Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

The Rev. Rob Fisher

St. Dunstan’s, Carmel Valley

Readings: Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18; Hebrews 11:29-12:2; Luke 12:49-56

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

There is a story told by a priest who grew up rebellious as a teenager.  During his adolescent years he tested the boundaries with his parents, and especially his father.  They drove each other crazy.

At one point when his dad was most upset and perplexed by his behavior, and surely with some pain in the father’s heart, he said to his son, “I just do not understand you.”

But his father did not leave it there.  He said, “I may never understand you, but I will always love you.”

The priest who told this story said that these words stuck with him.  His father was being very much like God in that moment.

***

This happens to be a very interesting Sunday to find yourself worshipping with us here at St. Dunstan’s.

Today we are having folk music in church, which is something that has been an old tradition at St. Dunstan’s.  We get to bring in different musical styles, different voices, and different instruments into our worship.

In England, some of you may know that they have a word for worship like this, and I am not sure if it’s meant to be complimentary.  They call it “happy clappy.”

But today’s lectionary readings seem to be deeply at odds with anything happy!

Our first reading, is from Isaiah, and it is a beautiful song that begins:

Let me sing for my beloved

my love-song concerning his vineyard:

My beloved had a vineyard

on a very fertile hill.

He dug it and cleared it of stone

and planted it with choice vines

I find it almost impossible not to picture Carmel Valley when I hear these words.  Our hillsides are increasingly planted with beautiful and very expensive vineyards.

The poem describes a man planting not just any vineyard, but a carefully planned and painstakingly tended crop of choice vines.  And the owner of the vineyard, after pouring his heart and soul into the crop, expects it to yield excellent grapes for making outstanding wine.

According to scholars, this type of song would have been familiar to people in the eighth century BC, when people celebrated great festivals of feasting and singing at the time of the grape harvest.

Again, it reminds me of our fair valley, and its love of festivals.

But this song, which starts out on a high note, takes a troubling turn.

The owner of the vineyard expected grapes, but instead got “wild grapes,” or translated in a different way, “bitter fruit.”

And the vintner asks, “what else could I have done?  I gave it all that I could have given?  Judge between me and my vineyard.

We are asked to be the judge.

Of course, we side with the owner of the vineyard, but the prophet has tricked us into judging against ourselves.

For we are the vineyard.  God’s own people, though loved and cultivated by God, have rebelled and produced bitter fruit.

***

We know what God asks of us.  God wants us to return his love with our own, and to likewise love those around us.  God wants us not to be self-centered but God-centered.

We know what is asked of us, and so why do we so often fail to do what is pleasing to God?

It reminds me of Bill Cosby’s observations of raising children.

He laments that little kids all seem to have brain damage.

For instance a parent tells her child to not touch the record player, and then as soon as she turns her back, what do you suppose happens?  The child does the very thing she’s not supposed to do.

Why does she do it?  Brain damage.

And then when the mother asks her child, Did you know that you were not supposed not touch the record player, the child says, in a pathetic voice, “Uh huh.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“I don’t know…”

Bill Cosby calls it brain damage!

And according to Cosby, who is probably right, all children suffer from this.

But little kids are not that different from adults.

As soon as we think God has turned his back, we fall to the temptations of our lower selves.  We become self-centered, petty, and even sometimes hateful.

Why do we do it?  We cannot say.

In the words of Isaiah:

God expected justice,

but saw bloodshed;

Righteousness,

but heard a cry!

We lose it in the translation, but the words for justice and bloodshed, in Hebrew are almost the same.Mishpat versus mispah.

And the same goes for the words righteousness and a cry, which are cedhaqah and ce’ aqah.

This is a play on words, and perhaps it also holds the commentary that what is clear to God can be very easily mixed up by us.  We can even mistake justice for bloodshed, and righteousness for a cry.

Getting to know what God deems as just and right causes plenty of confusion.  Well-meaning, sincere and reasonable people can disagree.  We strive for God’s truth, and we have to avoid losing in the midst of human bias.

Anne Lamott, a passionate and salty Christian writer has said that we have to be careful because when we find that God hates all the same people that we hate, we can be sure that we really have created God in our own image.

***

Jesus says in Luke that he comes not to bring peace but division because he knows that the truth a tough sell.  He knows that the truth will bring discomfort.  He knows that his baptism by fire is coming, as he will be a sacrifice of love for us, in service of the truth.

The ominous passages today are not the end of the story.  We are not meant to read the Bible only in small chunks, but for the total story that it tells.

The Bible dialogues with itself.  This happens even within the Book of Isaiah, which begins with warning and condemnation, and then later turns to a message of hope, encouragement and comfort.

Without God’s love, the vineyard will be unprotected and will be utterly destroyed.  But God will never withhold his love.

Like the parent with the rebellious teenager, God says: “I may never understand you, but I will always love you.”

Is it just a coincidence that this very same image—the grapevine—will become something new itself?

God’s own grapevine will be the source of the wine that by our faith gives us eternal life, where God’s loving sacrifice is poured out and offered to us: the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation—Amen.