When the rain is blowing in your face
And the whole world is on your case
I could offer you a warm embrace
To make you feel my love.
When evening shadows and the stars appear
And there is no one to dry your tears
I could hold you for a million years
To make you feel my love.1
How do you understand God? Is God an abstraction for you, an intellectual puzzle, or an intriguing idea? Is God some impersonal force for you? “The Force be with you,” they said in the Star Wars films. Is that how you experience God? Perhaps you think of God as transcendent, totally beyond this world, above all human experience, except perhaps for the Word made flesh. Or maybe you think of the Deists’ “watchmaker.” God set the world in motion, and it has run by itself ever since? Perhaps you think of God as unchanging. After all, doesn’t one of the prayers in our Compline service ask that we may rest in God’s “eternal changelessness?” In some respects, all of these ways of talking about God have some truth in them, since at some point we humans acknowledge that God is unknowable and indescribable. “Neti, neti,” say Hindus, “not this, not this.” “Utter mystery,” say many practitioners of contemplative prayer. To say anything more about God surely risks anthropomorphizing God, reducing God to purely human terms. And yet today’s Scriptures beg us to ask a poignant and utterly necessary question. Does God feel? Does God have emotions, as we do? If we are created in God’s image, and emotions are intrinsic to our nature, must they not also be intrinsic to God’s nature? Doesn’t God also feel?
The Hebrew Scriptures – and remember that they were Jesus’ Scriptures, and they are our Scriptures too – contain many, many examples of God having feelings. Think of God in the Garden of Eden, lonely, wandering around looking for Adam and Eve. How about all the many times God gets angry at the Israelites, especially during the long trek in Sinai? How about the psalms? For the psalmist, God can be impatient, jealous, sympathetic, compassionate, merciful, and loving. The prophets show God providing both warnings and reassurance. Through the prophecy of Hosea God grieves for unfaithful Israel. And, of course, the Song of Songs portrays God as a young man in springtime, passionately in love with his fair beloved.
Does God have feelings? Judging by our reading this morning from the prophecy of Isaiah, God has very deep feelings. The prophet has just castigated Israel for the corruption of its priests. Seemingly changing tone, the prophet then begins a love song in God’s name. God has created a vineyard, which God has lovingly tended: planted it with the best vines, put up a guardhouse, built a wine press. But did the vineyard produce the sweet wine that God expected from such loving care? Contrary to God’s expectations and hopes, the vineyard produced wild grapes, i.e., inedible grapes that only scavenger birds would deign to eat. Then the prophet lets God give voice to God’s despair and disappointment: “What more could I have done for my vineyard that I didn’t do? Why did it yield wild grapes?” Despite God’s best efforts, despite all of God’s love and care, God’s project has failed: the vineyard is unproductive. Giving in, God will let the vineyard be, let it produce wild grapes, let its protective hedges fall down, and send no more rain on it.
Can we relate to this story? Surely all of us have had parallel experiences, experiences where we have poured our best efforts into a project, only to see it fail. I can think of numerous examples from my time as dean at Ohio University: grant proposals that we thoroughly researched, lovingly and carefully wrote up, and submitted well before the due date, only to be bypassed by the powers that were or given only a small fraction of what we’d requested. I think of a few young faculty members – fortunately only a few – to whom we gave reduced teaching assignments, summer support, travel to workshops, coaching and mentoring, and still they couldn’t sufficiently improve their teaching or write the needed articles to be eligible for tenure. Although we pray to be spared this feeling of disappointment and despair, many parents of adult children know it well: for all our care, attention, love, and support, our adult child just can’t seem to take hold, can’t make a go of life, can’t shake free from addiction, or, worst of all, commits a horrible crime. Did you ever wonder, for example, what the parents of Jared Loughner must have felt, when they heard the news of what he’d done? With God, we too can wring our hands and cry out, “What more could I have done that I haven’t done?”
My sisters and brothers, fortunately for Israel and for us, God’s despair and disappointment are not the end of the story. Yes, the vineyard becomes “a waste,” and falls into ruin. And yet, for all that, God still cares deeply for God’s people. The vineyard of Israel and Judah are God’s planting, God’s creation. The rest of Isaiah’s prophecy goes on to remind us of what the Gospels also tell us: that God is not a remote, uncaring God. Rather, God is deeply caring, deeply involved with God’s people. And not only with Israel and Judah, but, ultimately with all nations, all humanity, all of creation. Despite Israel’s faithlessness, despite the unsuccessful alliances with Assyria and the exile into Babylon, ultimately God cares so much for God’s people, that, Isaiah assures them, God will deliver all of them from war, oppression, and death. “O Lord, you are my God,” Isaiah will sing to God, “for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.” And ultimately all people and all creation will be included in the saving work of God.
But – there’s always a “but,” isn’t there – God’s love for Israel and Judah carries expectations. God tended the vineyard of Israel and Judah expecting justice and righteousness, but the vineyard produced only bloodshed and cries of pain. God expected the vineyard to bear good fruit, not the wild fruits of injustice and suffering, nor the fruits of greed, gluttony, dishonesty, and arrogance, as the later verses of this chapter detail. No wonder God was disappointed! As Christians, we can certainly relate to the image of bearing good fruit. Jesus himself used this image. We remember especially what he told his friends in the Gospel of John: “I am the vine; you are the branches; those who live in me and I in them will bear abundant fruit…. It was not you who chose me; it was I who chose you to go forth and bear fruit,” to love one another as Jesus had loved them.
And so ultimately we are faced with a challenge. We who have been grafted on to Israel – as St. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Roman Christians – what good fruit have we produced in our lives? God loves us as deeply as God loved Israel and Judah, but God’s love for us is not for our own self-aggrandizement. We do not hear in this Scripture – nor anywhere in the Bible – a prosperity Gospel. What we do hear is the question that is at the heart of God’s love song. How have we returned God’s passionate love for all people and for the world that God created? Have we produced the inedible grapes of greed, over-consumption, dishonesty, and war? Have we turned away from those in need? Have we trashed this beautiful earth that God has given us? Or do our lives reflect God’s passionate love? Do we try to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind? Do we strive actively for justice and peace, equity and well-being? Do we aim to be good stewards of all the abundant resources that God has given us? Do we try with all our being to love others as God loves us?
As we grapple with these questions, as we engage in the self-examination to which the prophets of Israel call us, to say nothing of the part of Matthew’s Gospel that we have been hearing these last several weeks, we do so with the assurance of God’s deep, continuing, and abiding love. God does feel – deeply. And God’s deepest feeling is passionate love for God’s people. When we truly commit ourselves to God and strive in our lives to return God’s love, we can be assured that, as one writer put it, “we are characters in a divine love song.”2 And so, we are bold to pray,
Lord, you have called us to know you,
you have called us to love you,
you have called us to serve you.
Make us worthy of our calling.
May we proclaim your power and your peace.
May we rejoice in your light and your love;
through Christ the living Lord. Amen.3
1. Garth Brooks, “To Make You Feel My Love,” quoted in Celebration Preaching Resources, for October 2, 2011.
2. James Burns, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2011), 127.
3. David Adam, Clouds and Glory (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse, 2001), 126.
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