I’ve
been sitting with our reading from Isaiah this week. In it, the prophet sings a
song of the love of God for his vineyard. The song tells of how God chose his
site, on a very fertile hill, taking into account aspect and drainage; of how
he turned over the soil, and got earth under his fingernails clearing out the
stones; of how he selected the best vines, and planted them; built a
watch-tower to protect them; and then, while the grapes grew, how he hewed-out
a wine-vat from a large rock, a basin in which to tread the grapes, with a
channel cut for the juice to flow out from, to be collected in wineskins to
ferment. It is a horticulturally-slow labour of love, that conjures up the
image of a hard patch of skin on the ball of the thumb from the rub of a tool
handle, and the deep satisfaction of tired limbs at the end of the day, when
God looks at what he has done and declares it good. Very good. But when the
grapes have grown, they are small and bitter.
The
prophet turns from singing of God to
giving voice to God, asking his
listeners, ‘What did I do wrong? Was there anything more I should have done and
failed to do?’ And the audience surely responds, ‘No, you’re good.’
God
continues: ‘This, then, is what I plan to do: I shall take my cultivated
vineyard and return it to the wild. I will no longer prune or hoe or irrigate,
no longer tend the garden. If my vines choose to bear wild grapes, then wild
let them be.’ And the audience, listening to the song, must surely agree that
this is an entirely reasonable course of action. And then comes the sting in
the tail: you are the vineyard, o
listeners, o divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah. God expected fruitful lives,
a celebration of his goodness; but instead all he found was the bitterness of
injustice.
Alongside
listening to Isaiah’s song—and wondering whether we celebrate all that God has
done for us, or blame God for the bitterness of life—I have been thinking about
our second reading, from Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi, where he
lists the ways in which God had prepared his life with good things in hope of
fruitfulness, and in response longs to be fruitful, to offer something precious
back to God just as grapes, when crushed—their skins now a waste product—offer
up wine to the owner of the vineyard.
And
I have been thinking about the ways in which God has invested in me, within the
context of a ‘vineyard’ or community of his people, or, church.
The
first church I can remember being part of was a city-centre Church of Scotland.
There, I drew-in a love for scripture, in a place where being allowed to go out
to the evening service as well as the morning one, at around the same age as
starting secondary school, was held as a real rite-of-passage into adulthood by
the youth.
In
time, we moved from there to a more local church. That community had come out
of a Brethren Assembly. The Brethren don’t have clergy, but allow any adult man
to share whatever God had spoken to him that week in his personal devotions;
and this group came out because they felt that women should be empowered to
share on an equal footing. This was a church that both valued and questioned
their tradition. Others joined, from other backgrounds; and this community
studied the Bible and Church History together to determine what they believed
on a wide range of issues. So, for example, Brethren and Baptists dedicated
their children and practiced adult baptism, while families who had joined from
Presbyterian or Episcopalian backgrounds baptised their children. In this and
other matters, the members of West Glasgow New Church considered their own
practice, consolidating or changing their view, but seeking to create room for
those whose conscience led them to uphold a different practice.
When
I went to university, in England, I discovered both the Church of England and
the charismatic movement. In Sheffield, we experienced services where, in
response to hearing God’s word, scores of people would come forward for prayer,
week after week, deeply aware of God’s holiness and of their need for God’s
healing touch or simply life-giving presence in their lives. It was like those
accounts in the Gospels of whole towns turning out for Jesus to heal their
sick. Or the crowds who followed him from place to place; for this was a
community that engaged not only with getting healed-up but with the lifelong
process of becoming more like Jesus.
For
my curacy, we moved to a church in north Liverpool. In a similar way to how a
significant part of our congregation here in Sunderland is made up of
asylum-seekers and refugees, a significant part of the congregation there was
made up of people in Recovery [Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous].
Their lives were messy. Their relationships were messy. Their lives were being
transformed by Jesus, but that is a lifelong process—with lots of set-backs
along the way. In fact, the kind of process we are talking about in such broken
lives takes several generations, because our brokenness has a big impact on our
children: the good news is that God works to save not only us, but our children
and our children’s children. In many ways, the church was dysfunctional; but it
was a community being transformed by the difficult, costly love of Jesus—and it
held out hope to the wider community through its foodbank and debt advice and
playgroup and community breakfasts.
From
inner-city Liverpool we moved to the suburban village of Birkdale, where I
continued my curacy in two churches that were wrestling with the concerns of
growing old. Both congregations wanted to grow younger, and this too was a
third-age issue: many of them were grandparents who lived far [in some cases,
across the globe] from their grandchildren, and needed more children in their
lives. They were also worried that, as more of their peers died, their story
would be lost, because our stories are held collectively on trust for one another,
and our stories matter. I guess at times they felt like grapes crushed
underfoot, and certainly as with pressed grapes there was a certain amount of
rubbish to be strained out, but by-and-large the fruitfulness of their lives
was sweet, when it could so easily have been bitter.
All
of which brings me to this place, this vineyard, with all that has gone before
in the past. The past is a hillside, or several hillsides, I am thankful to
have been planted in; but I don’t want to live in the past. The questions that
concern me are, how has God shown his faithful loving-kindness to us, here?
Will we sing a love-song for the Lord, our beloved, concerning our lives, our
community—or will we withhold our song and so be bitter to the taste? And if we
sing, what story would our love-song tell?
I
think it might tell stories of sharing in the sufferings and death and
resurrection life of Christ. Of Mackem men and women who have known
bereavement, from the death of a parent or partner to the empty-nest of
children leaving home. Of Iranians who have lost everything. All discovering
that they are loved into new life by God, slowly, patiently, at great cost. Learning
to embrace our fragile life and offer it back in fruitful thanks and praise, in
taking a stand against injustice and rejoicing when the cry of the orphan and
widow and alien is heard. Failing and falling, and finding in the end of the
world as we have known it the anticipation of the one to come.
At
times, our song might be led by the choir and the organ, but also resound in
the clanging of tins for the foodbank, and the slap of feet at our ceilidhs,
and the dancing of children at the summer specials. Or in the silent prayers
raised heavenward every day in this place, and the splash of colour of the
flowers, and the stained-glass projected onto the white wall of the chancel. In
the register that records every child and adult baptised here, and in the
eulogies spoken at funerals. And in the bringing forward of bread and wine,
broken, poured-out, and shared together.
So,
let us sing a new song to the Lord, songs of sufferings and death and
resurrection. And in the words of the Choristers’ Prayer: ‘Grant that what we
sing with our lips we may believe in our hearts, and what we believe in our
hearts we may show forth in our lives. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’
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