A Song for Summer

A sermon preached at St. Peter's Anglican Church in Winnipeg on Sunday, August 17, 2025.

The lectionary texts for this day were: Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18; Hebrews 11:29-12:2; Luke 12:49-56.

For the past several weeks, the Old Testament readings from the lectionary have been taken from the books of the Hebrew prophets. To me this seems to be at least a little ironic since I suspect that in the summertime we want to hear light and airy sermons that fit with the relaxed mood of summer sunshine and warm breezes. Nothing too heavy, please.

But then, along comes the lectionary, with its focus on the challenging texts of the Old Testament prophets. After reading some of these texts we might be moved to say together, “Thanks be to God that we have a gospel reading that can distract us from the words of the prophets.” That might work most Sundays, but not this week—because the gospel reading from Luke is just as difficult as the Isaiah text. So, this morning we are not going to be distracted. We are going to face head on the stark words of Isaiah that we read just a few moments ago.

Probably, when most of us hear references to the Old Testament prophets we think of them primarily as fortune-tellers, predictors of the future, or glorified tarot card readers. But reducing the Old Testament prophets to predictors of the future deprives them of much of their power and relevance. You see, the prophets were not primarily concerned with the far distant future. Instead, they were speaking to contemporary events in their own time. They were immersed in the ambiguities of the social, economic, political, and religious circumstances of Israel.

The prophets began with the conviction that their ancestors, who had been enslaved in Egypt and who had suffered terribly under the tyranny of Pharaoh and of an oppressive Egyptian economy, had been liberated from their servitude by the LORD their God with the parting of the Red Sea. But the LORD had brought them out of Egypt not simply to set them free, but in order to establish in Israel a different kind of community. Egyptian society had been structured like a pyramid, with the few at the top of the pyramid monopolizing the majority of the resources, wealth, and power—and the rest of the population consigned to living off the scraps that fell from the tables of the mighty.

Once liberated from Egypt, Israel was not simply to reproduce this Egyptian pyramid in their own community; in fact, they were to avoid it at all cost. Rather, in Israel there was to be a broad distribution of resources, wealth, and power so that no one was left behind. The leaders in Israel were not to be megalomaniacs who viewed the meek and the poor as expendable cogs in the economy, valued only for their labour—and discarded otherwise. Israelites were to be brothers and sisters—siblings—who showed active, practical concern for one another. The most vulnerable in Israel—the widow, the orphan, and the (illegal?) immigrant, were to be given special care. In Egypt these groups would be the grist for the Egyptian economy—the cheap labourers who worked in the fields and on Pharaoh’s massive construction projects. But in Israel it was precisely these groups who were to be the focus of society, rather than its discards.

The Old Testament prophets used two words to describe this social arrangement in which all were to share in the well-being, the wealth—the shalom—of the community: justice and righteousness. Justice and righteousness were not hollow, theoretical concepts. They were practices that were to be established in Israel; they were actions more than words. And they were concerned practically with the broad distribution of resources and power across the landscape of the Israelite community. So important was this vision of Israel as a community that stood in stark contrast to its neighbours in these practical ways, that the prophet Amos had urged the Israelites to “let justice sweep through the land like a mighty river, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” And the prophet Micah urged that the one thing the LORD required of Israel was “to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God”—not in some abstract, individualized personal piety, but rather in the nuts and bolts of their social and economic relationships.

This brings us to the passage in Isaiah 5 that we read earlier. The poem is introduced as a love song, sung for the poet’s beloved. Neither the singer nor the beloved are identified at first. But what we learn is that this is a love song about the beloved’s vineyard.

The beloved vintner—the owner of the land—had planted a vineyard. This was not easy, especially in the hill country of Israel where the land had to be cleared of rocks and trees, and the ground was hard. It was back-breaking labour that would have required a heavy investment of time and effort. The song goes out of its way to tell us that the owner had planted the choicest of vines; not the cheap ones you might find at Wal-mart, but the expensive ones you could get only from your local garden centre. Then the vintner had built a hedge around the vineyard to protect it from the wild animals that might invade it to strip away the young vines and their grapes. The owner had even built a tower in the middle of vineyard to keep an eye on it. This vineyard owner didn’t cut corners; he spared no effort. Everything conceivable had been done to ensure that this vineyard would produce good grapes, grapes that would eventually produce delectable wine.

But something went wrong—inexplicably wrong. Somehow the choice vines that the vintner had planted in that richly cultivated ground produced sour grapes, rotten grapes, grapes that were no good for anything. All that labour, all the investment of time, energy, and resources had been wasted. Nothing good came of it.

So, what is the vineyard owner going to do? He is going to tear down the hedge that he had placed around the vineyard. He is going to stop cultivating the ground. He is going to allow weeds to grow and wild beasts to trample the vineyard. He is going to uproot the choice vines he had planted but that had produced only useless grapes. And, remarkably, he is going to command the sky so that it does not rain upon the fruitless, desolate vineyard. We are left with the question, Who does this vineyard owner think he is that he can command the rain not to fall from the sky?

The answer to that question is left to the final verses in the poem where the meaning of the song is revealed. The vineyard owner is non other than the LORD, the God of Israel. And the vineyard that was cared for, tended to diligently, and planted with choice vines was Israel—God’s pleasant planting. But for some reason Israel had not produced good grapes, but only sour, useless ones. The LORD had looked for Israel to produce justice, but instead all it produced was bloodshed and violence; the LORD had looked for Israel to produce righteousness, but instead all it produced was the desperate cry of the oppressed poor. Israel’s vocation to be an alternative community had been replaced by the mad pursuit of the same muchness and manyness of Egypt. Greed had uprooted generosity toward the neighbour. And rather than a community of siblings who share resources widely and demonstrate concern for all—especially the weak and vulnerable—Israel had become a community in which those who had power and resources built bigger barns for themselves, in the process crushing the defenseless.

Isaiah’s little summer love song—that started out as the equivalent of a Beach Boys “good vibrations” song of summer—had turned out to have a sharp edge. So, I’m left wondering, what kind of song would Isaiah sing for us?

In his song for today, Isaiah might have a verse about the distribution of wealth in Canada. He would tell us that in Canada in 2024, the top 1% of Canadians controlled nearly 25% of the wealth in the country, while the bottom 40% of the population controlled less than 3% of Canada’s wealth. He would tell us that approximately 10% of our population, or more than 4 million Canadians are living below the poverty line.

The second verse would observe that in Canada on an average night, 35,000 people are housed in shelters for the homeless; further, it is estimated that more than 300,000 Canadians experienced homelessness last year, with a disproportionate number of indigenous people being homeless.

In his final verse, shockingly, Isaiah would sing about the fact that according to Statistics Canada, in 2024 ten million Canadians—including 2.5 million children—experienced some measure of food insecurity, ranging from being concerned about not having enough money to buy food for their family, to actually going without food for a day or more at a time. Finally, he might tell us that foodbank usage has increased by 90% since 2019.

In the Gospel reading from Luke this morning, Jesus says to those around him, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” (Luke 12:54-56).

Can we read the signs of disparity, homelessness, and hunger in Canada, in Manitoba, and in Winnipeg, and yet be unable to interpret their meaning?

On this summer Sunday morning, the song of Isaiah challenges us. Is our vineyard--our country, our province or our city--producing the good grapes of justice and righteousness that lead to shalom for all, or the sour grapes of disparity, poverty, hunger, and homelessness that lead to despair?

In this church we have an open table, with the open invitation for any and all to feast at the table of our Lord. Once again this morning, we will extend the invitation for all to come and share in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. In some ways, that’s the easy part. The hard part is having an open table as a society---a society in which all have abundant food and shelter and none are left behind. The reminder that Isaiah presents to us this morning is that justice and righteousness matter, not in abstract and individualized ways---or even in moralistic fastidiousness but in the life of our community, in the lives of our neighbours, in our social and economic decisions, and in our sharing of resources with our neighbours. And Isaiah goes on to tell us that we, as the people of God, have a part to play in the establishment of justice and righteousness in our community.

May we hear what the Spirit is saying to the church this morning through the sacred words we have read together. Amen.