Bitter Fruit

The scriptures referred to are Isaiah 5:1-7, Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18, Hebrews 11:29-12:2 and Luke 12:49-56.

I was watching Book TV many years ago and the author speaking at a bookstore was Larry Kramer, one of the most prominent and outspoken activists of the gay community. He is a co-founder of ACT UP and the Gay Men's Health Crisis and the author of the play The Normal Heart, which chronicles the early days of the AIDs epidemic. He was in his 70s at the time of the taping and a venerable figure in his world. He started to speak and in short order began to condemn his own community for killing themselves and each other by using drugs like crystal meth and having unprotected sex. He felt being gay was about so much more than just having lots of sex but felt that was what gays were primarily focused on. You could have heard an ant cough in the silence that seized the audience, which was largely gay. Daddy was angry and giving them a verbal spanking and they were stunned. I looked him up and found out that Larry Kramer has been compared to an Old Testament prophet because he pulls no punches in his critique of society, either in regard to the pointed indifference of city, state and local governments to the health of gays or in regard to the hedonistic self-destructiveness of today's gays.

I anticipate a similar uneasy reaction to today's Old Testament, Psalm and Gospel readings. It is somewhat disguised by Isaiah's metaphor of a vineyard, though verse 7 makes it clear that he means God's people. The passage starts as a love song and then becomes a “somebody done somebody wrong song.” It describes how arduous setting up a vineyard is: digging terraces, clearing stones, selecting from cuttings and planting vines, building a watchtower and hewing the wine vat out of rock. It doesn't talk about how long it takes for a vineyard to start producing, which is 2 years to produce grapes and 4 years before you can make your first bottle of wine. Most people back then probably knew that. And despite all the loving hard work he has put into it, God is disappointed that it has produced wild or sour grapes. The Hebrew literally means “stinking or worthless things.”

God put a lot of work into forging and protecting the nations of Israel and Judah. Is he being unreasonable to expect them to bear good fruit? And what is the bitter fruit that he is complaining about? Our passage says, “...he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!” In Hebrew the words for “justice” and “bloodshed” sound similar; likewise the words for “righteousness” and “cry.” But the there are layers of meaning that the English translation doesn't convey. The Hebrew word for “bloodshed” is related to the word for “oppression” and some translations use the later because it makes a more obvious contrast with justice. And the Hebrew word translated “cry” here is specifically a cry for help or a cry of distress. So someone has suggested this translation: “He sought equity but found iniquity, a righteous nation, but instead, lamentation.” What angers God is his people are perpetrating violent injustice and oppression upon each other.

This is expanded upon in the verses immediately following our passage where God lists 6 woes. First, he condemns those who “add house to house and field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land.” (Isaiah 5:8) He is talking of those wealthy property owners who are extending their real estate holdings at the expense of the smaller, poorer farmers. According to Leviticus, everyone got land apportioned to them by God and it was to remain in the family. If they needed money, they could lease the land to someone else but every 50 years during the Jubilee year the debt was canceled and the land reverted to the original family. God says, “The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers. Throughout the land that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.” (Leviticus 25:23-24) God created the earth; it is his and we are just stewards of it. Taking advantage of the unfortunate to seize what God given to someone else is not part of the deal. As we said, nothing is really ours and definitely not permanently. And the prophet foresees a time when fine houses stand empty and vineyards and fields become worthless wastelands.

“Woe to those who rise early in the morning to run after their drinks, who stay up late at night till they are inflamed with wine. They have harps and lyres at their banquets, pipes and timbrels and wine, but they have no regard for the deeds of the Lord, no respect for the works of his hands.” (Isaiah 5:11-12) This bad fruit results in people who indulge themselves in mind- and mood-altering substances as well as in luxuries while simultaneously not paying any attention to God's ways. “Therefore my people will go into exile for lack of understanding...” (Isaiah 5:13) Because they don't get that everything comes from God and is to be used for the good of all, they will lose the land they steal from one another.

“So the people will be brought low and everyone humbled, the eyes of the arrogant humbled.” (Isaiah 5:15) Arrogance, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, is the complete anti-God state of mind. You don't feel you need anyone because you know it all and can do it all. You may give lip service to God but you don't really believe he is the superior being because nobody is superior to you. Without humility, you won't seek God or his forgiveness because that would be to admit you need someone else or that you have done something wrong. No one can truly be a follower of Jesus and retain his or her arrogance.

Next God pronounces woe on those who parade their sins and wickedness the way a conqueror parades his spoils or pagans would parade their idols during a festival. They challenge God to hurry up and carry out his plan so they can evaluate it according to their standards. (Isaiah 5:18-19) So this is a condemnation of shamelessness and cynicism.

Then it's “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” (Isaiah 5:20) The human capacity for justifying anything they wish to do or whatever and whoever they approve of is astonishing. People can dismiss any cruelty and injustice if they can say it was for a good cause. The Nazis were just trying to make the world a better place...by exterminating Jews, Gypsys, gays, Slavs, the mentally and physically disabled, etc. They got their ideas from the eugenics movement in the US and our policy of removing Native Americans to reservations. We still have folks who think the answer to all our problems is to exclude or get rid of “those people.” And “those people” can be whomever you designate. And if it is not evil to harm people for no reason other than the accident of their skin color, or where they were born, or in what religion they were raised, then I don't know what is.

“Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.” (Isaiah 5:21) In our individualistic culture, the message we constantly drum into the heads of our children and young people is “Believe in yourself, even if no one else does.” And that would be fine if confidence was always accompanied by competence. But that is clearly not the case. And a lot of damage in this world is done by those who think they are always right and don't listen to others. The fact is that in most cases if you are wise and clever that will become evident to others and they will tell you, if not in so many words. They will come to you for advice and look to you for leadership. I think Rudyard Kipling had a better take on this in his poem If where he wrote, “If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too...” Knowing that you might be wrong, and on the occasions when you are, learning from that experience, is vital. A large part of wisdom is being able to handle and process feedback from other people and from life. Those who don't are dangerous.

Finally God says, “Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent.” (Isaiah 5:22-23) Again drunkenness is condemned but also corruption. If you let the guilty go, they can do more harm. By focusing on five teens who happened to be in a different part of Central Park the night a female jogger was beaten and raped, the real culprit, a serial rapist whose DNA the authorities already had on file, was able to go on to rape 5 other women. And only the rich guilty person can bribe someone. Which results in the poor being disproportionately incarcerated. And, as we have seen with the Central Park Five, the innocent can suffer under a justice system that is weighted towards those who can afford expensive lawyers.

So what makes the products of God's vineyard so bitter are greed and debauchery and unfaithfulness and cynicism and arrogance and injustice. And that is why he will break down the walls that protect the vineyard and let it be trampled and devoured and burned. That is why he will let the Assyrians take Israel and later the Babylonians take Judah into exile. Tolerating such corruption weakens a nation.

Obviously this was not a popular message and indeed we can look at the prophetic books in the Hebrew Bible as minority reports. We know kings had their own schools of prophets who told them what they wanted to hear. (1 Kings 22:6) But the prophets whose works the Bible preserved told those in power and their followers the truth. And nobody wants to hear the truth when it makes them look bad. Which is what the author of Hebrews is talking about when he mentions martyrs for the faith: “Others were tortured...Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword.” Jeremiah was mocked and imprisoned. (Jeremiah 20:2; 37:15) Zechariah was stoned. (2 Chronicles 24:20-21) Jewish tradition says Isaiah was sawn in two. And Urijah was killed with a sword. (Jeremiah 26:20-23) Neither the popularity or unpopularity of an idea is a reliable indicator of whether it is true or not, but if it unpopular with people in power they will discount it, suppress it and try to shut up those who say it. One way to silence those who speak the truth to power is to kill them. In 2018, more than 50 journalists were killed around the world, including dozens of Russian journalists and infamously, Jamal Khashoggi who was killed and dismembered in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Which brings us to Jesus' startling speech which we read in Luke today. He is acting as anything other than “meek and mild.” Rather the Lion of Judah says, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” Why is he talking like this?

The paragraph preceding this one is about judgment on those who do not do what their master told them to do while he was away. Remember Jesus was commending the servants who did their duty and fed and treated properly their fellow servants while the master is gone. Jesus then says, “But suppose the servant says to himself, 'My master is taking a long time in coming,' and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk.” Sound familiar? Jesus, like Isaiah, is seeing the same problems cropping up in his day. People are doubting that God really will act and are mistreating others. Though only Jesus says it explicitly, all of the prophets' complaints can be boiled down to violations of the 2 Great Commandments: to love God completely and love your neighbor as yourself. It begins when people abandon the God who is love or simply go through the motions in worship. And it ends up affecting how they view and treat those created in God's image. Jesus' whole message is about the nature of God and how we should therefore act towards one another. He emphasizes God's love and forgiveness and yet he meets up with fierce opposition. He also knows the penalty for those who speak inconvenient truths to power: they get crucified. That's the baptism he is talking about. It is a baptism of fire. And he knows people will take sides about him and his message and it will divide nations and peoples and even families.

I think Jesus chose the metaphor of fire for a couple of reasons. Fire cleanses. If you want to clear a field, you do a controlled burn. They do them on Big Pine to cut down on dry underbrush which might otherwise fuel very destructive fires. Fire is used to refine metals and separate the dross as well. Fire is frequently used in scripture to symbolize both judgment and cleansing.

Fire is powerful but it can also be used for good. Fire gives light in the darkness. Jesus spoke of putting a lamp on a stand to give light to the whole house. The only fire Jesus kindled was the light he was shedding on this world. It casts a harsh light on how people act but it also illuminates the way to God. However, as Jesus said, a lot of folks like the darkness because it hides their deeds and the ugly truth about society. (John 3:19) On the cross they tried to extinguish the light of the world. But the darkness could not overcome it. (John 1:5)

And now the torch has been passed. Like using one candle to light others, Jesus, the light of the world, has ignited us with his divine spark so that we can be the light of the world. (John 9:5; Matthew 5:14) Perhaps this is the fire he couldn't wait to kindle. And indeed it wouldn't really get going until after his death and resurrection. As the disciples who met the risen Christ while going to Emmaus said, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32) Once the Spirit was poured out on the believers at Pentecost, signified by the tongues of flames over their heads, they couldn't keep the light of the gospel hidden from the crowds. And the gospel spread through the world like wildfire.

Like fire, the gospel stirs up mixed reactions. Though gospel means good news, people don't always see it as such. Because the good news is made up of two parts: diagnosis and treatment. And the diagnosis, as we heard in Isaiah, is not a pleasant one to face. Like any illness there are symptoms: arrogance, injustice and self-destructive self-indulgence, among others. We are spiritually and morally sick. It affects how we think, speak and act. It affects how we treat God, how we treat each other and even how we treat ourselves. And while it is obvious that this world is sick, like most alcoholics, many of us are in denial. Because getting better requires some big changes in our attitudes and in our lifestyles.

The treatment is trusting Jesus as one would a doctor. We need to trust him to fix what's wrong inside. And then we need to follow doctor's orders. That means being humble and taking directions from him. It means giving up some things and doing other things that might be as welcome as strenuous exercise is to a couch potato. Mark summarizes Jesus' message thus: “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the gospel!” (Mark 1:15) Repentance, changing your way of thinking and living, is still not a popular part of Jesus' message. There are lots of so-called Christians who don't want to or feel the need to ask for forgiveness. But you can't fix what's wrong if you don't admit what's wrong.

But as I've seen in patients with hard to diagnose diseases, finding out what's wrong with you can paradoxically be good news. Now you know what you are fighting. You know the cause and the symptoms. You have a plan of treatment. You can get better.

The world can get better. As Larry Kramer told his audience that making their lives all about selfish pleasure was killing them physically, we need to realize that living a self-centered life will just as surely kill us spiritually. God made us to produce good fruit: not arrogance but humility, not greed but generosity, not self-justification but justice, not cries of distress but songs of joy.