God Feels Things

In a splendid biography of the early 20th century writer of French background but of English birth, Hillaire Belloc, A.N. Wilson tells a fascinating story. Belloc was one of those writers who, by virtue of the contract that he had with his publisher, had to produce copious amounts of literature, either essays or books or historical works, or for what he’s most noted: poems. Belloc was an amazing writer but at times he felt under great pressure to write even if he wasn’t inspired, and just for the sake of meeting the demands of his publisher he’d write something and wouldn’t be particularly happy with it.

Wilson tells a story of one day Belloc being on a train heading north out of London heading. He was sitting in the coach and noticed that the man opposite him was reading his book: A History of England. Belloc said to him, “How much did you pay for that book?”

The man told him. Belloc reached into his pocket, gave the man the exact sum he had paid, grabbed the book and threw it out of the train window, saying “It is not my best work.”

Then Belloc, in commenting on this according to Wilson, said, “Sometimes when you want to do good things you have to suffer.” He was saying something that biblical literature had said for thousands of years, namely that there often comes a time when for good to happen, something has to be given up or a cost has to be paid, or a ledger has to be adjusted.

Such was the case in our passage today from Isaiah. For it begins with “I will sing a love song to the one I love. I will sing a song to the one I love.” For Isaiah there was no question that this was a song of love from God and he was given the job of making sure that he spoke that word of love. But he did it in a song, a song that was to serve justice. It was a song that was to serve righteousness, but it was a song. Maybe words, ordinary words could have said what he wanted to say, but he felt a little bit, and I’m showing my age here like Jim Croce in the 1970’s, who said “Every time I tried to tell you, the words just came out wrong, so I'll have to say I love you in a song.”

Well Isaiah said to Israel, “God has to use a song to sing to you. God has to have a message for you. It’s a message for Israel, it’s a message for Judah and it is a song of love.” But what kind of song is it? Well it’s a song, and this is sad, of unrequited love. I think there are times in history and in theology when people think that God is sort of immovable and immutable and omnipotent. Because they believe that God is immutable, immovable, omnipotent, it’s as if God has no passion, no love, no engagement with the world. Well, I’m always ready to accept that there’s a certain immutability to God. God is consistent in his love and justice and righteousness. It is the very nature of God himself.

I am never prepared to accept that God is so immutable that he is unaffected by the things that happen on Earth by our human behaviour, and the way we treat one another. Rather, God is deeply moved by what happens to his people. God is deeply moved by what happens to the world. God is not distant with no feeling. God is passionate with a profound engagement. The illustration that the song uses is that of a vineyard, a vineyard we’re told that God had originally planted on a hillside in fertile ground. The rains could run down the hills and continue to feed the vines on the hill going into the valley. God had pruned these wonderful vines and planted we’re told the very best vines for the very best grapes. God had set up a watchtower to look over the vines, to make sure that everything was protected and safe and nothing could damage, neither the frost nor the sun nor the drought. The watchtower was looking out for thieves as well. God was protecting this vineyard and had planted this vineyard with the very, very best things.

Then at the end of the song there is a sad, sad statement. “But you,” he said, “have produced bad fruit. You have produced bad wine.” Who was he talking about here? Well Isaiah tells us who he’s talking about. He interprets the song for us. He tells us that Judah and Israel are the vineyard and God is the vintner. It is Israel and Judah who had been given all these opportunities to do great things and to produce great wine, but rather they produced bad things and God is upset and disappointed. The song begins by using the word in Hebrew for disappointed. God is broken-hearted. It’s an unrequited love. He gave them everything and they produced bad fruit, so God makes a second appeal to them.

Now the song is finished. Now Isaiah himself is the only one who’s speaking. He is quite direct and quite straightforward telling them that these are the things that you have done wrong. You’d been given a fertile land. You’d been given all these wonderful things. But now, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to take down the fences around the vineyard. I’m going to remove the walls around the vineyard. I am not going to prune anymore. I’m not going to let the rain fall on you anymore. I’m going to leave you desolate because of what you’ve done. You’re going to be open then to the attack of other powers. You’re going to be open to your enemies who want to destroy you, Judah and Israel. You are going to be laid bare before the whole world because I’m going to take down my fences.

Years ago in my university days in South Africa I had a very good friend whose father owned a vineyard in the town of Worcester in the Western Cape. He was part of a consortium that produced the very best wine-growing grapes that South Africa could produce, and then the consortium would then make them into fine wines. I toured the vineyard from time to time and saw how it developed. I would stay there for the weekends, a wonderful place in the hills outside of Cape Town, and I noticed something about their vineyard. It wasn’t actually that big, but around it there was netting and fencing. I was told that they could actually plant more vines but they wouldn’t be able to pay for the fencing to be able to cover them and to protect them so they decided they would have only the very best vines and fewer of them by putting this netting and this fencing around.

Why did they do that? Because of baboons. Baboons love grapes and if they can get their hands on a grape it’ll be thrown at you. Baboons will sit in the middle of a vineyard and pull the grapes from the trees until it gets a stomach ache and becomes ill. It’s not a pretty sight I’ve been told. Then the baboons get mad they’re not well, and it just goes from bad to worse. Do not let the baboons into the vineyard. They put up these nets and the baboons couldn’t get by them. But it was a decision they made, and the decision that they made - and this is quite significant for the biblical story - the decision that they made was to make sure that they had the right protection in order to produce the best grapes and to produce the best vines and therefore to have the best wine. They paid a cost, not making as much money, creating fewer bushels than possible, but they maintaining a higher quality.

This is what Isaiah was saying to Israel. Never mind your own ideas and wishes and greed. Listen to God. God has provided you with fencing and netting and walls and safety and security in order that you might produce good wine. But they didn’t. If God from his broken heart is to say I’m taking down the walls, what is Israel to do?  The answer is that they’re to practise and carry out justice. Justice in biblical times was not a theory, it’s not like John Rawls, a concept, but rather it is something that is much more concrete. For the people in biblical times, their notion of justice was based on a retributive justice. In other words, sometimes people need to be corrected. Sometimes wrongs need to be put right and the problem with Israel in the time of Isaiah was that the corrupt were getting away with things and the poor and the dispossessed are the ones who were treated by the courts with injustice.

Isaiah looks at this and he sees the greed and the avarice of people who are in power trampling on the weak, and he says what you need is justice, but a true, retributive justice. A balancing, if we use our own model, of the scales of justice so that they are in fact just. It is a redistributive justice here. And the redistributive justice is that there is a greater equality. What had happened was the monarchy had become corrupt. What had happened in Judah and in Israel was that the people in power had become corrupt, and therefore they were hoarding things. And because they were hoarding things, the poor went without.

And what Isaiah is saying when he says you need justice is you need redistributive justice. You need procedural justice, another biblical concept of justice. Procedural justice, the way that justice is carried out, the way that the courts act, the way that the law is carried out. This was sophisticated in biblical times. This wasn’t just some sort of made-up law that was only the Ten Commandments, this was a system, a procedural system that Israel was not practising and not carrying out. In other words the innocent often could not make an appeal to the court because they’d be blocked by the powerful and the corrupt. Even in substance, even substantive justice was being denied because God, who biblically was seen as the source of justice, was being ignored and removed.

What does God do? What does he do when he says to Israel, “You’ve now got to practise justice and righteousness? Well, he did the greatest thing that he could do. He practised restorative justice. Sometimes when you listen to scholars today you would think that restorative justice is a new concept or a new phenomenon, and it’s as old as the biblical prophets. God wants to restore to those who have had taken from them what is rightly theirs. The whole concept of Jubilee is based on that, of handing back after many years the gift of freedom from those who have become enslaved by debt, those who find themselves at odds with the will of God and with the court.

God wants to put right that which is wrong. But at the same time he points out that for Israel to practise justice and righteousness, they have to change. What follows, and if you follow in Chapter 5, you’ll notice that there are woes to the people of Israel. “Woe to you who are greedy, woe to you who are cynical, woe to you who are morally perverse, woe to you who practise avarice, woe to you who have turned their back on God, woe to those who do not practise justice.” God desires and loves Israel so much he wants it to turn around. God loved them as they were but he didn’t want them to stay that way. He wanted them to change.

This morning, let us not think about nominal change, let us think about ways we can really substantially change. There’s not one of us in some component in our lives that does not need the retributive redistributive substantial restorative justice of God. We all need it in our lives. Sometimes we treat change in our lives as if it is a facile thing. This reminds me of a story by Harry Kallas, the television reporter who was covering the great pitcher from the Atlanta Braves, Greg Maddux. He said on air, “Oh, Greg Maddux, he’s had a complete turnaround in his life. He used to be depressed and miserable and now he’s miserable and depressed.” In other words, facile. Not a real change at all.

That’s, I think what Israel was trying to play with. They were trying to avoid the command of God to change. They just wanted to be like they were. In our own lives, think about the ways God’s word speaks to you, because maybe 2,600 years have gone by since Isaiah, maybe we’re not in Jerusalem, maybe we’re not Judah, maybe the Babylonians are not on our doorstep, but it’s the same God and there’s the immutability. The same God who’s pouring out his love and his grace and saying to every one of us, “You’re a vineyard in which I have built the very best vines, but I want you now to change in such a way that that vine produces good wine, good fruit, the best.”

In a few moments you’ll be receiving the gift of bread and wine grape. Jesus says “I am the true vine.” At the wedding of Cana he served the best wine. Jesus was seen when he gave his self in the Upper Room in the Passover. He says, “This cup, this vine, this grape is the new blood in my covenant. This is me giving myself for you.” You know when I said something good costs something? Well something great, namely God’s love, costs something for God. In response to that, we come forward and receive these gifts but we do so, not in a facile way but in the recognition that as we take them. Maybe in matters of righteousness and morality, in matters of justice and equity, we have to change, all of us. Because that is the song that God sings to us this Sunday. God is saying to us “I will sing a song to the ones I love.” This is a God who feels deeply. Amen.