Pentecost 19A2023
Isaiah 5:1-7
If, in hearing the first lesson from Isaiah, you scratched your head and wondered: Is this the God I know in Jesus? you aren’t alone. When Isaiah prophecies about a vineyard yielding wild grapes, the resulting condemnation strikes fast and fierce to our 21st century ears. We are less accustomed to the God of justice than we are to the God of love.
Isaiah’s prophecy springs up at a time of relative ease and stability in the history of Israel. A time of corruption by Jewish leaders, a time of idol worship, a time of hubris and denigration of the land, and most of all, a time of exploitation of those living in poverty. The vineyard of Isaiah’s prophecy are Israel’s leaders, and instead of yielding grapes, they yield wild grapes. Life’s ease leads Israel’s leaders to abandon the basics of their religion: to care for widows, orphans, and aliens, to care for the most vulnerable people of that age and place. And when the wild grapes of Israel exploit or forget those living in poverty, the landowner removes that hedge, tramples the wall, fails to prune and hoe. For the landowner “expected justice but saw bloodshed; righteousness but heard a cry!”
Any honest reading of Isaiah cannot skirt around the fact that the prophet declares consequences for unrighteousness, for failing to live in right relationship with God which really means living in right relationship with God’s people. Except the God we know in Jesus does not save or condemn people based on their actions. The God we know in Jesus loves us and all people. So how do we make sense of this scripture passage?
In the spring of 2015, while serving as pastor at Grace Lutheran Church in downtown Phoenix, we entered into a long-term facility use agreement with a preschool which economically benefited the church. When the director of the school initially came to pitch the idea, the first question I asked—and the first question every council member asked—was “Will it work for the preschool kids to be on the same property at the same time as folks with sex offenses on their record?” Because many in the Grace community had sex offenses on their record, we all wanted to be sure there wouldn’t be a legal problem. The director assured me it wouldn’t be a problem from the school’s perspective. With that and many other questions answered, we happily signed the facility use agreement, and the preschool moved in. A few months later, during our summer heat respite program, the summer outreach coordinator asked me the same question which I confidently dismissed. But the outreach coordinator said: “You’re right that it’s not a problem from the preschool’s perspective. The onus falls on the person with the sex offense to stay a certain distance away from children. You have made life harder for folks with sex offenses. If the police are ever on this property and happen to check someone’s status, that person will go back to prison for just being at the heat respite program.” You understand that, while sex offenses are serious crimes and incredibly traumatizing for the people who experience them and I am in no way minimizing the devastating impact that sex offenses have on others, on the street, sex offenders are at the very bottom of the social ladder. Sex offenders get beat up more and have a harder time finding friends to camp with and help them. So, not only do sex offenders face significant barriers with housing, employment, and simply public shaming, sex offenders are even marginalized among people experiencing homelessness. In the world of Grace Lutheran Church, sex offenders are the “least of these.”
I tell you this long story because, when I led the Grace community to sign that agreement with the preschool, I failed to care for the least of these. I was wrong. I led the congregation into something that hurt people. When I finally understood the impact of my actions, I sat in the outreach coordinator’s office and wept. (And I went home and wept and went on vacation and wept and came back and wept.) For me, it was a turning point that opened my eyes to my limitations in understanding and perspective. Moving forward, we discussed the situation as a council and as an outreach team, and we made a plan for how to still care for folks with sex offenses on their record in the deadly summer heat. And later that year, the school moved off the church campus.
When we abandon widows, orphans, aliens, or whoever is most vulnerable in any given society, there are consequences, and yeah, they’re not good. Despite what sounds like the harshest of consequences, God continues to be the Israelites’ God and the people of Israel, God’s people. This is only the 5th chapter of Isaiah; there are 60 more chapters to go of promise and accountability and promise again—as well as generations of faithfulness between God and the Jewish people to this very day—through both their failures and triumphs. Despite my own sadness when I failed in righteousness, God didn’t abandon me or condemn me eternally. But God did help me grow. The part of me that could spend 5 years hanging out every day with folks fresh from prison and folks who slept on cardboard every night, the part of me that could be in all those relationships and not see the impact of my actions needed to die. That hedge needed to be removed. That wall needed to be trampled. Yes, God loves me, loves me still, and God loves everyone else too. To be a God of love means holding accountable all humanity for loving one another.
Or to say it another way during this football season, God has drafted us for God’s team. God’s about loving the whole world, and God calls us to join God’s team in order to do just that. Quarterback Jesus doesn’t work alone here. The team reaches its goals when each player does their part. Yes, God does expect things of us, but when we fail, we’re still a part of the team.
Perhaps when we heard today’s passage from Isaiah, we wondered: Why is God picking on me? Why is God holding me accountable for unrealistically high moral standards? Doesn’t God love me just as I am? But if we read these stories from the perspective of those who are exploited, who are marginalized, who are shunned, this God of love makes all the sense in the world. From the perspective of the most vulnerable among us, this story proclaims a God who, in love, without abandoning relationship, will do everything in God’s power to create both a just and a loving world. For that, we can proclaim: Thanks be to God. Amen.