Isaiah 5.1-7
Hebrews 11.29 – 12.2
Luke 12.49-59
©Suzanne Grimmett
‘Let me sing for my beloved, my love-song concerning his vineyard…’
If we have settled in for something lovely after these opening words, you may have been unsettled when the poetry concludes in screams and bloodshed. We naturally like to hear reassuring words, but sometimes we would prefer gifts to come at no cost and with no responsibility. How wonderful to have been chosen, showered with love and assurance, cared-for recipients of grace! As we progress through this reading we hear in the Divine voice an expression of expectation upon this vineyard. So much had been done for it and done well- the land was fertile, it was cleared of rocky obstructions, only the choicest vines were planted and it received protection and attention- and yet no choice grapes grew. At the end of the reading we hear the prophet exclaim that the Lord of hosts….
…expected justice,
but saw bloodshed;
righteousness,
but heard a cry!
Righteousness and justice should be the harvest of love, mercy and such skilled care…and yet humankind continues to descend into violence and God’s people are not immune from these same mimetic patterns. We have so much proof daily of appalling violence and the will to power achieved through military force. Where tender attention and great gifts have been poured out there is a sense of divine sorrow and grief where the fruit of goodness and mercy has not grown. The love-song becomes a scream of anguish.
If we turn to the Gospel for comfort we may have experienced some disappointment as here there are more dissonant words.
“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!…they will be divided…father against son, mother against daughter…”
Here is where we might need to face again the uncomfortable truth that just trying to be nice to everyone all the time doesn’t bring peace- let alone righteousness or justice. Sometimes if our aim is peace at all costs, we become conflict avoiders, and that motivation in any community or family always, eventually, comes at the expense of goodness and truth. Sometimes working for peace and justice means facing the truth and telling the truth; to our enemies, but also to our friends, family and even to ourselves.
Not peace, but division.
Sometimes to create communities of peace we need first to face squarely the differences, disagreements and hurts we are experiencing. We are all prone to scapegoating, pointing the finger of blame at another and joining in with a chorus of voices (or perhaps just our own circle of friends) in condemning another person or group, whether that group be defined by ideology, culture, gender or generation. Frequently, problems are never specified but only alluded to in general terms, so they can never be examined and addressed. Often, the pressure is to not stand out and to maintain belonging in the dominant group, even though it comes at the expense of others and of relationships of trust.
Christian belonging which simply follows such patterns has some unfinished business. Jesus raises the conflicts arising in the most fundamental space of social belonging, the family, and points to the deeper belonging to which we are called in Christ. Families were of course quite different in Jesus’ time, although it is still through such intimate familial metaphors as Father or Mother that God is described, showing the highest value of these relationships. However, the idolisation of the family in modern Western culture has robbed us of the greater belonging in the community of Christ where everyone is equal, no one is excluded and the gifts of all are shared for all. Willie Jennings points to the potentially idolatrous nature of modern coupling and the nuclear family, suggesting that belonging has been colonised and our imaginations limited to ‘a future of relational cul-de-sacs’.[1] He says;
Too much community life has been surrendered to the supremacy of the couple, who have moved their life and their love to the centre of our existence, draining Christian belonging of its inheritance, its power, its calling.[2]
As we listen with shock to Jesus’ words about division between mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, we could do well to consider how much of that discomfort is because of an unspoken understanding that the supremely central role of the romantic couple and the nuclear family in the life of the faith community must never be critiqued.
Elsewhere in Luke’s Gospel we have that most iconic family story often called the prodigal son. I am sure you know it well and it is arguably one of the most beautiful parables of grace in all of scripture. The younger son who takes all his inheritance and wastes it in selfish living, disdaining his family, returns to the Father to be given a great banquet and showered with love and forgiveness. Meanwhile, the elder, more faithful son seethes in resentment.
The grace poured out upon the younger son brings with it the seeds of family conflict. The resentment of the older son is never resolved and would not have existed if such gratuitous mercy and forgiveness had not been extended to the younger son who had acted so carelessly and selfishly.
Audrey West in a commentary in this passage notes that
Humankind does not always appreciate the gospel’s great reversals. We do not like it when those we deem undeserving receive the abundant grace promised to all. We want others to be punished for their sin, while we expect to be welcomed into the heavenly home (nobody expects to see their enemies in heaven!). Jealousy, anger, desire for revenge, resistance to change: these can consume us in the face of the gospel, to the point that we find ourselves antagonists against those whom Jesus welcomes.[3]
It’s a scandal! And surely if Jesus was coming to bring peace we would not have all these feelings! C.S Lewis has said that anger is the fluid love bleeds when it is cut. Maybe we might recognise such bleeding of Divine anguish and disappointment also in the prophetic words of Isaiah.
And perhaps that is the clue. We are not in the middle of a careful dispassionate creation. When we have a look at the strength of emotion, the willingness to forgive and forgive again, the desire for human joy in community and for peace to break out among all peoples and the heartbreak when such an invitation is rejected and trampled upon, we might realise that we are not part of some clinical equation for life or carefully planned experiment.
Despite humankind’s failure to respond to grace with the good fruit of righteousness and peace, God continues to plant the vineyard.
Despite our continued blindness about the way the elevated place of one kind of family continues to maintain groups of dominance while excluding others, God continues to invite all into the beloved community.
And despite the violence of humanity and its inability to care for the earth and respond to the goodness we have received with the courageous work of justice and peace, God continues to tend and attend.
Although so often we have lost the rhythm and forgotten the notes, may we find ourselves yet humming the truth-telling melodies of grace so all may share in this love song of life and belonging that continues to be sung over creation.
+Amen
[1] Willie James Jennings in the Foreword to Pathways to Belonging, ed Dustin D. Benac, Erin Weber-Johnson & Glen Bell, (Wipf and Stock: 2025) xiii
[2] As above.
[3] Audrey West in Bartlett, David L.; Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 3: Pentecost and Season after Pentecost 1 (Propers 3-16) (pp. 905-906).Kindle Edition.