by CCW | 11 October 2018 14:34
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.
The poem turns from the images of agriculture to the images of justice. In other words, the poem turns towards the ethical much in the manner of Socrates and Plato. The harmony of the created order and the possibilities of the good fruits of the harvest are really a kind of justice, the justice of creation which sin betrays. The poet imagines God “look[ing] for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry!” This highlights the extent and the nature of our disobedience and denial of the truth and goodness of creation. We turn the vineyard into a wasteland, a point that T.S. Eliot saw only too well in his modern classic, The Waste Land.
The wild grapes are connected to our disorder and disarray, to human injustice; a reminder to us of the connections between the social and the political and the created world, a sensibility, I fear, that we have forgotten. Isaiah reminds us of the rich seams of ethical thought that belong to philosophy and religion. The love-song convicts us of the contradictions of our souls in a most beautiful way through the mechanism of divine lament. The contrast between God’s purpose for his creation and our betrayal of that purpose could not be more strongly highlighted. And yet, the love-song seeks to move us to an awareness of our condition and separation from God and the goodness of the created order. It recalls us to truth and goodness in the face of our disarray. It recalls us to the divine love which made us and made us ultimately for himself “in whom we live and move and have our being,” as Paul will put it centuries later drawing upon ancient Cretan poet.
One of the great things about Chapel is not simply that students and faculty alike, regardless of their religious or non-religious predilections, are exposed to some of the greatest stories of our humanity but that these stories confront us with ourselves and awaken us, perhaps, to a more humble thoughtfulness. My hope and prayer is that will carry over into how we deal with one another both in the community of the School and in our global world.
Why did it yield wild grapes? It is a kind of cri de coeur from the heart of God to our hearts. It convicts us and moves us.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2018/10/11/kes-chapel-reflection-week-of-10-october/
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