Suggested Readings: Psalm 63:1-8, Isaiah 5:1-7, Luke 6:43-45
Today’s passage from Isaiah is beautiful and troubling. The first stanza draws me into the beloved’s mind, sharing their vision of a fair planting and admiring their labor and devotion to make it come about. The final phrase—“but it yielded wild grapes”—twists like a knife. I have been the beloved; I have put fortune, sweat, and faith into people who have let me down. I have felt the rage and the sense of betrayal that springs from such a setback.
The third and fourth stanzas are horrifying. It’s one thing to walk away from the vineyard, but to break down its wall, to deliberately make it a wasteland? The shift from grapes to people in the fourth stanza makes the ugly logic of revenge even more stark; the beloved’s rage leveled ancient Jerusalem, and the same kind of rage levels much of Gaza and Ukraine today. I can’t accept it, and yet I have keenly felt the desire to take this kind of revenge. I have never actually taken such harsh actions (have I?), but I am implicated all the same.
So, how do I respond to the (poet’s? beloved’s?) call for judgment in the second stanza? I can’t condemn the beloved: not for their work, nor even for their expectations. I can’t blame the vines (they are just vines!), or even the people the vines represent (they are just people!). This poem drags me fully into the emotions that fuel violence and retaliation, and I find it very hard to drag myself out.
Luke’s Gospel passage offers a way to understand the tragedy of the vineyard, and reading it in context gives me hope. Luke 6:37 commands: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged…”, and today’s verses reinforce the importance of sound judgment. I can’t expect grapes from a bramble bush, and I have no right to vengeance (if ever) when I mistake one for the other.
The imperative I take from this morning’s reading is to pray ever more urgently for discernment, and for the humility to recognize the limits of my discernment. Like David in Psalm 63, I am in the wilderness, and “…my soul thirsts for you…”.
William Hooper
