KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 10 October
Why did it yield wild grapes?
Isaiah 5. 1-7 is a wonderful love-song and a lament. It serves as a commentary on the creation stories of Genesis 1 & 2 and the story of the Fall in Genesis 3. “Let me sing for my beloved a love song concerning his vineyard,” it begins. The poet is singing a song for God, the beloved, concerning his vineyard; the triple reflexives are poignant and moving. A most powerful passage, it reveals to us in an affective manner the contradictions of our humanity.
The imagery is remarkable. Creation is imaged as a vineyard; even more, as the poem unfolds, our humanity, viewed in terms of “Jerusalem,” “the men of Judah” and “the house of Israel,” is described as a vineyard. “The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel.” The agricultural imagery takes us back to the themes of thanksgiving for the harvest which can only happen when we work in concert with the goodness of the created order. What this poem also reminds us is that we only too often make a mess of the created order.
Here that is imaged in terms of a divine lament. “My beloved had a vineyard”– us. God looks to his vineyard to bring forth grapes but, instead, “it yielded wild grapes.” The story of the Fall has cosmic repercussions. We turn the goodness of the vineyard of creation into a wilderness. This is part of the human condition that is beautifully but convincingly set before us. The failure lies not with God and his vineyard but with our humanity. How? By denying the will and purpose of God for our humanity and our world.
