Peace Sunday
November 10, 2019
Isaiah 5:1-7

Remember, this is a love song.

God had taken some time with Israel first delivering them from slavery in Egypt then leading them to Mt Sinai and teaching them new laws. God spent an entire generation in the wilderness guiding them in daily trust in God’s presence and provision. God brought them into the land of Canaan, here again teaching them that conflict is resolved through obedience. Once settled, God gives them judges to help discern their new life together and respond to hardships. The people mature and while it is not God’s first choice God lets them choose a king and God supports this king. The people are secure and a Temple is built. Nothing has been better. Milk and honey are flowing.

Isaiah begins this love song,

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 watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded rotten grapes.

Everything was in place; resources, protection and ongoing support. So God asks,

What more was there to do for my vineyard that I had not done in it?

Isaiah concludes the initial section of this chapter with a concentrated kernel of poetic Hebrew that is hard to render into English. The people were God’s good and pleasant planting.

God looked for peace but saw pain
for righteousness but saw wretchedness

God looked for peace but saw pain; for righteousness but saw wretchedness.

We are somewhat used to this being the way news is brought to us from around the world. But this is how I have felt the last few weeks listening to local news.

What more did Winnipeg need? What more should have been done to keep us from approaching the year 2020 with unprecedented and tragic instances of violence in our city? On the eve of Remembrance Day, and on Peace Sunday, I am asking that we consider the question of peace in light of the pain that so many in this city have experienced. Before returning to our present situation let’s follow Isaiah a little further.

So God has created an environment in which peace should thrive but pain persists. How did this happen?

Isaiah starts with neighborhoods referring to

You who join house to house and add field to field until there is no room for anyone else.

It seems housing and neighbourhood development has always had a component of prejudice and exclusion. At least until a few decades ago many neighbourhoods in North America actually had legal clauses prohibited the sale of homes to people of particular racial backgrounds.

For homeowners houses are typically their largest investment so there tends to be push to have the best possible neighbours and the best possible neighbourhood because once we’ve invested we want to drive prices up but this often limits and denies people access to many neighbourhoods.

According to Isaiah the neighbourhoods that seal themselves off from what is undesirable will themselves become barren, lacking purpose or creativity. Isaiah looks inside the homes and sees nothing but people mixing drinks from morning till night.

Any insight, any understanding that was once possible is dulled with wine and wasted without purpose. The result of this situation for Isaiah, and this is important, is that everyone suffers, depression in the suburbs and despair downtown. And addictions everywhere. With remarkably vivid imagery Isaiah paints a bleak picture of everyone heading down to the grave.

My people will go into exile from lack of knowledge
The grave has enlarged its appetite, opening its mouth beyond measure
The wealthy and the masses go down
People are bowed down, everyone levelled
The eyes of arrogant are cast down

God lets the hedge of protection fall. The vineyard, spilling over with rotten fruit is now trampled by outsiders.

Everything feels like it is grinding to halt. The grave is a pit relentless and infinite in its capacity to devour. Then in stark contrast we read,

But the LORD of hosts is exalted by justice.

Justice resists and rises from the grave. This is our hope. But what does it mean?

From here I want to trace a line from Isaiah to the New Testament and pass through our own Mennonite tradition up until the present. I am not saying it is the only line but it is a real response to the absence of peace and the presence of pain.

Isaiah does not claim that another vineyard like the old one will be established. What does Isaiah give us? A prophecy. A messiah. As we will start hearing in a few weeks.

For unto us a child is born,
a son is given;
…
and his name shall be called Prince of Peace

We read later in Isaiah that a root will sprout from stump of Jesse. This is the source of our peace. A sprout from a stump. For Christians this is of course Jesus. And what did Jesus accomplish? Jesus did not rebuild the wall and watchtower for protection. Rather, what do we find? Not a fortress and not a security guard. Jesus says in John 15, I am the vine.

In Christ our faith offers not a stone wall but a living root. Our faith gives us an opportunity to abide with the one who is peace for our pain. This sounds nice, doesn’t it, but even still what does this mean, to abide in the living vine?

For many of the first Anabaptists including Menno Simons this meant that to abide in the vine was a commitment to non-violence. Menno Simons calls on the supposed faith of political leaders of his day to refrain from violence. He echoes the image of Jesus as the powerful and vulnerable vine when he says, “Christ rules by patience with His Word and Spirit. He has no other sword or saber.” Again, sounds good but what does this mean? As Mennonites we have wrestled with what a commitment to non-violence means for some 500 years now.

I want to add one more voice before we reflect on that we’ve heard and experienced. In Enfleshing Freedom theologian M Shawn Copeland looks to the experience of those suffering, particularly in the past experiences of slavery and the present challenges of many black women in America. She is clear about the need for systemic change, the need for a better vineyard to protect tender shoots but she is also clear that policies and laws are not enough. She writes,

“We need thoroughgoing, practical, genuine systemic change in the present global order. At the same time, we sense a need for something deeper and beyond . . . the distribution of the material and cultural conditions for human living. That something deeper and beyond, I suggest, is solidarity.”

Solidarity is the move from good intentions and abstract issues to allowing more of our lives to become invested in expressions of love in the places of greatest vulnerability. Solidarity then must always come through increasing attentiveness to those most vulnerable. Here again, a wall and watchtower policing our neighbourhoods is not enough if solidarity is not nurtured and practiced within.

Looking to Jesus Copeland finds one who shares in suffering and in solidarity offers consolation. She tells us that Christ is a revelation in matters of peace and violence. Christ reveals to us that there is no neutrality in the question of solidarity we are either moving into solidarity or we are denying it. We must invest our lives in something and the question of solidarity helps us draw those lines.

Just as importantly Christ and the cross also reveals the limitation of our efforts and solutions to violence and evil. In solidarity with those vulnerable and in his rejection of the world’s violence Jesus was himself vulnerable and exposed to the world’s violence. And finally Copeland tells us that Christ reveals himself as live into lives of solidarity. In solidarity we find communion with Christ.

From Isaiah to Jesus through Menno Simons and up to Copeland we find an understanding that we call and act for change, we hold those in power to account but we also acknowledge that we cannot ultimately take power and enforce peace but rather we must enact peace through lives of solidarity with others.

Isaiah reminds us that the strong walls do not always produce the right relations. The people were given what they needed but they did not foster communion, equality and solidarity. The vulnerable were exploited and the powerful isolated themselves and in the end all suffered.

What does this mean for you and for us in our context? How have you responded to the headlines and responses to violence in our city? What thoughts have come to mind in terms of why this is happening and how it may or may not impact your life? What image do you have in your mind of the people involved in the violence we hear about in the news? If you are like me it is easy to distance yourself from the problem.

I was able to make it out to one of the recent public events addressing the attention being given to violence in Winnipeg. I was impressed with those who spoke and stunned with how it resonated with my thinking for this sermon.

First, the fundamental issues have hardly changed in 2500 years. Isaiah addressed housing and addictions. These were the two primary issues that the speakers called on politicians and citizens to understand and address.

Jesus, Simons and Copeland called for non-violent solidarity. These speakers were unanimous that more investment in policing will not solve these issues as police are typically called at the end of a long story that needed to be responded to and supported so much earlier.

These speakers advocated for solidarity asking that any decisions that politicians or community leaders make should be done in close consultation with those most impacted by extreme forms of violence.

Finally one speaker resonated with how this passage from Isaiah all began and the first line of this sermon. Remember, this is a love song. Isaiah 5 begins let me sing for my beloved a love song. These words from God were not about punishment or guilt, but of aching love for people in pain instead of peace.

The speaker reminded us that for every person who acts out in violence; for every person spiraling in drug addiction, for every person in the grips of desperate poverty there are loved ones who have done their best to help make things right.

I suspect most of us know that at some point in our own lives or in the lives of someone we love there has been or still is a challenge that has been overwhelmingly difficult but would be utterly unimaginable if not for the type of supports and resources many of us have available; resources that often still feel like they are not enough. Many of us need to remember that for many good and loving people such resources simply do not exist and life can spiral out of control.

One simple request of our faith is to understand this and care.

We are not called to or even able solve all these problems. We are called to communion and solidarity, a greater understanding of our shared experience in life and the inequalities that can make some experiences so desperate.

Let this solidarity shape your time and your resources. Let it direct where you live and where you work. We are called to care and not to fear. We are called into the rhythms of a love song which can in time open our lives, simple as they are, into acts of solidarity, which are acts of love, which is our hope.

May we all learn to come on common and level ground as equals to the strong and vulnerable vine that nourishes and heals bringing peace from pain. May we add our lives to this song as instruments of peace.

Amen.