our love song ends with a shattering play on
words in the Hebrew. God expected justice (mishpat), but instead saw bloodshed (mishpach).
God expected righteousness (zedekah), but instead heard a cry (ze’akah).
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Do you see what’s happening here? The love song is an allegory. God is the gardener. The
vineyard is God’s people. The fruit the gardener is expecting is justice and righteousness. The
wild fruit is the cry of those who are oppressed by their own people. The tragedy of this story is
that the cry being raised up is the same cry that rose up to God when Israel was enslaved in
Egypt. The Lord heard the cries in Egypt and took pity on them. In turn, God expected God’s
people to hear the cries of those who are suffering in their midst and take pity on them. But
that hasn’t been happening.
If you read the surrounding chapters in Isaiah, you get a sense of what’s wrong. The people
don’t defend the cause of the widow and orphan (1:23), they covet and store up wealth for
themselves (1:29), they oppress the poor (3:14-15), they acquit the guilty and deprive the
innocent of their rights (5:23). The list goes on and on. Our love song has turned into
heartbreak. The only hope we hear in the song – and it’s a slim one – is that the people of
Israel and Judah continue to be “God’s pleasant planting.”
So, what are supposed to do with a passage like this? On a personal level, we might listen for
the cries of the people around us and feel a tug inside. God is the good gardener. We trust
that God will tend the garden of our lives. God will do whatever it takes to help us bear fruit.
God wants justice from us. God wants love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control from us. Like a careful gardener, God will clip and cut
away anything that interferes with growth in our lives.
We have a sense of what this might look like. A good editor reads the manuscript and says,
“This work has potential, but here’s where you need to cut.” And the writer groans as the red
ink flows. A good piano instructor says, “I think you can master this piece for the competition,
but here’s the rehearsal schedule if you really want to make it happen.” And the pianist sighs
as she sees the hours required. A good supervisor of a new resident at St. Mary’s Hospital
observes some incredible diagnostic skills, but also a questionable bedside manner. And the
resident grimaces as he receives the feedback.
God the good gardener lifts up a branch of the vine and says, “You can be fruitful, but
occasionally I’m going to have to clip some diseased branches and leaves.” And though the
process is painful, we can see on the ground below us the spotted greenery that’s been clipped.
Pride. Vain ambitions. A loose tongue. Bad relationships. Unhealthy habits. Laziness. Greed.
A need for control.
We’ve seen a gardener realign a plant, and we’ve seen God realign a life. And sometimes that
life is ours. We’re not always sure what God is doing, but we trust that God is up to something
good. After all, God is the good gardener who cares personally for the vineyard.
There’s more to this song than just a personal application, of course. The prophets of Israel
were deeply concerned about the society in which they lived. Long before there were things
like Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid or immigration or the Affordable Care Act, Israel
had laws guiding their relationships with each other. To name just a few of those laws: They
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were to leave the grain along the edge of the field unharvested so the poor would have
something to eat. They were to welcome the stranger, because once they themselves had
been strangers in the land of Egypt. They were to care for widows and orphans, because often
they had no one to look after them. They were to honor their fathers and mothers, a
commandment not directed at young children but at adults with aging parents. On top of
everything, every fifty years they were to observe the year of Jubilee. All debts were to be
forgiven, all slaves set free, and all land returned to its original owners. In other words, people
were to start over again, and to live as justly as they possibly could.
Clearly working for justice in a society is tremendously hard. We’ve witnessed some of the
struggle this past week in Minneapolis. Jamar Clark was shot while in police custody. It didn’t
take long for tensions to rise. On the one hand, police officers have one of the toughest jobs in
the country. On the other hand, minorities – and particularly African-Americans – have not
always gotten a fair shake when it comes to the criminal justice system. Put these two realities
together in a culture in which cameras are everywhere, and now we often get a chance to see
things first-hand and make up our own minds. Think Eric Garner being tackled on the streets of
New York City; or Walter Scott running away from a police officer in Charleston, South Carolina;
or Freddie Gray being dragged to the police van in Baltimore. It feels different when we see it.
How we treat each other as a society says a lot about what we value, and about what God or
gods we serve.
At this time, we are engaged in some important conversations in our country – conversations
about race relations, and radicalized Islam, and immigration, and a whole host of other things. I
don’t pretend to have all the answers to these issues, but I do encourage you to join the
conversation. Listen respectfully. Learn as much as you can about the issues. Keep an open
mind. Spend as much time reading Old Testament prophets as you do watching cable TV. Pray
for extra patience when you’re around those who don’t share your point of view. As I see it,
these are tremendously important conversations to be having. God wants to work in them to
bring justice and righteousness for all people.
French philosopher Teilhard de Chardin once said that “we must trust in the slow work of God.”
That’s hard. We get impatient. We want to see results, and we want to see them now. Rather,
we are called to trust that God is a good gardener, a patient gardener, and God knows what
God is doing. That doesn’t mean the vineyard always grows as God intends. No, sometimes
the love song turns into heartbreak. Sometimes we need to be pruned. The good news is, like
Israel of old, we continue to be God’s pleasant planting. In fact, one day there will come forth a
shoot from the stump of Jesse. The garden will flourish in a whole new way. And God will give
the growth. Amen.