What Does God Think Of Us?

Advent Devotion (Pt. 2): Isaiah 5:1-7

Prayer for Advent: “Merciful God, you sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation. Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. -Amen.¹

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I know a storm’s coming. Early into Charles Dicken’s Oliver Twist, the main character escapes his nascent darkness through the kindness and generosity of an elderly man. Nevertheless, dark clouds are forming around orphan Oliver. Even though I have an inkling that the sun will break through before the book’s end, I have no desire to read about the child’s mistreatment to get there. I want to jump ahead.

I encounter similar feelings at the beginning of Advent. Christmas is birthed in darkness.² I want to jump ahead to the wise men and the shepherds, to Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus. But the bright star of the season is most powerfully seen against the backdrop of stormy prophetic words; of bold proclamations in thick, black, permanent marker; the first outlines of the Christmas season. With this story, like so many others, the deeper the darkness, the greater the celebration.

One of the reasons I’m tempted to jump ahead in Advent is my fear of what God thinks of me. I’ve lived long enough with myself to feel guilty about certain actions in my life. I fear that God sees them as well and will judge me for them. But I’ve learned from “Advent’s past” that my participation in the story of the Bible does not begin with guilt. There’s a wider context. There’s a time before Isaiah’s dark words that I need to keep in mind to experience the fullness of Christmas.

I am reminded of that wider context by the first words of this week’s Advent passage:

I will sing for the one I love
a song about his vineyard:
my loved one had a vineyard
on a fertile hillside.
He dug it up and cleared it of stones
and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it
and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes… -Isaiah 5:1-2a

This delight in the creation of the human race is found in multiple places in the Bible. Our creation, in Genesis 1, was simply and powerfully evaluated by God as “good.” In Proverbs, as well, creation is described in this wonderful way:

I was there when he set the heavens in place,
when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,
when he established the clouds above
and fixed securely the fountains of the deep,
when he gave the sea its boundary
so that the waters would not overstep his command,
and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.
Then I was constantly at his side.
I was filled with delight day after day,
rejoicing always in his presence,
rejoicing in his whole world
and delighting in the human race. -Proverbs 8:27-31

We find this same theme of delight at both the beginning and the end of our Advent passage this Sunday:

“The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the nation of Israel and the people of Judah are the vines he delighted in.” -Isaiah 5:7a

We were created with delight, shaped and formed with attention to detail, and given all we need to makegoodhappen. This is where the Christmas answer to the question of what God thinks of me begins.

If I look at Isaiah’s dark words through God’s delight in my creation, my guilt becomes the next step in my relationship with God rather than its fearful, final destination. I can now conceive of the possibility that Advent’s storms will, in time, bring God’s delight into my fear-driven heart.

But this possibility of new life is quickly pushed aside by thoughts, made “natural” through habitual use, jumping again to control my emotions and actions. “If God delighted in me when I was created,” I tell myself, “my guilt is surely minimized.” “God will overlook it. We can jump to making good happen.”

Such temptations must be common among human beings. In the first six chapters of Isaiah, there are five attempts to convince the reader to acknowledge their guilt. Our passage is the third of five, beginning with the delightful love song but quickly turning into a tragic court scene:

“…he looked for a crop of good grapes,
but it yielded only bad fruit.”

^“Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard.
What more could have been done for my vineyard
than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes,
why did it yield only bad?”

-Isaiah 2:b-4

Jesus uses this metaphor of a vineyard created with expectation to describe the relationship of God to the people of his day as well:

“‘Listen to another parable: there was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall round it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.” -Mt. 21:33-34

But the metaphor, in both the Old and New Testaments, begins with delight and ends in disappointment. In our Advent passage, Isaiah’s trial continues to judgment:

Now I will tell you
what I am going to do to my vineyard:
I will take away its hedge,
and it will be destroyed;
I will break down its wall,
and it will be trampled.
I will make it a wasteland,
neither pruned nor cultivated,
and briers and thorns will grow there.
I will command the clouds
not to rain on it.’

The vineyard of the Lord Almighty
is the nation of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are the vines he delighted in.
And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;
for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. -Isaiah 5:5-7

“Well,” I am tempted to tell myself, “I am thankful these passages aren’t directly addressed to me.” “After all, I’m a 21st-century Gentile follower of Jesus. I can read them as an observer rather than a participant. I sympathize with God’s disappointment, but I don’t have to take the guilt of the vineyard upon myself.”

Except that the Apostle Paul, in his eagerness to include all Gentile followers of Jesus in God’s promise to Abraham, puts me squarely into the metaphor, describing me as a “wild olive shoot” grafted into the vine.

If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: you do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, ‘Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.’ Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. -Romans 11:17-21

No, I’m a participant in the story. My relationship with God is just as damaged as Isaiah’s and Jesus’ contemporaries were. I need to own my guilt this Advent season.

But here’s the difference. My fear-driven heart tells me that walking into the storms of Advent will chain me to a perpetual experience of guilt. This is a lie. Those emotions are only a leash around my neck because I’m constantly running away from them. By confessing my participation in the problem, I’m not making a home with guilt and fear. The season of Advent offers me the courage to face these uncomfortable emotions and break their power over me. Christmas is the way out of my imprisonment. It’s the way to make my home with delight and freedom and to find the way of life I was made for, a life that makesgoodhappen.

Thankfully this path, unusual to me, has been well-trodden by Christians who have gone before me. They have found healing from guilt and fear by praying Advent prayers of confession for their unjust actions and broken promises. I can paraphrase their words in a prayer like this:

Prayer of Confession: Almighty God: you alone are good and holy. Purify my life and make me a brave disciple. Deliver me, O God, from distrust, fear, and insecurity, from selfishness, self-indulgence, and self-pity. Deliver me from a calculating mind, from going along with mean and ugly things, from failing to share your indignation about injustice. From token concern for the poor, lonely and loveless people, from confusing faith with good feeling, or love with wanting to be loved; deliver me, O God.

Continuing in the steps of the “great cloud of witnesses” who have gone before us, I will make this second week of Advent about waiting. I will wait for God to respond to my prayer of confession by reflecting on the lyrics of a song sung by a choir of Jesus-followers across space and time since 275 AD. Entitled, “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence,” and based in part upon an even older text from Zechariah 2:13, "Be silent, all flesh, before the LORD; for he has roused himself from his holy dwelling." I will participate in the story of Christmas, by reading the following words with wonder, awe, and expectation:

1 Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
and with fear and trembling stand;
ponder nothing earthly minded,
for, with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
our full homage to demand.

2 King of kings, yet born of Mary,
as of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
in the body and the blood.
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heav'nly food.

3 Rank on rank the host of heaven
spreads its vanguard on the way,
as the Light of light descendeth
from the realms of endless day,
that the pow'rs of hell may vanish
as the darkness clears away.

4 At His feet the six-winged seraph,
cherubim with sleepless eye,
veil their faces to the Presence,
as with ceaseless voice they cry,
“Alleluia, alleluia,
alleluia, Lord Most High!”³

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1. Book of Common Worship (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993.) p.174.

2. See the previous Advent post.

3. Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent, dating back to at least 275 AD, was originally composed in Greek. Ralph Vaughn Williams (1872-1958) set Gerard Moultrie’s translation from the Greek to the tune of Picardy, a French medieval folk melody. (Wikipedia) Recommended Spotify covers of this song include a contemporary version by Red Mountain Music and a traditional choral version by by the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles.