The legendary song writer Paul McCartney once penned: You'd think that people would've had enough of silly love songs, I look around me, and I see it isn't so; Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs; And what's wrong with that? I'd like to know, 'cause here I go again.
The Prophet Isaiah sings a silly love song to God’s vineyard, that is to say, God’s people. The song recounts the ways God’s hope and expectation were often met with our failings and disappointments. It’s a love song to creation that shows God expected justice, but there was bloodshed; righteousness, but there was a cry of distress! What makes this a silly love song, is that God sees all this and keeps trying to say I love you to this world. Over and over again, God looks around and sees that the vision for creation isn’t so. Nevertheless, God continues to sing love songs to God’s people to remind us of the never-ending love we find in God.
I invite you to reflect on Isiah’s song of the vineyard this week. How are you called to cultivate plantings in which God delights here and now? What love songs has God sung to you? How do expectations shape the ways we feel about one another?
Here Isaiah (5:1-7) goes again:
Let me sing for my loved one
a love song for his vineyard.
My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside.
He dug it,
cleared away its stones,
planted it with excellent vines,
built a tower inside it,
and dug out a wine vat in it.
He expected it to grow good grapes—
but it grew rotten grapes.
So now, you who live in Jerusalem, you people of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard:
What more was there to do for my vineyard
that I haven’t done for it?
When I expected it to grow good grapes,
why did it grow rotten grapes?
Now let me tell you what I’m doing to my vineyard.
I’m removing its hedge,
so it will be destroyed.
I’m breaking down its walls,
so it will be trampled.
I’ll turn it into a ruin;
it won’t be pruned or hoed,
and thorns and thistles will grow up.
I will command the clouds not to rain on it.
The vineyard of the Lord of heavenly forces is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah are the plantings in which God delighted.
God expected justice, but there was bloodshed;
righteousness, but there was a cry of distress!
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Chris