Scene: A cinema audience

Katy Emslie-Smith August 17, 2025 0 0

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Isaiah 5: 1-7 (NIVUK)

1 I will sing for the one I love
    a song about his vineyard:
my loved one had a vineyard
    on a fertile hillside.
2 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,
    but it yielded only bad fruit.

3 ‘Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah,
    judge between me and my vineyard.
4 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?
5 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.
6 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.’

7 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

A cinema audience reclines into their soft plush chairs, positions their popcorn and drinks within easy reach and relaxes into the gentle horticultural scene on screen. The gardener quietly tills the soil, then prunes a hanging vine tendril. He leans on his rake while he surveys the tower from which he can watch over the garden and he dreams of how he will soon harvest full bunches of grapes and try his hand at making a little homemade wine. The birds are singing, the bees are humming as the screen dances green with myriad patterns of leaves. Suddenly the audience startles to the scrape of metal on stone as the scene jumps to the loud, jarring sound and image of a bulldozer demolishing the protecting wall, uprooting the perfectly clipped hedge, knocking the hanging grapes to the ground and trampling them into the now wasteland dust. Popcorn everywhere, a few drinks spilled on knees.

Isaiah chapter 5 takes us to this kind of jump scene where we first read of God’s character as the provider, the protector, the grower, the nurturer, the gardener. Comfortable and pastoral. In shocking contrast that same God comes as the destroyer, the uprooter, the demolisher of all that makes up a bad harvest. He comes as sovereign God, the one who can command the clouds to give or withhold rain, Holy God who cannot and will not in his holiness tolerate and remain detached when any part of humanity suffers violence, bloodshed and distress. He sees and he hears and his anger burns.

A bulldozer clears the dross of the past to make way for the constructive, creative future work of restoration. God the giver bulldozes his destructive anger onto himself as Jesus hangs on the cross. Through Christ’s death and resurrection, God begins the forgiven, merciful restoring work of his compassion poured into our broken and painful world.

Prayer:

May we be growers and nurturers wherever the barren ground of injustice and oppression has barred people from flourishing. May our anger burn with yours into deep compassion and action towards justice and healing.