The Divine Vintner
Isaiah 5:1-7 presents us with the metaphor of the vineyard, an image used five times by Jesus in his teaching. The last verse from Isaiah explains the analogy: “the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people…are his pleasant planting.” The vineyard is Israel, the vines are the people, and God is the caring, careful vintner. It presents above all in the first verses the reassurance of God’s sustaining love, the loving care he gives to his earth and his people: “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.”
It is important for us to consider beyond the human concern of the Biblical analogy of the vineyard, and realize that the world, this fragile earth, our island home, is the vineyard, and it sorely needs tending today. We have abandoned it, rather than cared for or protected it.
The verses in the middle of this passage, however, go on to describe God’s sorrow at his people’s waywardness and describe him as abandoning the vineyard. Around Pelham there are old abandoned vineyards, and they are a sad sorrowful sight, neglected, overrun with long grasses and weeds, the stunted vines no longer bearing leaves or fruit. Now I do not imagine a God who abandons at all; indeed, such a thought would contradict the opening verses. It is not God who abandons but people who abandon God’s ways. God expects justice, as verse 7 states, sharing of the garden and its produce, but instead he sees “bloodshed” over the land, battles for territory and ownership. Consider the situation in the Middle East today, the fighting over borders between Israel and Palestine, and we can hear the cry of God still.
Psalm 80 develops the metaphor of the vineyard and in v17 makes it clear that it is the people who are unfaithful, who turn from God & his ways: “we will not turn away from you; revive us, and we will call on your name.” As well, two verses from Isaiah 3 were originally set between verses 3 & 4 of the psalm, and there, God accuses the people of having eaten up the vineyard: “It is you who have ruined my vineyard; the plunder from the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?’ declares the Lord, the Lord Almighty.” A just equitable distribution of the harvest is the hallmark of God’s vineyard.
It is important for us to consider beyond the human concern of the Biblical analogy of the vineyard, and realize that the world, this fragile earth, our island home, is the vineyard, and it sorely needs tending today. We have abandoned it, rather than cared for or protected it. In light of such injustice and greedy exploitation, the gardener weeps. We recall when Jesus wept at the sight of wayward Jerusalem. God laments the destruction of the garden, the injustice of his people, but in his sustaining faithful love waits to restore his garden. Isaiah 27 presents a “song of the fruitful vineyard” and includes the promise of the vine restored “to blossom & bud and fill the face of the world with fruit.” As soon as his people reject their false gods and return to paths of justice and righteousness, as soon as they call on God in faithfulness, he is there to restore health to the land and its inhabitants; indeed, he is already at work even before we ask. But God can’t do it alone; the Lord needs our hands and hearts, our strength and souls, to participate in the renewal of God’s vineyard, in the establishment of God’s kingdom of justice and righteousness.
We so often forget God’s original blessing, the very act of creation, constantly renewing life, the great I AM, God’s supreme action and gift of love, life- giving love. We think of the world as fallen, when it is we who have fallen away from God’s original blessing. The growth of plants around us, the greening of this fragile earth, our island home, is a vivid reminder of God’s love freely given. Our attraction to gardens and gardening is a sign of our spiritual longing for spiritual connectedness with the world around us. On the eve of his passion, Jesus went with his disciples “to a place where there was a garden,” presumably the Garden of Gethsemane, the place of Judas’ later betrayal. Jesus’ passion had to begin there, in the good place, in the garden, for his actions atone for the betrayal in the first garden, and Jesus returns us to paradise. The affinity we feel with nature stems from our longing for “deep down things” (Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”), for that first garden, for the glory of living in God’s love, as Jesus did. We need not create our own Edens; we need to acknowledge the Eden all around us. God’s vineyard hasn’t gone away; it’s still here, we’re still in it. Our rather unoriginal sin is to deny it, to ignore it—in our greed, to exploit it. God the ever-faithful, calls us to renewed faithfulness, to renew the garden, to tend the vineyard.