Sunday, August 18, 2019 - 9 AM

A Love Song – Isaiah 5:1-7 Bascomb UMC / August 18, 2019 / 9AM Focus: God’s love inside the Trinity offered to us by a God who chooses to risk hurt and disappointment by offering us entrance into love. Function: To entice and attract anyone longing for genuine love to seek the real source of TRUE authentic relationship with our Creator God. 5 Purpose Outcomes of the Church: Worship, Fellowship, Discipleship, Evangelism, Service Isaiah 5:1–7 (CEB) Song of the vineyard Let me sing for my loved one a love song for his vineyard. My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it, cleared away its stones, planted it with excellent vines, built a tower inside it, and dug out a wine vat in it. He expected it to grow good grapes— but it grew rotten grapes. So now, you who live in Jerusalem, you people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard: What more was there to do for my vineyard that I haven’t done for it? When I expected it to grow good grapes, why did it grow rotten grapes? Now let me tell you what I’m doing to my vineyard. I’m removing its hedge, so it will be destroyed. I’m breaking down its walls, so it will be trampled. I’ll turn it into a ruin; it won’t be pruned or hoed, and thorns and thistles will grow up. I will command the clouds not to rain on it. The vineyard of the LORD of heavenly forces is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are the plantings in which God delighted. God expected justice, but there was bloodshed; righteousness, but there was bloodshed; What is the greatest love song of all time? I googled that and discovered that you must narrow the search to a genre of music: Pop, Rock, Country, or a decade: the 70’s or the 80’s or the medium: Musicals, Radio, Movies to get any real results. #1 in Rock was 'Something' by The Beatles on their 'Abbey Road' album (1969). It’s all subjective even if you use sales, the top country love song I found was "Forever and Ever, Amen" by Randy Travis. Agree? But for me, there may be no better example of a love song than the Rodgers and Hammerstein "If I Loved You." I acted as a singing telegram when I delivered an engagement ring to a young lady for a friend of mine. I walked into a bank and sang “If I loved you” and presented a ring for my friend – she said NO. I asked you this week if God can write a love song. Maybe I should ask IF God should write a love song. One of the basic traits necessary for God to BE God is be self-sufficient. God, by definition should not be dependent on anything else to be God. I asked the youth group about this last Sunday night. They always help me start thinking about the next Sunday as we close with worship – we read the sermon text for the next week. “Can we hurt God,” I asked and one student immediately responded NO – it’s GOD. And he was right! ………… Unless God chooses to be vulnerable. Can you imagine why God would choose to be hurt? I mean, you know if God enters into relationships with us humans, then God is going to risk hurt. And there are many things God chooses to do or not do, but we are taught by scripture that God IS love – God does not choose to love, God is love. Is there a difference? It’s why I adore our creator – love is not a choice, but a state of being with God. It’s the best explanation for the Trinity – a circle of love going on within the godhead between the Creator, the Savior, and the Sustainer that opens up and invites humanity to join. Singers love to tell us about how they came to write a particular song, and occasionally, it’s illuminating. One singer tells how a song arose out of the tension between her and her father over whether it was a good idea for her to spend her life driving around the country in a pickup singing for tips – ahhh, interesting. However, sometimes the explanations are frustrating or obvious (like “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you”). A good song should probably stand on its own; knowing how it came to be written (and w/Taylor Swift the story usually involves a romantic breakup) may not help you appreciate it. Our appreciation of a song means the song interacts with our OWN experience. But still, love songs are written out of a passion someone feels. Feelings ARE important, passion may ebb and flow, but aren’t they usually the starting point for a relationship? Isaiah presents a song that God wants sung from God’s own heart. There he stands in the temple courtyards where people were probably ignoring his negative message, but here, things have changed. Isaiah delivers God’s love song, a song about a vineyard as an obvious metaphor that people had no trouble understanding. The Bible’s “most risqué” book is the Song of Songs or S. of Solomon. It also uses the vineyard as a common image for a “love interest” (typical Jewish thought represented “the feminine”) and Isaiah’s “friend” (creator God) has worked hard at “cultivating” this relationship with “a love interest until the song “turns” and becomes a song about disappointment and even betrayal. God’s attentiveness didn’t work and Isaiah asks us a question: “what else could his “friend” have done?” Jesus took up Isaiah’s technique in a parable the vineyard where the SON of the vineyard owner appears to collect the harvest and is killed for his efforts. A vineyard can substitute for a romantic interest, but Isaiah makes it clear that God means Israel and Jesus has come to harvest ALL humanity. Both Isaiah & Jesus acknowledge violence rather than love. Isaiah’s version includes a clever play on the Jewish word mishpat - justice and mispah - the word for “blood pouring out” and tsedaqah - “faithfulness” and tse‘aqah - “a cry” (of pain from suffering people). Jesus embraced that suffering to heal our broken relationship. God’s issues are listed by Isaiah in six “woes” that follow in the next chapters. Isaiah named the sins that brought judgment on the land. #1 Justice! The rich defrauded the poor and seized their land. #2 Substance Abuse! The people were so addicted to alcohol that they begin drinking as soon as they woke up in the morning (hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere!). #3 No respect! They mock Creator God and dare the Lord to punish them. #4 Pride! Instead of listening to God, the leaders made decisions based on their own wisdom. #5 Selfish indulgence! They were more interested in cocktail parties than fair trials and making money (bribes) rather than promoting justice. If they would not repent and accept His offer of pardon, then all God had left was judgment. We have here God’s great hopes for us (it’s not the same if it was pre-programmed into us because choice is off the table – no choice, no genuine possibility for love). In this case, God’s great hopes have become bad grapes. That is the RISK when you love a free and relatively independent people like Israel – they can go bad – or in this case become indifferent to their Creator and the Creator’s will for their lives. Author (and holocaust survivor) Elie Wiesel said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.” If you want to keep love alive, if you want to keep a relationship from becoming stagnant, you simply have to care. Unfortunately, chemistry is generally not long-lasting. The emotions ebb and flow and that’s why I plead today for our faith! Romance is the sump pump that kicks in when indifference rises. We need to FEEL our first love for the one who give us this life. Even though romance is “feelings based,” it’s still an important component of love. Romance keeps love from becoming complacent. We celebrate and prioritize this action That’s why I believe in worship, the images, the candles, the music, the altar. It’s a courtship with God! Last week I held Harlyn up to Jamison and they smiled at each other and heaven opened up in that moment and I FELT something wonderful! I don’t apologize for that, sometimes those memories, those feelings sustain us when life is hard and things aren’t so warm and fuzzy. We love God best by loving each other. We build long tern relationships. These families here today love YOU and this church – they bring their most precious parts of themselves here to dedicate them to God and to you! Who makes all of this possible but the God who created you, the God who represents you in heaven and saves you a place there, and the God who sustains you, transforms you daily to BE good grapes – to produce the good fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – sounds like heaven to me and I do have to DIE to enjoy it! So my invitation is: “think about out God – think about God’s goodness – think about God’s love and God’s mercy – fall in love with God all over again!” I feel God’s presence in beautiful music, when I see a sunset, when I go to the “thin places” of God’s creation – the ocean shore, the mountaintop, and in a child’s face at baptism. You know God is there! Come to the altar and begin anew this wonderful dance between you and the Holy Spirit to move us even closer to the inner circle of the Trinity where God incarnate in Jesus Christ has made our entrance into such love possible. Creator God IS the father waiting for the prodigal to return and, until time is no more, God is waiting for YOU, hoping you’ll return to your first love! God’s hope is that HERE….. the good fruit will grow….let us pray………..