Sermon for August 14, 2022 – 10th Sunday after Pentecost

by The Rev. Robert Schoeck

Silly Love Songs

For the past few weeks, we have been accompanying Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem. Instead of continuing our journey with Jesus, I want to pause for a moment and turn our attention back to the first reading from Isaiah. As I sat with our readings that first line from Isaiah struck a chord in my heart. “Let me sing for my beloved, my love-song concerning the vineyard.” For most of this week, I have been walking around the office humming or singing parts of the song “Silly Love Songs” by Wings, which was one of Paul and Linda McCartney’s post-Beatles projects. The opening verse continued to take root in my mind all week, “You’d think that people would have had enough of silly love songs.” And even though I was singing this more lighthearted love song, I also thought about other love songs; songs of love lost, songs like “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen or “Another Lonely Day” by Ben Harper. These, and many song like them, are love songs even if they are laments of what once was, but is now gone. In his song “Hallelujah,” Leonard Cohen sings:

“I did my best, it wasn’t much

I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch

I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you

And even though it all went wrong

I’ll stand before the lord of song

With nothing on my tongue but hallelujah”

There is a melancholy tone to the song, as if he is lamenting the love that he had and in the end, even though that love is gone, he stands before God with nothing on his tongue and heart but hallelujah. Even in the darkness of the moment, there is still hope as he thanks God for that gift of love and sings hallelujah. This is reminiscent of our funeral service, where in the Commendation we say, “All of us go down to the dust, yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

In my own journey, the song “Another Lonely Day” by Ben Harper is similarly a song about what once was, but is no longer. In this song Ben sings:

“Yesterday seems like a life ago

'Cause the one I love

Today I hardly know

You I held so close in my heart oh dear

Grow further from me with every fallen tear

It wouldn't have worked out anyway

So now it's just another lonely day

Further along we just may

But for now it's just another lonely day”

Both of these songs have long been written on my heart, and to me they both sound very similar to this love-song from Isaiah…a loving and longing lament for what was, coupled with the crushing reality of what is.

I imagine that most of us are familiar with the anguish of disappointed expectations. The worst disappointments - the pregnancy that never happened, the promotion that never materialized, the romance that turned into betrayal - can almost ruin us with bitterness. We have all had the experience of having done everything right, only to have our efforts result in no return. It is not hard for us to hear and understand this love song from Isaiah, with its disappointed gardener.

In Isaiah’s love-song, the gardener has done everything right. The land was fertile; the work was proper and thorough. The gardener did everything to protect his vineyard and help it grow, so that it would bear sweet grapes for the enjoyment and nourishment of many, but the vineyard yielded wild, bitter grapes with large seeds and very little fruit, as if the gardener had planted nothing at all. What he tasted was disappointment.

The gardener then turns to his sympathetic audience and asks a question, “What more was there to do that I have not done?” The implication is clear…nothing more. The gardener did everything right, but the vineyard failed. He started singing a love song for his vineyard; now he sings a lament for a disaster, and it ends on a note of finality, “What more was there to do?” We all know the answer…nothing.

The gardener then asks another question, “Why?…When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?” Sooner or later, almost anyone facing disappointment comes to this question. In the text, as in life, there are no straight answers. Circumstances crush us, and we have no explanation. We ask why, and we look for good reasons…and we find none. Likewise, the gardener gets no answer to the question.

Having pled his case, the gardener makes his decision; he will do nothing more for this piece of land. He will abandon it, let it turn back into a wild field. This sounds like the right thing to do. This is what we counsel people in intractable situations to do; give up, let it go, move on. The gardener will do nothing more.

Now the gardener says one last thing. “I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it,” thus creating a wild and barren wasteland. With that, the identity of the gardener is revealed. Only God can withhold rain. This is not just any vineyard owner; this is the divine gardener. One revelation leads to another, and now the identity of the vineyard is revealed as well. “For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant plantings; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!” What started as a song has turned into a parable and now the world of the parable breaks open with a crash. God’s people are the vineyard that has not produced, and God has given up.

It would be easy to read this love song, this song of lament, as only a word about ancient Israel in the time of Isaiah, a prophecy of the enemy’s military victory over Jerusalem. Isaiah’s indictment, however, is as relevant and poignant now as ever: “[God] expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!” The accusation is harsh and penetrating. Although Isaiah speaks in the broadest terms we do not have to look far for examples of bloodshed where justice should be, or cries of pain in place of righteousness. The Pope’s recent pilgrimage here to Canadian soil only highlights the emotional and physical pain, the languages and cultures lost, and the deaths of children experienced by the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis at the hands of colonizers and missionaries who embodied a Eurocentric exceptionalism disguised as the Gospel. The vineyard is to produce sweet fruit for the nourishment of the world. God nurtures, protects, and tends, yet the world still goes hungry for the gift God’s people were meant to bear. Our text is clear though…God may give up.

But how could this be? Do we not sing psalms of a God whose “steadfast love endures forever?” Do we not gather at this table together and hear again words flung over us like a blanket: “God is steadfast in love and infinite in mercy; he welcomes sinners and invites them to this table?” Does God really give up? Is it possible to reach a point of no return? Are we already there?

In this passage, Isaiah’s words do not offer much hope. There is only judgement in them, and sadness; a deep and profound sadness. They picture what happens when a people refuse the care and nurture lavished upon them, or accept it, but only keep it for themselves. God, according to Isaiah, will let us have what we want; self-governance, autonomy from the divine gardener, and the inevitable destruction and self-destruction that results from following ourselves.

There is good news here though, in that, like almost every psalm of lament found in our psalter, there is still hope that God hasn’t given up, that God hasn’t pack up and left the building leaving us to our own devices. Almost every psalm and song of lament starts in that low place of darkness, that place of hopelessness, but they almost all end in a place of trust and hope that God’s will and desire for His Creation, the upside down kingdom of God, will prevail. There is hope that when we tap into the darkness of the human condition: selfishness, greed, and making personal gains at the expense of others, that we will be pulled out of that darkness by the light and love of God. If God gave up there would be no incarnation; God becoming human in Jesus. If God gave up there would be no resurrection that puts an end to the finality of death. Everything that God has done throughout scripture and continues to do for us, proves that God has not and will not give up on us.

Although not specifically written in this love song, there is hope yet, but first the people must be willing to see the horrible things Isaiah sees, like bloodshed where justice is meant to be, and the terrible things he hears, like cries of pain instead of righteousness. If we can face such devastation and our own part in it, we might just be ready to shed our darkness and submit again to the cracked, dirty, and aching hands of the master gardener, who still dreams of and sings for a vineyard yielding fat, gorgeous fruit for the whole world.

Amen.