Bad Grapes!
by Jim Westmoreland
Baby strollers, toilet brushes, laser printers and birthday candles
all carry cautions, some of them so common-sense that they're
comical. But there's nothing wacky about warning labels from
God!
People are suing companies for everything these days, from defective toilet seats to hard-to-open pickle jars, and the cost of doing business is skyrocketing. Bob Dorigo-Jones, president of Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, reports that the Girl Scouts of Metro Detroit now have to sell 36,000 boxes of cookies simply to pay for insurance coverage, just in case they're sued.
Today, companies are responding to the threat of lawsuits by slapping common-sense warnings on their products. These messages seem like no-brainers, but you can't be too careful. You might say that frivolous lawsuits have given birth to a new cultural phenomenon, the wacky warning label.
For example:
--A label on a baby stroller warns: "Remove child before folding."
--A household iron warns users: "Never iron clothes while they are being worn."
--A cartridge for a laser printer says: "Do not eat toner."
--A 13-inch wheel on a wheelbarrow warns: "Not intended for highway use."
--A dishwasher carries this warning: "Do not allow children to play in the dishwasher."
The fifth chapter of Isaiah begins with a warning in the form of a love-song, sung by the prophet Isaiah, a song that tells of God and his vineyard. The historical context for this passage goes back to the eights century B.C. Israel and Judah, the northern and southern kingdoms resulting from the breakup of the united kingdom of David and Solomon, were being threatened by advancing Assyrian armies around 722 BC. Isaiah saw this threat as God's judgment for the injustice and apostasy of God's people and spoke that message to the people. This lyrical poem describes them as a vineyard that failed to produce good fruit and so had to be destroyed.
"My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill,” sings Isaiah. “He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; he expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes." (Isaiah 5:1-2). The Lord did everything he could to prepare the vineyard for a crop of good grapes, but it produced only bad fruit (NRSV).
God is unhappy with this outcome, so he brings a legal case to the people of Judah. "Judge between me and my vineyard," says the Lord. "What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?" (vv. 3-4).
The Lord followed all the proper vineyard procedures, but still he got bad grapes. So he asks the people of Judah to settle the case and determine who is to blame. Are the wild grapes the fault of God, or the fault of the vineyard? Are they the fault of the manufacturer, or the fault of the customer?
Well, if a child plays in a dishwasher, we have to blame the customer, not the dishwasher-maker.
If a woman steps on a 12-inch rack for compact disks and falls, we have to blame her for not obeying the warning label that was prominently placed on the CD rack: "Do not use as a ladder."
In the case of the bad grapes in Isaiah, the same is true: The fault lies with the vineyard.
God is fed up with the wild grapes that have taken over his vineyard, so he issues this warning: "And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, break down its wall, make it a waste, and] also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it" (vv. 5-6).
This warning label couldn't be any clearer: Producing bad fruit can result in injury, dismemberment or death. Wild grapes will be trampled down, returned to dust. God is issuing a caution that is as obvious as the sticker on a popular, manufactured fireplace log: "Caution - Risk of Fire."
By now, you've probably figured out that this passage of Scripture has nothing to do with vineyards, and everything to do with the behavior of the people of Israel. "For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel," concludes Isaiah, "and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!" (v. 7). Although the people of Israel and Judah were planted and watered properly, they turned into bad grapes. Instead of practicing justice and righteousness, they fell into violence and dishonesty. They became like the man in a New Yorker cartoon, talking with a friend in a coffee shop. "I've tried a lot of life strategies," he says, "and being completely self-serving works best for me."
You might say that the people of Israel and Judah misused the abilities and opportunities that God gave them. They were like an electric drill, made for woodworking, that carried the warning, "This product not intended for use as a dental drill."
• God made them for justice, but they practiced injustice.
• God made them to be fruitful, but they were barren.
• God made them for righteousness, but they practiced wickedness.
• God made them for service, but they preferred strong drink (5:11).
• God made them for good, but they practiced evil (5:20).
• God made them for truth, but they uttered falsehoods.
• God made them to dwell in light, but they live in darkness.
They failed to be what they were created to be, and to do what God intended them to do, and the result of their failure is complete and total destruction. This is God's warning. And it's not a wacky one at all.
So, how are we doing in our attempts to grow into the fruit he intended for us to be? God has done everything that can be done to help us to be fruitful, but there are daily choices that we must make if we are to keep from going bad. If we think that the practice of our faith exists apart from the church, we are like a single grape vine calling itself a vineyard. When Jesus, as you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me, he called us as individuals and corporately as a religious community to be involved. And, so we must ask ourselves, Are we paying attention to the issues of justice and righteousness that God considers to be so important to our fruitfulness?
Justice and righteousness. They are important now, just as they were important in the time of Isaiah and Jesus.
To avoid the fate of the wild grapes, we have to pay attention to issues of materialism, poverty, justice and righteousness. "You shall not steal" is as important a warning label as it was when it first appeared in the Ten Commandments, as is the caution "You shall not covet your neighbor's house" (Exodus 20:15, 17). What do these commandments challenge you to do in your school, in your workplace, in your neighborhood?
Moses says that you "shall not deprive a resident alien, (imagine that–immigration issues in ancient Israel?) or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow's garment in pledge" (Deuteronomy 24:17). What does this say about the way we treat immigrants in our country, as well as women and children who are struggling to survive?
Jesus spits out the warning, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith" (Matthew 23:23). What does this warning label say to us when we focus more on the good of the church than on the good of our neighborhood and our community?
Yet, we can't forget that there is Gospel here. As pastor Michael Bingenheimer of Ascension Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas, notes: God still called them `loved' even though God has these complaints against them. God was not giving up on them. God's desire was for them to repent and return. God knows that our daily lives don't always reflect justice and righteousness. God doesn't give up on us either, but He wants us to come with repentant hearts so that we might be fruitful. Only God has the power to remove the wildness of sin from our hearts that causes us to center our lives around our goals, our dreams, and our efforts. When His Spirit begins to control us and produce His fruit in us, we are noticeably less anxious because we are no longer trying to control everything, and we are at peace with ourselves and others.
That said, justice and righteousness are what God expects of us - people who have been created as "his pleasant planting" (Isaiah 5:7). The Lord wants us to work for honesty and justice and peace in the world around us, and to be people who are living in harmony with him and with our neighbors. This is the secret to being good grapes, and avoiding the kind of desolation and destruction that can come to unfruitful vineyards.
To stand for justice is to stand against injustice. To stand for truth is to oppose hypocrisy and falsehood. G. K. Chesterton observed that tolerance is the easy virtue of people who do not believe anything. An unknown poet put it this way:
Popularity was his middle name.
Its prod was pride, its price was pain.
He never learned the word called, "no."
They spoke of him as "good old Joe."
His life was one long laughing spell,
and how he felt you couldn't tell.
His favorite words were "yes," and "sure."
Yes, good old Joe was Simon Pure.
So when he died they wrote these lines,
and laid him down midst whispering pines.
"Here lies a man - his name was Joe.
But what he stood for, we'll never know."
You couldn't have said that about Jesus. If we produce God’s fruit in the vineyard of our lives, people will know what we stand for, and they will know about love and forgiveness from us too. Amen
Century Christian Church, August 19, 2007 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland
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