Letting go and finding a fresh vineyard
Rhona Cathcart
October 10, 2023
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Isaiah 5: 6 (NRSVA)
6 I will make it a waste;
it shall not be pruned or hoed,
and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns;
I will also command the clouds
that they rain no rain upon it.
Down the road from me there’s a pub called The Drouthy Laird. ‘Drouthy’ seems an apter word than ‘thirsty’ to describe the physical sensation of dryness which thirst or ‘drocht’ (a Scots word for drought) brings to the mouth.
Today’s biblical metaphor is of an unproductive vineyard. The land of Judah has been yielding ‘bad fruit’ for a long time. Instead of promising renewal as he so often does, God says he will “command the clouds not to rain on it”.
It’s an uncomfortable, arid picture of a punishing God who withholds goodness. Yet perhaps we are looking in the wrong place. The metaphor may not call us to look at God’s behaviour, but at our own — busy cultivating the wrong things, or failing to prune or cultivate at all. The ‘drouthiness’ we feel has its roots in us — as we cling to unproductive soil just because it is familiar; or as we fail to graft new vines onto the old, because it feels risky
So often God calls us to pay attention to the local, to what is happening in our own families, churches and neighbourhoods, but this isn’t an excuse to try to keep things as they’ve ‘aye been’. Without an openness to what God is doing and a willingness to adapt, there is a risk of ‘drocht’ even in what was once a flourishing vineyard.
God doesn’t abandon us — the vine stock remains strong. But in a land where so many are ‘drouthy’ — for justice, for compassion, for kindness, for meaning, for basic standards of living — it is up to us take and tend God’s fruit-bearing love into new and fresh vineyards.
PRAYER:
Lord
When my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth
And my throat is as dry as dust
When the drouthiness of my soul fills me with hopelessness
As I try to keep things going that seem to bear no fruit,
Help me to see where I am supposed to be, or how I am supposed to work.
Give me eyes to see the new shoots and the time and skill to cultivate them
In Jesus’ name. Amen
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