High Inputs for Poor Return

Text:  Isaiah 5:1-7

            Dreams of flowerbeds radiating colour can turn to a gardening nightmare when slugs, maggots and flies infest the plants.  The threat of pests and the vagaries of the weather might rob us of the experience of the delectable flavour of new potatoes, carrots, green beans, mange tout, sweet corn, and tomatoes.  The gardener always knows that there’s no guarantee.  However, when you dig the soil, fertilise, nurture seeds ready to be planted out, it is a let down when those efforts are not rewarded with a good harvest.

            It’s much more serious for the farmer.  Bread and butter on the table depend entirely on the yield of the crop.  My dad and brother invest tens of thousands of dollars to put the best seed into the ground.  They spray for weeds and then wait for nature to take her course.  Of course they care for the soil by feeding it with fertiliser so that it will have the nutrients to produce high quality crops.

            This morning we heard news of how the drought in Russia has led the country to cease all wheat exports which will lead to a shortage in the world market.  Combined with the excessive rains in western Canada and the devastating floods in Pakistan will mean that harvests will be poor.  Already the price of grain is rising and this will have an impact on the price of food, particularly bread.  Of course it is the subsistence farmers who are hit hardest.

            It’s a love song with a tragic ending.  At first we think that Isaiah is recording the words of a woman singing of her beloved’s vineyard.  It’s only as we continue reading that we discover that the singer is the prophet and the beloved is the LORD.  Beloved is intimate term was used between lovers.  It becomes clear that the prophet knows the LORD not only as the holy one who sends tremors through the temple and fills it with smoke but also as a passionate lover. 

The beloved has a vineyard.  He selects the best land for it:  fertile soil set on the side of a hill.  This vineyard was not the pass time of a gardener or a gentleman farmer.  Getting a good yield was the difference between survival or not. The success of this vineyard is imperative.  The beloved wants the highest yields possible.

He builds the vineyard from scratch.  He digs it, clears it of stones, and plants it with specially selected vines.  He installs a security system by building a watch tower.  He carves out a wine vat.  He does everything possible to make conditions right and to prepare for a good yield of grapes.  But despite attention to the soil and careful selection of vines the harvest consists of wild grapes.  High inputs have been rewarded with a poor yield.  These wild grapes were worthless.

I’ve never had experience of a vine and growing grapes until moving to Witney.  The vine at the Manse was severely pruned before we came.  In fact, I told Viviane, “That’s dead.  We need to get rid of it.”  Viviane forbade me and assured me that what looked like dead branch would come to life in the spring.  I was sceptical – very sceptical.  Sure enough, the dead looking limb pushed green shoots out and grew beautifully.  Because of the pruning it didn’t produce anything last year.  However this year it is laden.  I’ve done nothing to it other than to prune it a little and it has produced.  And yet in this love song the beloved has done so much and all he gets is wild grapes.

Isaiah stops singing and the LORD speaks for himself.  He addresses Jerusalem and the people of Judah.  The LORD asks the people to judge between him and the vineyard.  Has he not done everything possible to give the vineyard all the right conditions to produce and yet all that it has produced is wild grapes?  They are asked to judge whether the vinedresser has been incompetent or whether the vines are simply defective.  There is no answer.  It is a rhetorical question.  There’s only one response.  The fault is with the vine.

The LORD has his hearers nodding their heads in agreement with him.  They would agree that there’s no choice but to start all over again.  Remove the hedge. Break down the wall.  Stop pruning and hoeing, abandon the vineyard.  Stop the rains too so that the vineyard has no water. 

The sting in the tail is when the direct link is made between the vineyard and “the house of Israel and the people of Judah”.  They have been the ‘pleasant planting’ of the LORD.  They were created as a vineyard to produce the fruit of justice.  Instead they produced the wild grapes of bloodshed.  He planted them to produce the fruit of his right ways and instead they produced the cries of those wronged. 

There’s a play on words in the Hebrew that is lost in English.  The word for ‘justice’ (mishpat) is very close to the word for ‘bloodshed’ (mishpah) and the word for ‘righteousness’ (sedaqah) is close to the word for ‘cry’ (se aqah).  We think of Abel’s murder when the Lord says to Cain, “...your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground?” (Genesis 4:10).

Biblical scholar Margaret Barker suggests that this play on words alerts us to the fact that the love song begins with the song of the beloved.  ‘Beloved’ is the meaning of the name ‘David’.  She sees the vineyard on the top of the hill as the ‘city of David’ – Jerusalem.  The wall of the vineyard is the wall of the temple.  The tower in the vineyard is the sanctuary within the temple.  The destruction of the vineyard then is the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. 

This tragic love-song of a vineyard destroyed because of injustice speaks of the LORD who will not turn a blind eye to wrongdoing.  It is a pessimistic picture without a glimmer of hope.  The only thing that saves this song from utter despair are the words that immediately came before in chapter 4.  The LORD will make the branch – his people – glorious.  We know that God will forgive and restore his people.  We discover the shoot that will grow from the smouldering stump.

This song of a vineyard is not about an individual.  It is about a nation.  It is about a whole society gone wrong.  It is about a people for whom God has done everything possible for them to produce fruit and yet they stubbornly produce wild grapes. 

We are part of God’s people living in a society and world where there is injustice.  Those who follow Jesus are branches grafted into the Vine.  Jesus is the Vine.  The Father is the vine grower.  Our call is to produce the fruit of love.  All the inputs have been invested by the Father through the death of his Son.  The yield expected is the kind of self giving love that follows the example of Jesus who died for his friends.  As branches in the Vine we need to be pruned.  All that is selfish needs to be taken away in order to help us become even more fruitful in love. 

God’s vineyard – his people – the kings and religious leaders produced the wild grapes of injustice and violence.  God will not tolerate injustice.  He rages against what is not right. 

We are God’s vineyard.  How can we pray and work for a just and fair society and world?  Do we speak out when we see someone not being treated properly?  Do we stand up to those who think that violence against someone else is justifiable?  Do we speak out against dodgy business practices?  Do we shout out against those who take advantage of others because of the money and power they have?  Do we produce the fruit of love, justice and God’s right ways by the way we live in our marriages, families and friendships...in the way that we shop...in the way we invest?

God has invested his love in us.  He has done everything he can do for us.  Will we be nourished by his grace and produce a high yield of love?