A pastor went to visit one of the older couples in the church. They were out working in their garden and it was a sight! It was filled with perfectly pruned vines, bushes, trees, which bore lushes flowers and fruits. It was absolutely breathtaking. The woman, noticing the pastor’s arrival paused her work and went over. The pastor commented, “God has certainly blessed you with a magnificent farm.” She looked out over the garden, thought for a moment and said, “Yes, He has, and we’re grateful. But you should have seen this place when He had it all to Himself.” That’s a great little story that I heard this week while discussing the lessons and it really put me to thinking, studying, reflecting and remembering. About 16 years ago we moved out into the country onto a piece of land that had been in another family for many, many years. The family showed us the grapevine that many jars of preserves had come from, and the apple tree and other fruit trees. We saw an aerial photograph of all the gardens. You could walk around the land and sense and see its beauty, but the thing is, there had been no workers in the vineyard, so to speak, for quite some time. The muscadine vine had been overcome with other vines, honeysuckle, thorns and poison oak and the muscadine vine had gone wild and shot up a big, old silver oak tree and was choking the life out of it. I tried and tried to get it back, but with little knowledge, little time, and little help it was, at least for me, a lost cause. There was also a rose bush choked in the midst of vines and briars. The lady that had lived there for a long, long time was known for her flowers so I dug, I cut, and I worked and but the plant just withered. It was next to an ancient stump and there was just a nightmare of unruly mess all around so I just had to burn that area. Not long after, I went to that area and was cleaning up and raking it out and there was a stem with a rose. I was able to then dig it up, poison oak free and replant it next to the house where it grows to this day. The ability of the vineyard to produce was hampered, and was ill affected by the lack of workers. Really, I can’t think of a better line under our national churches logo than God’s work, our hands. It really gets at the point of this week’s readings, all four of them. God’s work, our hands, highlights the opportunity to celebrate who we are as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America – one church, freed in Christ to serve and love our neighbor. It doesn’t mean we save it up, do it one day a year. God’s work our hands is a reality for everyday, every hour, every minute, every second living. God has freed us through Jesus Christ and has bestowed grace upon grace upon us, a vineyard, where God’s expectation is our thankfulness, Jesus tells us, “I am the vine and you are the branches and those that abide in me and bear fruit.” What’s abiding look like? Following Jesus’ commandment to love one another, for that is the work of the vineyard. Remember in Isaiah God asks, “When I expected it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes?” and he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry! God planted love and came to find instead grapes of wrath. The imagery of the vineyard and what Jesus expects of us and what is going on works so well, even into this day and our literature. Jesus tells us explicitly about how when we do good things or evil things to another person, that we are doing it directly to him. Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ How are we doing in the vineyard? Are we cultivating love for our neighbors or are we tending the grapes of wrath? Steinbeck’s title of his book, The Grapes of Wrath was not by accident. He wrote about the injustices perpetrated upon those who had been driven from their homes and farms by the dust bowl situation and the Great Depression which came together in a perfect storm. The land in vast portions of the US ceased to produce due to a lack of crop rotation and over working the land so families had to go in search of work and food. Families headed west to find an overabundance of food, however it was being destroyed in front of them in order to keep the prices of produce up. Steinbeck wrote, “ The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is a failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. Here the grapes of wrath become part of a system of perversion, an agriculture that produces violence and decay instead of fruit. There’s death where life should have been: the corn choked by dust; the soil stripped of nitrogen; and the stillborn baby of Rose of sharon, the Joads’ eldest daughter, dead in the womb from malnutrition.” Do we dare think this is actually fiction at its core? Right now in the US 40% of our food is thrown away. That’s 165 billion dollars worth. That’s 20 pounds per person every month. Before the pandemic hit 35.2 million people lived in food insecurity in the United States. To grasp how much food we are talking about here, imagine a professional football stadium and fill that up with food. That’s a lot of food, right? Now to get the actual right amount, imagine 739 more of them. The hungry are among us and throughout the world and I have actually seen food thrown into dumpsters and contaminated with bleach to keep people from scavenging it under the myth that you could be sued for someone getting sick. Feeding the hungry is but one of the things that Jesus expects from his vineyard. Isaiah issues a warning to the people in the first lesson and that warning goes unheeded and Israel finds the shoe on the other foot. We see their lament and bewilderment in the psalm for today. It was written not long after the time of first Isaiah and after Israel had been conquered by the Babylonians and many carried off into captivity. The psalmist blames God for removing the “hedge” and places his people in the victim seat. As human beings we love to avoid responsibility for our transgressions. We often resort to what the psychologists and counsellors call DARVO. DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. It describes how some people may react when they are accused of or held responsible for bad behavior. People may use DARVO to deflect blame and responsibility for the wrongdoing. Deny: the person will deny that they did anything wrong. Sometimes they will acknowledge something happened, but that whatever happened wasn’t that bad and that it didn’t cause any harm. Attack: some people will attack the credibility of their accusers, making it seem like the accusers are untrustworthy and should therefore not be believed. People may say that their accusers are liars, mentally ill, or have ulterior motives. Reverse Victim and Offender: finally, some people will try to convince others that they are the “true” victim, and that their accuser is actually the guilty one. The psalmist is trying it and then Jesus sees the same thing going on as so many of God’s children are being ignored and he too proclaims judgment, and yet again the people are not just shocked and bewildered but angry and seek and accomplish his death. Jesus got DARVO’d. From their very mouths the people acknowledge that vengeance is justified upon those that keep the fruits of God’s garden to themselves but they refuse to see themselves in Jesus’ parable, essentially a modified recounting of Isaiah. But a very strange thing happens. The Son’s death is accomplished on the cross, yet from Jesus’ mouth as he dies come not words of promised vengeance and curses but words of grace and forgiveness. Because of that grace our sins are forgiven. The bloodshed and the cries of suffering, the oppression and injustice, forgiven. Are we thankful? Out of that thankfulness do we put our hands to God’s work? Do we set a table for our neighbor out of love and thankfulness or do we point Jesus to the bleach filled dumpster of chicken biscuits on their way to a landfill? Let us go forth from this day putting our hands to God’s work and let the prayer of St Francis be upon our lips, hearts and hands. “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console, To be understood as to understand, To be loved as to love;b For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” Amen
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