Exile – First United Methodist Church Schenectady

“Love-vines” based on Isaiah 5:1-7

August 14, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I’m told it takes years to build a vineyard, and it takes pretty choice land as well. Vineyards need sandy or loose soil, they need lots of sun by day and dew at night. Israel exists in a desert climate so building a vineyard there means that access to enough water would be imperative too. The work of building a vineyard is physically demanding, requiring people to work together. In Israel, big boulders need to be moved (they’re a regular feature of the land), walls and towers have to be built to to protect the space from predators and thieves, and a ditch had to be dug around the wall. The land needed to be hoed by hand – plowing wouldn’t do, and that was hard work too! Wine presses had to be made as well, and in Biblical times they were made by hewing out those large boulders!¹ (Imagine!) And then, grapevines don’t produce fruit until their 3^rd season.

Vineyards are hard work, and big investments. Both now, and in Biblical times, not just anyone can afford to support land that wasn’t producing for 3 years, not to mention paying people to do the heavy lifting and hard labor in the meantime! The act of domesticating the land in order to produce domesticated grapes is intense.

From the earliest examples of literature, vineyards and gardens have been used to talk about fertility, love, and sex.² The metaphors are pretty easy to follow, and I’m guessing you don’t need explanations. Furthermore, grapes are a common symbol of fertility – likely the threefold combination of the clusters of grapes themselves giving expression to the idea of MANY, the impact of drinking wine, and the human eye’s enjoyment of curvy things all had impact in that! The Bible regularly uses vineyards as metaphors of sexuality as well. (The Bible also regularly acknowledges the horror of planting a vineyard and not being around to enjoy the fruits of your labor!)

It is interesting, though, isn’t it? Vineyards and gardens are intentional growing places, domesticated to allow for optimal growing conditions and care. That they become common symbols and allegories for human fertility is a bit ironic, as most of the mysteries of human fertility were unknown to the ancients and many are still unknown to us. The choice of the symbolism itself suggests humans wanting to have more control over sexuality and fertility than they do!!

Let’s look at a few of the places that the Bible intentionally connects the ideas of fertility/sexuality and vineyards. One comes from Deuteronomy 20:5-7:

Then the officials shall address the troops, saying, “Has anyone built a new house but not dedicated it? He should go back to his house, or he might die in the battle and another dedicate it Has anyone planted a vineyard but not yet enjoyed its fruit? He should go back to his house, or he might die in the battle and another be first to enjoy its fruit. Has anyone become engaged to a woman but not yet married her? He should go back to his house, or he might die in the battle and another marry her.”

While these are three separate ideas, they are also three interconnected ones, and I believe the order is intentional. The metaphors are most striking in Song of Songs:

My mother’s sons were angry with me; they made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept! (1:6)

My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms in the vineyards of En-gedi. (1:14)

Catch us the foxes, the little foxes, that ruin the vineyards— for our vineyards are in blossom.” (2:15)

Let us go out early to the vineyards, and see whether the vines have budded, whether the grape blossoms have opened and the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give you my love. (7:12)

Solomon had a vineyard at Baal-hamon; he entrusted the vineyard to keepers; each one was to bring for its fruit a thousand pieces of silver. My vineyard, my very own, is for myself; you, O Solomon, may have the thousand, and the keepers of the fruit two hundred! (8:11-12)

There is a lot of vineyard imagery in this relatively short book, isn’t there? Now, I should have been clearer about the metaphor, the vineyard/garden is usually used as a reference for FEMALE fertility.

Which is why the opening line of today’s passage is so very interesting. It sounds like a female voice to begin with, her beloved’s vineyard might first be assumed to be HER. “Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.” Love and vineyards, not only do they classically work well together, they create a well-known direction to start off this passage. It is a love song with a vineyard motif. That’s a genre anyone can follow. It would be reasonable for the hearers to assume that we are going to get into some more Song of Songs like stuff!

The text goes on to explain that all the appropriate care has been given to the vineyard: all the hard work has been done. Boulders were cleared, vines were planted, a watch-tower was built, the wine press was dug out of stone itself, and it is implied that even the wall had been built. But the vineyard didn’t produce what was expected. With all that work, the vineyard owner would be expected some great wine – and, um, love.

Instead, only very seedy, un-juicy wild grapes emerged, perhaps the same kind that were growing the vineyard before the work was begun. That’s wrong! It isn’t supposed to go that way. All the hard work is supposed to produce something! In fact, it is supposed to produce something wonderful: domesticated grapes! Which are good for food directly, for food as raisins, for a sweetener AND for wine. After all, that’s why people go through all the work of the vineyard building: it is supposed to be worth it.

In this metaphor, supposedly about love, the vineyard owner decides to give up, and allow the wild to reclaim the vineyard. Connecting it back to the opening verses, it seems possible the “vineyard owner” is divorcing his wive because of her lack of fertility with him. The act of domestication had failed in this vineyard, and the vineyard owner isn’t intending to put more effort into it. No more work! The wall and the protective hedge will be destroyed. No more weeding! No more pruning! No more hoeing! And no more rain….

Which is the point when we are supposed to figure out this isn’t just a weird story about the wrong crop growing up. Normal vineyard owners don’t control the rain. This is when it becomes clear that this metaphor is about God and the people. This is when the text gets super confusing about who the one who calls God her beloved is too, but I don’t have a single answer for that. (Feel free to come up with your own answer.)

The final line of our text is the prophet Isaiah interpreting the song/story that has just been told. It feels a bit like a parable of Jesus that comes along with interpretation. The prophet explains, “For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!” (5:7)

Now, the explanation doesn’t go quite as far as the metaphor does! The story ends with a suggestion of destruction, leaving us waiting for a declaration about exile! Yet, the interpretation just explains how the Israelites were supposed to be different, and aren’t. They were meant to be God’s dream for goodness in the world, but they’re just like the rest of the wild grapes. They have been domesticated: tenderly cared for and loved, but that hasn’t impacted what has grown from them. Instead of behaving with God’s justice and extending God’s love by caring for the poor, the widows, the orphans, the foreigners, and the vulnerable, the people of God have refused to participate in justice. They’ve rejected mercy for each other, and can’t call themselves righteous. The text talks of cries and bloodshed, suggesting that the ways people were being mistreated weren’t trivial: they were matters of life and death. The lack of justice meant the most vulnerable people were dying.

The people of God were acting like the wild grapes, the ones that hadn’t known tender love and care. They were receiving what God gave to them, but not letting it impact how they treated others.

This wasn’t God’s dream for the people. God planted justice and righteousness, but it didn’t grow. Rev. Paul Simpson Duke, currently copastor of First Baptist Church of Ann Arbor and Campus Minister for the American Baptist Campus Foundation at the University of Michigan, along with his wife, Stacey wrote in a commentary, “Any good news? Well, it is a love song. It ends badly. Has God stopped planting vineyards or restoring ruined ones? The bad news is that we can still be useless and a lethal danger to the world and to ourselves. The good news is that Someone still sings, plows, plants, guards, and looks for good fruit. In this is enough hope to set us humming bits of the song at least, and living toward its true ending, Love’s own harvest, sweet justice, festive righteousness, a cup of joy in the lifted hands of all.”³

It turns out that the use of the vineyard imagery wasn’t accidental, nor was the opening line claiming to be a love song! The love song part seems a little bit Country-Western, in talking about how the beloved did the person wrong, but it is still a love song. In truth, historically, there was an exile, but there was also a return. The vineyards around Jerusalem were destroyed, and later rebuilt. God’s work in the world certainly continues, even if it is a source of IMMENSE frustration to God that we KEEP ON missing the memos on justice, righteousness, and treating each other like we matter! “Someone still sings, plows, plants, guards, and looks for good fruit.“ God may well be tempted to give up on us every once in a while, but as we are told again and again, “God’s steadfast love endures forever.”

God is One with a long-view – longer even than than the person who thinks to start planting a vineyard. God still thinks we are fertile soil, capable of producing justice, righteousness, and a world of peace and love. May we take the ministrations of God – the planting and pruning, the protections and the watering, the hewing, and the watching over – and allow them to transform us into ever more fertile soil that may produce exactly what God wants: justice, righteousness, and love. Amen

1To my horror, the things I thought I knew about vineyards were affirmed here: Fred Wight, “Manner and Customs of Bible Lands” chapter 20http://www.baptistbiblebelievers.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=TGctIUL-BsY%3D&tabid=232&mid=762. 1953, Accessed 8/11/16

2 C S Lewis, Allegory of Love Oxford (University Press 1936).

3Paul Simpson Duke, “Homeletical Perspective on Isaiah 5:1-7” found on page 345 of “Feasting on the Word Year C Volume 3” edited by Barbara Brown Taylor and David Bartlett (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville Kentucky, 2010).

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

August 14, 2016

Sermons

“Holy, Joy, Sharing”based on Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 and Luke…

January 24, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

It strikes me as likely that most of you don’t know anything about Nehemiah. In fact, I would guess that the MORE Biblically knowledgeable among you would be fairly likely to assume that Nehemiah is one of the minor prophets. (This assumes Biblical knowledge, clearly, in understanding what the Minor Prophets are. Minor prophets are the prophets whose books are shorter. That’s all.)

Nehemiah is a book of history. It is bound up with the book of Ezra – apparently they were one book for the first 2000 years or so, but now are considered two. They are books about the return from Exile. Those of you who are here all the time may be getting sick of hearing me explain the Exile, but I don’t want to leave anyone behind. So, hold onto your seats, I’m about to review Basic Biblical history and catch everyone up. I’ll try to be informative without being boring. Wish me luck.

This is a story that starts with Abraham. Abraham heard the call of God to leave the land of his ancestors and start a new life. God made promises to Abraham that he’d be the father of a multitude, and that his descendants were specially blessed to be a blessing to the world. He was married to Sarah, who may or may not have been his half sister. She was barren for a LOOOOOOOONG time, and to make it sound simpler than it was, she eventually had a kid named Issac.

Issac married Rebecca (whose father AND grandfather were Issac’s first cousins), and they were barren for a mere LOONG time and then had twins named Esau and Jacob. Esau was the older twin, but Jacob was the one whom Rebecca and God favored. Jacob was a bit of a trickster, but no more so than his uncle Laban, his mother Rebecca’s brother. He went to live with Laban for a few decades and when he returned he had two wives, two concubines, 12 sons, an unknown number of daughters, and a lot of wealth. Those 12 sons would become the fathers of the 12 tribes.

Jacob’s two favorite sons were Joseph and Benjamin, the sons of Rachel, his favorite wife. (Did I forget to mention that both of Jacob’s wives were his first cousins?) The older of the two was so obnoxious in his status as his father’s favorite that the rest of the sons sold him to slavery in Egypt. The Bible suggests that God favored him, so Joseph eventually became the right hand to the Pharaoh. He instituted a pretty severe taxation system that involved Egypt having great stores of food and the poor people not having any. Meanwhile there was a famine in Israel (which happens in desert climates). The brothers came down to buy grain so they wouldn’t die, it was all sorts of dramatic, but eventually everyone moved down to Egypt.

Then there was a new ruler, the family stopped being in favor, and they became slaves. Then there was Moses, they say about 400 years later. Or, rather, we should say, then there were two very wise, caring,and manipulative midwives who refused direct orders and helped Moses come into the world. His mother and sister were also wise, caring, and manipulative, and Moses (who was supposed to be killed upon his birth because that’s what they were doing to Hebrew babies) got raised as the adoptive grandson of the current Pharaoh.

Then there are some parts you’ve likely heard about: Moses had compassion for his people, but then he killed a guy, so he had to go away; he went into the desert; he had an experience of God initiated by a burning bush, God sent him to be the leader of the people; he whined about his stammer, Aaron got to help; there were conversations, there were plagues, the people were freed; the Pharaoh changed his mind, and the army died in the sea. Or, at least, that’s one of the versions the Bible tells.

Then the people wander in the desert for a few generations. Afterward, Joshua leads them into the land, and after his death for about 300 hundred years, random leaders emerged when the people needed them and otherwise they just settled in. Then the people wanted a King, and they got Saul, and Saul was crazy (maybe), so they got David, and David was a jerk (for sure) and after he died they got Solomon who was really not a whole lot better than Pharaoh. Which is likely why after the death of Solomon there was a civil war and the North seceded from the South. The North gets called Israel, the South is called Judah.

A little over 200 years later the North – Israel – is defeated by the Assyrian empire, goes into exile, and never returns. That’s 722 BCE. About 150 years after that, the South – Judah – gets defeated by the Babylonian Empire (587/586 BCE) and goes into exile. Then in 539 the Persian Empire lead by Cyrus beats out the Babylonian Empire and the exiles are free to go home.

Except a lot of them didn’t. Some went home. They started rebuilding the Temple. But a lot stayed put. About 100 years later a Jewish man named Nehemiah was the cupbearer to the King, and he he heard a report from men from Judah of the terrible lives being led there. It took him to prayer and prayer brought him before the King asking for a favor – to be sent to Judah to rebuild the walls of the city. He was appointed the governor of Judah.

The walls had been down for nearly 150 years. ALL IT TOOK was for someone to organize – the people COULD do it, the issue was that unless everyone did it t the same time it wouldn’t really matter. With Nehemiah’s hope, vision, and money, it worked. Some organized and rebuilt the gates, and then each family rebuilt the part of the wall that was next to their house (or, more likely) a part of their house. It wasn’t that anyone had that much work to do. It is just that unless your neighbors rebuilt too it wouldn’t really help – invaders could still come in.

It took 12 years for Nehemiah to work with the people, to face down the opposition, and to get the walls back up. That’s where our lesson for today comes in – right after the walls were complete. It seems that the people who gathered at the Water Gate hadn’t heard the whole story, all put together, either. The Water Gate was an interesting choice of location for this event, because the Temple had been rebuild. But the Temple didn’t have space for EVERYONE – for men AND women AND children. So they gathered where they could all fit, and they heard their own story from start to finish. (I’d guess that what was read was an early version of the Torah.)

It seems reasonable that the people would weep after hearing it. It is a good story! Furthermore, the story is intentionally designed to bring the past into the present, and for the people who just completed the restoration of Jerusalem, that would be incredibly powerful. They were hearing their stories within the gates and the walls of the city for the first time in 7 generations.

But the command they’re given doesn’t give them time to live in their weeping. They’re told not to weep – not for the 7 generations that missed this chance – not for anything. They’re supposed to PARTY. (I don’t make up the Lectionary. Therefore I don’t make up the PARTY theme. It is in the Bible.) Nor do I make up the theme that the whole deal is that we get to enjoy life as long as we share the joy. Nehemiah told the people, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our LORD; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”

Eat the GOOD stuff. Savor the wonder of it all. And share. Because it is holy, and that’s how it works. From the time of Abraham the idea is “blessed to be a blessing.” When you are able to feast on the richest food there is you should enjoy it, and SHARE. Wow. I really do love the story of Nehemiah. It is the story of what can be done when the people work together. And this passage is the story of the transformative power of worship and the stories of God. The whole book is the story of what can happen when one person’s heart is opened to the blight of others, and it is the story of the restoration. Nehemiah doesn’t just talk about the “good stuff” of life, the book of Nehemiah is some of the good stuff.

Thematically, the Gospel lesson and Nehemiah seem like kindred spirits. The Gospel tells of Jesus at his home synagogue reading the lesson from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because (God) has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. (God) has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.“ The other synoptic gospels put this later in Jesus’s ministry, but Luke seems intentional in putting it right in the beginning. For Luke, this is Jesus’s mission statement. Or maybe this is Luke’s thesis statement.

The words would have already been known to be connected to the Messianic expectation. (Which by the way is also all about the Exile, but I can leave that for another day.) They’re words we still use in our formal Communion liturgy. They are powerful words. They are words of restoration. They are words that reflect God’s care for all of God’s people, and not just the ones that societies tend to think are of value.

God wants a message brought to the poor – and it is good news for them.

God sends a message to the captives – and it is release of their captivity for them.

God messenger is to bring sight to the blind.

God’s work is to let the oppressed become free again.

God’s story is the proclamation of the jubilee.

The Jubilee is another Hebrew Bible idea that doesn’t get enough press. It is the Torah law that says that every 49 years all the fields are to lay fallow, all debts are to be forgiven, and all land is to be returned to its original owners. Jubilee is one of the ways that God’s vision for community in the Torah prevents cycles of poverty. For Jesus to read this passage is to connect his life with the care for the poor, the sick, and the oppressed, and the incarcerated.

Luke put this story at the beginning of his Gospel because he thought this was the point. The life of Jesus participated in God’s work of freedom, healing, and transformation. To be poor in Jesus’s time was similar to being poor today and being poor in the time of Nehemiah – it increased the chance you would die young after having struggled mightily. God isn’t interested in leaving people in those conditions.

Which means that for Luke, the work of the Body of Christ (US!) is that vision from Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon us, because God has anointed us to bring good news to the poor. God has sent is to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Or, maybe we like it from Nehemiah, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared…”

We are to care for each other, and enjoy the goodness of life, and work toward a more just world. Let’s get back to it! Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

January 24, 2016