The vineyard, wild grapes and God's mercy

Isaiah 5:1-6

The Jewish plains, especially around the sea of Galilee were especially fertile and were known as JIZREEL, God’s own plantations. Whilst each farm had a tendency to produce everything it needed (much as say a croft in Fairisle might do)  - there would be a kitchen garden and three or four sheep for the family’s wool and even the poorest family would have vines so they could have grapes. There were also real vineyards worked in a big way with watch towers like those the shepherds built to keep a lookout for robbers both four footed and two. Figs and fruit trees might be planted in the enclosure so that the vines might climb them but also vines were allowed to grow at ground level simply running along the earth. Pruning was quite unknown - the vine was not pampered, it simply did extremely well in the fertile soil and climate of Palestine. The Biblical expression “under the  vine and the fig tree” meant the delight of doing nothing whatever!

This is the kind of agriculture that appeals to me.

Isaiah’s poetic words were easily recognized by his audience - my beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill, he had provided everything for it; dug the rich soil, cleared it of stones, planted the choicest vines, built a watchtower to protect it and prepared for the harvest by hewing out a wine vat. Here is a lucky man blessed and diligent expecting his reward. His love will surely be rewarded and repaid with clusters of plump and vintage grapes and fine wine to follow.

But this was not to be - wild grapes, which are bitter and offensive and of no use were all that came.

This parable which is a teaching parable is typical of many found in the Old Testament and of a type often used by Jesus himself. We are drawn into a situation which we can easily relate to and then asked to comment on it. “Judge between me and my vineyard!” - only to discover usually too late that that parable is about ourselves and our own behaviour. The wild grapes in this case were the people of Judah and Jerusalem. But let us recognise that this has been  a long conversation with God which began in the garden of Eden. God had provided everything - “what more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?” All Adam and Eve needed to do was obey one rule, not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge but they could not.

It is too an ongoing conversation with God. Here we are hard on the heels of our harvest festival confronted with the question - having celebrated all God’s gifts we are forced to ask ourselves why are there so many places on our fruitful earth with wild grapes? This week  in Las Vegas, recently in Myanmar, for years in Syria.

And you know, when things are bad for us individually, when things are unfair to us do we sometimes feel like tearing up the hedge, breaking down the walls, trampling upon them, hacking down the watch tower and just letting it all go to rot and become overgrown with briers and thorns? I know I do.

And though we can see that God might easily have done just that, it is not what has happened. God never gives up on mankind, yes he could have torn up the blueprint right then in the garden of Eden and started again but he did not - he sent his prophets like Isaiah to warn and instruct, he sent his son to teach and to be an example and when we, like those in our Gospel  reading, put Jesus to death even after that we have been  promised the Holy Spirit, the Comforter to be with us always.

Isaiah penned a great poem, it is a poem we should read often for the graphic way it presents us with the disappointment God may justly feel in his creation but especially for the way it shows how God did not react in human ways but continues to forgive and have endless, truly endless, mercy.

Amen