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Isaiah 5:1-7
The pattern has become all too familiar. When we hear the initial news of a shooting, especially a mass shooting, we can recite the next steps in the process. Step one, wild speculation. Then, thoughts and prayers. Third comes “he was a loner, but I’m totally shocked.” Then, “Quit politicizing tragedy.” And, finally, “Well, let’s not change anything.” From Columbine to Aurora to Newtown to Charleston to Las Vegas it is the same thing – a despondent, heavily armed white guy who gets labeled almost everything but a terrorist which, of course, brings up the double standard that if you are brown, you are a terrorist, but if you are white, you are a “lone wolf”, but that is another sermon.
As a pastor – as your pastor – I am all too aware of the accumulation of grief and sadness, even anger, that weighs down on us all. I know that hurricanes and earthquakes are not connected to shooting our suicides, that political attacks and personal loss are not the same things, that a single shooter taking some kind of anger out on a crowd is not the same as the police shooting an unarmed man in the streets, but in some very real ways pain is pain, suffering is suffering and anxiety is anxiety. It is difficult to be even marginally connected to our culture and not feel the impact of what seems like impending storms. Wednesday’s weather seemed to manifest what I think a lot of us feel – a rain that starts and then never seems to stop…steady, unyielding grayness.
Another verse of the familiar post-tragedy refrain is the discussion of responsibility, often with questions about God and the age-old, always unsatisfyingly answered question of why…why does God allow these things to happen? Some suggest, with sickening predictability, that it is because we don’t pray enough or we’re such sinners and this is God’s wrath on us. Others suggest that this is even more evidence that no such thing as God exists and we’re all just afloat on a sea of meaningless suffering, as if that is more comforting than the angry God thing. None of the theologies – from the providential God who pulls all the strings and has some grand plan that we ought to trust to the God who has set the world into motion and stepped away really bring me much satisfaction. I can believe them all partially, and only for part of my daily wrestling with God and God’s action (or lack thereof) in the world.
If you feel the same, I have some good news. The Bible is totally with us. The psalms sing of everything from God’s glorious deliverance to God’s stark absence with equal exuberance. Ecclesiastes says that everything is smoke, pointless and empty. The book of Deuteronomy says that if you do the right things God will bless you appropriately, while the book of Job questions that directly, seeing great injustice in this “plan” that God is supposed to have. And I have to say that while there are times I think that God must have a plan and seems to be orchestrating things so well that it couldn’t be coincidence, I also have just as many times, like this week, where I think that if God has a plan, God’s plan sucks.
If we go to our tradition or to scripture for an answer we will instead find many answers, for this is a perplexing issue not only to us, but to all of humanity. I attended the CAIR banquet on Friday night and while we were waiting on things to start, I started talking to a Muslim friend of mine about this very issue as we grieved the sorrow around us together. What does your tradition say? He gave me a similarly nuanced version of plans and tests, but with the caveat that because all life contains struggle, is our struggling that can bring us closer to God…if we choose that. It seemed less of a commentary on the nature of God and more a commentary on the nature of us.
This morning we have heard Isaiah crying out in the voice of God from a few centuries ago. Isaiah uses this metaphor of a vineyard, a vineyard that seems to have been planted well, provided everything it needed to flourish and yet, Isaiah speaks as if it were God’s voice, “When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?” Wild grapes, in case you didn’t know, are worthless to a vineyard owner, they are no good at all. Maybe that’s what we wonder, too? Aren’t we supposed to live in the “greatest country in the world?” Isn’t this America supposed to be the pinnacle of all democracy and civilization, a land blessed by God, full of milk and honey? Anyone feeling that right now? What is becoming normalized is shocking, from foreign policy via Twitter to storms that crop up with great ferocity to the newscast segment that tells us all how to act if there is an active shooter at your workplace or school because this is how we live now! We seem shockingly dedicated to the myth of redemptive violence, as if we can violence ourselves out of the pain of violence, if it’s the “right kind” of violence. And we seem to believe that we cannot change because we are dependent on what is wrong. If this is the American dream, I’ve about had enough. I’d like to wake up, please.
The call of Isaiah is for the hand of God to tear down this vineyard, remove it’s hedge, break down it’s wall and trample it. Anyone who knows anything about growing grapes knows that this is a cry of desperation, for it literally takes years, even decades, to establish a good vineyard. This is a cry from a person ready to abandon a massive amount of investment out of sheer frustration. I’m liking Isaiah a lot these days, mostly because Isaiah isn’t willing to compromise unity and integrity, not willing to simply say things are good or to bring in the PR people to polish up the big pile of…well, you know what. Isaiah knows that the only way that we get to good is by being good. There are no shortcuts to holiness, no way to peace, peace is the way.
Listen to the language that Isaiah uses about the vineyard – God, “dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; [God] built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; [God] expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.” The parable forces us to draw the unavoidable conclusion that the vineyard (that means us), not its owner (that means God), is responsible for the poor harvest. Isaiah often places responsibility for the bad fruit at the feet of the leaders of Israel. One scholar has therefore suggested that phrases such as “house of Israel” and “people of Judah” refer exclusively to the leaders, but I’m not so sure that we can follow that logic. After all, we like to blame leaders – it’s the President’s fault, or Congress or that televangelist or even that one guy who plays football. But, as Dr. Cornel West said at the Zarrow symposium on Friday, these leaders didn’t drop out of the sky. They represent who we are, as a whole and if we don’t like the fruit of the vineyard that we stopped taking care of, we really can’t point the finger at someone else. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.
Isaiah writes in Hebrew that instead of the “justice” (mishpat) that God “expected,” God sees “bloodshed” (mispach). And instead of “righteousness” (tsedaqah), God hears “a cry” (tse’aqah). When I use the Hebrew, you can hear the word-play, it echoes in your ear and would do so even more if you were a speaker of ancient Hebrew…it would, like any good poem, help the listener remember it. And I think that is the point, something that rings in our ears, so we can remember. You know that trick that people tell you to do to remember people’s names or to memorize stuff for homework – make it rhyme so you can recite it, stick it into a song so you can sing it, give it a little gloss so it catches your eye. Isaiah plants another seed in our souls, the sound of God’s love song growing up like a vine with good fruit, if we will tend it.
And if not? Well, I don’t believe in a God of vengeance, but I do believe in karma. I do believe that you eventually reap what you sow. I do believe that despite how often we think we see the morally repugnant seem to win, that this does not last. You can call that judgment if you like, Isaiah certainly does, but I see it as the chickens coming home to roost. There is one thing it is not – it is not the apocalypse, the end of the world. Notice that even Isaiah’s harsh language is about God coming to tear the existing vine down, but not to end it, rather to plant something new…to generate love out of catastrophe.
And I have to admit that there are times I ask for God to come tear it all down, or times that I even wish to do it myself. But, like Isaiah, this is not where I stay. Remember that also in Isaiah’s vision is the call for swords to be made plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, for us to study war no more and for God’s creation to actually be what God created it to be…a dream of beauty and restoration, not destruction. But whether in Isaiah’s vision or in our own dreams today for a brighter future, we cannot arrive there without being honest about who and where we are and without some serious change, even some trampling of some ideas, some policies, some practices. And that means change in us, too. For while I may not be sure how God operates in the world, I am sure that our God is a God of liberation, who seeks to free us from the things that capture our hearts, whether that is the lie of racism, the sin of separation, or the myth of redemptive violence…and that liberation first begins in our own hearts. For we cannot hate hate and expect hate to end.
May God be with the families of those who have lost so much, as a guiding comfort and a healing balm. And may God be with us in these days, and all days, as we seek not only to find meaning,
but to create it. Amen.