I love wine. And I love looking at vineyards. There is something meditative and soothing about passing rows of grapevines--whether they are full and heavy with grapes to be harvested, or they have already been picked, pruned and set to restart the growing season. The photo above shows one of my favorite images of the vineyards in the Napa Valley in mustard season--otherwise known as winter (March).
The readings for this coming Sunday, though, are anything but soothing. In fact, they are downright threatening and violent. Jesus, like Isaiah, worked with the predominating images and icons of his day--there must have been grapevines everywhere (one gets the feeling that people only drank wine and water and ate bread and fish in his day--not a bad diet, come to think of it.) I'm always interested in writing new parables for our day, using images that we can relate to easily. Though there are many vineyards in our area (some as close as ten miles from the center of Syracuse) this image doesn't hold the same power for us.
My inclination right now is to figure out what this parable would be using a modern icon. Would a sports analogy work? Or the shopping mall? The real point, though, is to get at the heart of what Jesus is saying about the ways we have and do reject him--reject his message and reject his presence in our lives.
And, if we stick with the vineyard image for a bit, what does it mean to think of ourselves as the vineyard that bears wild fruit. There is an art to growing good vines and crafting good wines and part of that art is that yielding of the vines to the work of the crafter. It is as if we have been sprayed with Roundup and are resistant to God's crafting. Hmmm... gotta think more about this.
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