Monday 5 October 2020

The Vineyard

I have been waiting for this reading from Isaiah ever since Frances and I visited Bulgaria over a year ago. We were staying in the Balkan foothills and our billet was at the top of a hill above the town, so each day we began downhill in the heat and the dust to perhaps catch a bus or to forage for lunch and on the way we passed small holdings which frequently were walled vineyards. The walls were protected by barbed wire not watchtowers and you could see the vines climbing trellises and strings, their grape clusters shining in the hot sun. In corners were primitive water butts and buckets, half drain pipes for irrigation. I recognised then more fully than before that each of these was a labour of love, the terrain, climate and soil needed to be harnessed, needed work and dedication to produce good grapes and that this was individual or family work. Later we would see men on motorbikes or a small car pulling little trailers filled with grapes taking them to the collective distillery to be made into their own wine. 

Isaiah  describes a perfect vineyard, on a fertile hill, well dug, cleared of stones and protected - his listeners would have understood as easily as my Bulgarian friends what this meant and would have shared in the frustration of the result Isaiaih describes of the well chosen vines being overwhelmed by wild grapes. 

The parable of the vineyard carries over from the Old Testament times to the New, where we recognise the care of the viticulturist, and we share the sense of anger at the injustices meted out by the tenants of the landowner’s vineyard to the slaves and most outrageously to the Son. These stories are universal, understood by any culture and any age group.

Isaiah speaking God’s words asks “What more was there to do for my vineyard?”

In 1968 Bill Anders on Apollo 8 took the photograph that has ever since captured our imagination.  “Earthrise” , a picture of our own planet rising with the grey surface of the moon in the foreground. The astronaut’s famous  picture is said to have changed our view forever and has been credited by some with the launch of the many environmental movements we are familiar with today. This is the vineyard we have been given, in all its beauty and diversity.

I have given up watching David Attenborough, not because I disagree with him bit because it is all so sad: the retreating ice caps, the breaking icebergs, the polluted oceans, savaged rain forests diminishing species numbers - actually it makes one cross:

“And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard, I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured. I will break down its wall and it shall be trampled down. I will make it a waste, it shall not be pruned or hoed and it shall be overgrown with briars and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. “

As tenants of the Lord’s vineyard, as stewards of his creation, the Church is rightly putting its weight behind increased responsibility to the earth itself - that's the one in the famous picture, the one that is permanently under threat - and we are urged to do all we can to help.


Amen


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