Whose Advocate?

Isaiah 5:1-7

Let me sing for my beloved
   my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
   on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
   and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watch-tower in the midst of it,
   and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
   but it yielded wild grapes.

And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem
   and people of Judah,
judge between me
   and my vineyard.
What more was there to do for my vineyard
   that I have not done in it?
When I expected it to yield grapes,
   why did it yield wild grapes?

And now I will tell you
   what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
   and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
   and it shall be trampled down.
I will make it a waste;
   it shall not be pruned or hoed,
   and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
   that they rain no rain upon it.

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
   is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
   are his pleasant planting;
he expected justice,
   but saw bloodshed;
righteousness,
   but heard a cry!

I just finished a book this weekend, Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley. In the book, the narrator, Kiara, is explaining how her parents met, how her mother had a crush on her dad for a long time and made absolutely sure that they would meet and fall in love. Kiara says of this, “An orchestrated love is almost more precious than a natural one; [it’s] harder to give up something you spent that long making.” Now, the reason that this reminded me so much of this passage is that this is written as a classic ancient love poem. Vineyard is almost always a metaphor for lover, for someone’s beloved in Biblical and non-Biblical poetry alike. And this is a poem of unrequited love. This is a poem about the vineyard—us—and Isaiah’s beloved—God—and their kind of toxic, unrequited relationship. God has put all this effort into creating us, into giving us the best tools, the most fertile earth, this unconditional love, and what does God see and hear in response to these spectacular gifts? Bloodshed. Cries of the oppressed.

Now, this isn’t a very hopeful passage. It ends with cries of the oppressed, after God says they will no longer tend this beautiful garden that’s been planted. That doesn’t sound like unconditional love to me. As usual, here we are in the Hebrew Bible reckoning with an angry God that we mainline Christians have a tough time with. But here’s the thing—yes, God’s rightfully and righteously angry in this passage, but God doesn’t actually give up on us. And God doesn’t actually destroy us—we destroy ourselves. Because this all ends with Isaiah’s prophesy of the peaceful kingdom which will rise from the shoot, or from the stump of Jesse that is surviving among an apocalyptic and barren landscape. Yes, there will be destruction, yes there will be hard times, but God’s not doing that. Because God spend too much time and love making us, we know God’s not gonna give up on us.

The literary tools used in this poem are really extraordinary. It starts out with Isaiah telling his people a story—a story about this mysterious friend who built a vineyard that yielded rotten fruit despite doing everything right, despite giving it everything it needed. So at this point, thanks to the beautiful poetry, the idea is that the people are enraptured. And then all of sudden, as the people are wondering why and how this vineyard went so rotten, the narrator changes—it’s then God talking, through Isaiah in the first person, putting the people of Judea on the spot, challenging them, daring them, “judge between me and my vineyard! What more was there to do that I have not done?! Why did this wild rotten grapes appear when I did everything right to yield perfect grapes for perfect wine?!” The verse breaks here, and I imagine the dumbfounded Judeans realizing now that they are indeed the vineyard, that they are the rotten, wild grapes, standing there, ashamed, in silence. And then we have the angry God stuff—God saying, that the vineyard will be destroyed, that we will be destroyed—yikes!

You know though, I read this as God saying, “okay, you want to destroy yourselves, I give up. Go ahead, shed blood, oppress the poor, that how you’re going to destroy yourselves.”

Because if we read on, we find out why God is so exasperated and upset. Verse 8 talks about the how the wealthy are hoarding their wealth and land and conspiring with one another to break down the lower classes and oppress people, and consolidate, maintain, and then grow their power. Verse 11 talks about those same rich folks partying hard to the point where they completely forget about God, thinking only of their hedonism and vices. Verse 22 talks about the wealthy accepting bribes for favors, and in doing so robbing the poor of their rights. And throughout chapter 5, Isaiah implies that because of all these sins against justice, the great city will fall and that, as verse 17 says, “…the lambs shall grace as in their pasture, fatlings and kids shall feed among the ruins.”

You know, it kind of makes me think of those joke bumper stickers that pop up every general election year— instead of a preferred candidate’s name, the bumper sticker just says, “Giant Meteor, 2024.” Don’t worry, I’m no nihilist, and I’m not one of those Christians that prays for the end of the world. But it does seem that at a certain point there’s not much to do but burn it all down and rise from the ashes. And that’s the thing—regardless of what happens, no matter what kind of apocalyptic prophesies we hear, no matter what kind of despair-inducing climate report comes out, no matter how hopeless things may seem, no matter how hard we try to destroy ourselves, and let me tell you, we seem to be making quite the effort, God is not going to let us. That shoot of Jesse, or some equivalent will always sprout. God created us out of unconditional, capital-L Love, and that means God will not destroy us.

But—do we really want to let it get to that point? To get to that point where God comes this close to giving up on us, to get the that point where we really truly destroy ourselves almost completely? No. We don’t want to suffer, and we don’t want our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren to suffer. So we have to take a note from Isaiah here. In one of my Bible commentaries I used in researching this sermon, it describes Isaiah, in speaking on behalf of his beloved God in that first stanza, as being an advocate of God. I had never really thought of prophets in this way, and I really love it. Because none of us can tell the future, as far as I know, at least, and so acting as a prophet would act in our modern world can feel daunting. But we can all be advocates for God.

Because let me tell you, I am so sick of people being the devil’s advocate. A healthy debate is fine and helpful, especially in an organized space like a classroom, but being a devil’s advocate has turned into something else. In an article from a couple years ago in the New York Times Magazine, the author points out that thanks to the anonymity of the internet, people feel comfortable couching their hate speech as someone being devil’s advocate; or someone else will play devil’s advocate for no reason other to stir up drama and create infighting. It’s not sustainable. We live in a world where the powerful encourage and embrace division in order to keep their power—so it’s a ripe environment for a formerly benign debate strategy to be exploited and turned something so ugly. So instead of playing devil’s advocate and creating more division for the sake of hatred or drama, let’s be God’s advocate in the world. We can be God’s advocate in our everyday lives.

And maybe speaking on behalf of God still sounds a little daunting, or even arrogant. I get it. It does. But let’s look at this passage from John 16:7. Jesus is giving one of his farewells to his disciples. And he tells them—“…I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send [it] to you.” Church, the Advocate here is the Holy Spirit. This is our guidance in our modern world. This is how we continue to be God’s advocates in the world. We find ways to feel that Holy Spirit, working in and through us, and we can discern the ways to become modern-day prophets; to be come God’s advocates.

And since this passage leaves us hanging with a pretty bleak ending, we have to look at what I mentioned earlier—the reasons God is angry—as guidance as to what we need to be advocating. We need to be advocates for the poor and the disenfranchised. Let me read you exactly what verse 8 says: “…you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to life alone in the midst of the land!” These are the rich consolidating their property and power pushing the poor further and further out. This is something that’s happening throughout the entire country right now—on the mission trip to Philadelphia just a couple weeks ago, we saw the gentrification that’s pushing poor folks further and further towards and outside the city limits—luxury condos being built with no regard for affordability—just being built with the intention of raking in the rent money. And, as Paul always tells the youth group—there’s nothing happening in Philadelphia that’s not happening right here in Hartland. We all know how dire the housing crisis is here—young people who would otherwise stay in Vermont are being pushed out because of people buying up houses and making money off of them with short-term rentals via Airbnb. This is why God is angry. We’re not taking care of our people—we’re only looking out for ourselves. I’m forever amazed and appalled by how little has changed since the most ancient Biblical times.

Let’s be like Isaiah. Let’s be God’s advocate. When we hear statistics and new stories about things like gentrification and hoarding money and property, I don’t want to hear anyone playing devil’s advocate in order to debate or try to convince anyone that developers, and wealth hoarders have earned their money and can do what they want, blah blah blah. I want to hear from God’s advocates. I want to hear from people who, by being God’s advocates, are humankind’s advocates. Because if we look at what God, through Isaiah, was advocating for, we can some to the conclusion that God is advocating for us. And we can therefore determine that the right thing to do, is advocate for one another—for those who are struggling. For those who are being pushed further to fringes by inequity and oppression. For those who are forgotten and therefore rarely have an advocate on their side. It’s a symbiotic relationship. It’s not the unrequited love that we heard about today.

Now, no matter how much we turn our backs to God, no matter how much we mess up, no matter how toxic we make that relationship, God will not destroy us. Because, despite how our scripture passage ended today, God’s love is unconditional. But that doesn’t mean we’re not capable of destroying ourselves. Just because God’s love is unconditional, doesn’t mean we’re entitled to an Earth as it is in Heaven. No, that’s something we have to work for. And we work for that perfect world that is possible by being God’s advocates. We work for that perfect world that is possible by advocating for the poor, for the struggling, for the forgotten—for advocating for better policies and safety nets, for a fair and just world where no one gets pushed out just because they’ve fallen on hard times or they’ve been the victim of an unfair game that benefits the already-powerful.

There’s no need to play devil’s advocate. There are enough people doing that already. We need to be God’ advocate and by showing that same love that God has for us to one another. God’s not giving up on us. So we can’t give up on what God calls us to do in this broken world. Amen.