Not Yet Dead

Rev. Brian Weinberger

NL Year 2 • Sermon • Submitted 5 years ago

Isaiah 11:1–5

Isaiah 5:1–7

Root of Jesse

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My grandfather owned a vineyard for most of his life and I have shared with you in the past about it. I have fond memories of spending time at that vineyard every summer as I grew up. And since Thanksgiving is coming up I remember going there every Thanksgiving and watching my grandfather cook the turkey after he had spent time tending to his vineyard.

That was the thing that I admired most about him. Even though there were off seasons for harvest there was never an off season for tending his vineyard. Despite being a staunch German who liked to keep most of his feelings to himself except when he became grumpy about things, you could see that his vineyard meant a lot to him. He truly cared for that vineyard both in terms of making sure it was at its best, but also how much it meant to him above and beyond his financial livelihood.

Which is why I know that when my grandparents told our family they were retiring and moving into town and selling the vineyard it was a big change for them. And I remember my grandfather holding onto the vineyard for as long as he could, trying to find the right person to buy it. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to find someone to buy the vineyard, but there were plenty of people who wanted to buy the land. He eventually sold it to someone who turned it into a dairy farm because this particular man needed to expand his land to accommodate his growing cattle industry.

Despite being a staunch German who liked to keep most of his feelings to himself

I remember him telling me about it and how the man was an idiot for doing that. The vineyard he had owned most of his life was purchased from someone else and those vines were close to, if not over 100 years old. The older the vineyard that has been well maintained the better the grapes you will receive from your harvest, and my grandpa tended his vineyard with love and great care. A beautiful vineyard that produced incredible grapes torn down and destroyed without a second thought to make way for more cows.

A lot goes into the care and harvest of a successful vineyard. A vineyard takes at least three years to go from being planted to its first harvest day, and that only happens on that third year if the vines have been tended meticulously. Then after that it would take about another two years before it would be able to bottle the grapes for wine. We see in our story from Isaiah that was this vineyard was intended for wine. We also see that this vineyard owner put great care and love into this new vineyard as my grandfather did for his very old vineyard.

After at least three years of this owners life with sweat and love and devotion to the vineyard he comes to the harvest time to see the literal fruit of his labors and discovers that it produced wild grapes. The word we see in the Hebrew is ba’us, which you can see means a lot more than just wild grapes, and the different English translations of the Bible use these different words to describe these grapes. I had two thoughts about this moment. 1. Can you imagine what it must have been like after three years of working tirelessly tending this vineyard to make sure that it produced the best grapes possible to only produce bad, worthless and rotten grapes that weren’t good for anything? 2. Have you ever popped a grape into your mouth and as soon as you break the skin with your teeth discovered that it was bitter, sour or just has a foul taste and you spit it out immediately?

This is Isaiah’s way of trying to let the people know that they went against God’s divine plan for them. God had this great hope for the people and with all of the commandments and laws in place, with the promised land in their hands, and with kings to rule over them, there was this understanding they had all they needed for their lives. They had been planted, fertilized, and lovingly tended. In return for all that love and care God hoped for a kingdom in heaven and earth like no other, but only saw a kingdom and the people in it that were just like every other nation in the world. Instead of producing the justice and equality God had hoped for the people took advantage of one another and oppressed the less fortunate. Just like we talked about last week because of the people’s lack of trust in God, there was nothing more that God could do and so the powers of the world, like other nations came in and took over the people of Israel and made them slaves and caused them to disperse around the world because there was no longer a wall protecting them.

These words ring true in our ears today as we continue to see violence and bloodshed in our world. We see the people of Hong Kong fighting for justice and causing great harm in the process. We see fighting at the border of Syria and Turkey. Just this week we saw another shooting at a school in Santa Clarita California. We see people in churches arguing and fighting with one another because they can’t agree the way something should be done and it creates hurt feelings and an inability to work together in a place where we have been called to be the family of God. So these words of Isaiah continue to ring true in our ears today.

In our home in California there was a grape vine on our back fence. The house hadn’t been cared for because it was a foreclosure and the vine looked awful. Even though my grandfather tended a vineyard his whole life I hadn’t picked up much about actual caring for an individual plant. So I called him and my dad to find out what to do with it. It had grown along the whole fence line but it didn’t have a single leaf or green branch on it, in fact they were all brittle and dry as a bone. Both my grandpa and my dad told me to whack it. Whack it back to the trunk they told me. Don’t leave anything left but the main trunk part. I couldn’t believe it. You want me to do what? I told me dad I couldn’t do it. It would kill it. Part of me actually thought it was already dead, but I didn’t want to kill it if it was still alive somehow. I asked my dad to come up and do it. And he did. He came up and took this beautiful but dead vine and cut off every twig, every branch all the way back to the trunk. At the end of the day all the remained was was that very small trunk and a lot of now (for sure this time) dead branches.

One day in the spring I walked into the backyard not even paying attention to the vine, I think I was actually looking at the apple tree and out of complete disbelief that dead looking vine had grown several branches that were bright and green and making their way twisting themselves around the back fence. As I continued to watch over the weeks and months it grew bigger and longer and leaves started appearing everywhere on the vine. Then one day grapes appeared and I could not believe it.

Isaiah 11:1–2 NRSV

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

Isaiah 11:1-2

Despite all of the hurt and pain and injustice that we cause for ourselves, God still declares hope. In the midst of despair and destruction there is still more that God will do and does for us. No matter how dead things look God invites life to spring forth from the stump. God’s judgement never ends with destruction, but continued hope. That out of the stump there will come life. As we quickly approach the season of Advent we look to this shoot to come out of the stump. We look to our hope, our savior Jesus who brings light even in the darkest places of the world and who brings hope and joy to the places of injustice. Who brings healing where we have brought pain. No matter how hard or difficult or dead things appear know that God has a word of life for you. Out of death and destruction there is life and hope and his name is Jesus. Because as I said last week, God’s love runs so deep that nothing will take that promise that God loves us more than anything else. That love and righteousness, grace and mercy will overcome anything else this world throws at us. The love of God as found in Christ Jesus is greater than any other force in this world and Isaiah gives us a promise of that hope. Out of the stump we have life. Amen.

And yet, despite all of the hurt and pain and injustice that we cause for ourselves, God still declares hope. In the midst of despair and destruction there is still more that God will do and does for us.