Psalm 80:7-15 (New King James Version)
7 Restore us, O God of hosts; Cause Your face to shine, And we shall be saved!
8 You have brought a vine out of Egypt; You have cast out the nations, and planted it.
9 You prepared room for it, And caused it to take deep root, And it filled the land.
10 The hills were covered with its shadow, And the mighty cedars with its boughs.
11 She sent out her boughs to the Sea, And her branches to the River.
12 Why have You broken down her hedges, So that all who pass by the way pluck her fruit?
13 The boar out of the woods uproots it, And the wild beast of the field devours it.
14 Return, we beseech You, O God of hosts; Look down from heaven and see, And visit this vine
15 And the vineyard which Your right hand has planted, And the branch that You made strong for Yourself.
There is a game I like to play on my iPad, Homescapes, where there are games within games on it. The game has you match there objects in a row or more to score, but another part of the game is that you get stars each time you beat a level and the stars let you complete tasks to help the main character renovate his parent’s house. The house and garden, and other parts have fallen apart. I get frustrated when I play the game because the work is never done. You fix something and it falls apart again, or somebody comes up and says, “oh you forgot to add this to it” over and over, the work is never done. I get frustrated a the idea because I get frustrated at the same concept in life. I would like things to be simple, not easy, but simple, I would like to know who the bad guys are upfront, if they are hard to beat so be it as long as the path is clear. If I know the cost of something and I can’t afford it, that is ok with me as long as all the terms were given upfront. I like simple, and I am doing the work on myself to understand that life is not simple. There is dementia, there is depression, there are broken relationships infidelity, suicidal ideation, financial troubles, physical health troubles, there are pandemics, economic collapses, systemic racism, class warfare, poverty, hunger, and wars, just to name a few, things are not simple and it is hard to deal with. There are times where we celebrate and there are times when we lament.
Psalm 80 is a communal lament, used in ancient Israel when a national calamity had occurred. Scholars are split on when exactly this could have been written because Israel was attacked often. Psalm 80 could have been written possibly around 605, 597, 586, 582 b.c. when Nebuchadnezzar invaded or 722 BCE when Israel fell. Israel as a nation had some issues, issues with kings so they split, issues with other countries so they were attacked, often. Kings coming and going, wars coming and going, the people suffering. Not unlike today.
The scriptures before the passage I read before the sermon the people of God call God the Shepherd of Israel, but like people do when times are tough they complain, they complain because they are in trouble and feel like God has not been a good shepherd to them. One of the questions I am always asked as a pastor has to do with theodicy, if there is a God, why do so many bad things happen? Some people say that God caused the suffering, others say that God didn’t cause the suffering but allows it to happen. Either way you think, at some point in your life there will be some bad things to deal with, and some of it might rock you to your core, and change your life perspective on some things even your view of God. Some people might just try to press on and act like nothing is wrong while their world is falling apart but bad times are bound to come what matters is how you operate in those bad times.
Sigmund Freud, although a critic of religion pointed out that people as youth have a need for security, and can imagine their father as an all powerful person, when they find out that their father is vulnerable, they put that all powerful image on God, sometimes to their detriment. With keen insight, Freud recognized this tendency among the religious. He said that people attempt to secure “happiness and protection against suffering … through a delusional remolding of reality.”
Not only did critics of religion have this kind of thinking but so did some of our champions. C. S. Lewis - He said, “When you love someone you don’t want them to suffer. I feel like that. Why doesn’t God?”
The people of God in the text called the nation of Israel a vine and the promised land a vineyard, there is a lot of vine and vineyard imagery in the lectionary passages today. The vine and vineyard is an image all over the Bible when talking about God and God’s people. But this vineyard is being torn up. The walls put around the vineyard are broken down, any and everyone can get in and steal the fruit. There is a wild boar tearing the vineyard, a viscous powerful and an unclean animal. The irony of an animal that God says is unclean is tearing up God’s creation. The people don’t know what to do, their country is under attack and they don’t have faith in the leadership being able to handle the crisis. The people of God need help.
But the people of God get out of complaining and understand that God has gotten them out of trouble before and the same God that got them out of trouble before can get them out of trouble again. If we can cry out to God in the midst of our troubles God will hear us, be with us, and help us out of the situation. It is hard to have faith when everything around you is falling apart but I stopped by to tell you. It is no secret what God can do, what he has done for others he will do the same for you. The Gardner is coming to take care of the vineyard, it just takes a little time. Vine tending requires patience. Nothing grows quickly in God’s realm. The clearing out will have to happen, some things need to go away and some need to go away forcefully. Rather, God’s clearing comes from the heart of God’s love for God’s people and the world. A good gardener does not rejoice in clearing out weeds but sees it as a necessary act to prepare a place to plant a productive vine.
There are other texts with with a vineyard being destroyed like in Isaiah 5, but the difference between Isaiah 5 and Psalm 80 is that the prophet in Isaiah tells the people to turn around, Psalm 80 asks God to turn towards us. The text says that we need God to shine His face on us. A vine needs sunlight to live, and we need God’s light to live. That light, that favor from God, that shining light in the darkness that helps us to see our way through, it is always darkest before dawn we just have to be willing to wait. And be willing to cry out even when it is so dark we can’t see our hand in front of our face. Just because we can’t see God doesn’t mean that God isn’t there.
We have to be willing to cry out in times of suffering. The psalm expresses the pain of the calamity and anger at God for allowing it to happen; at the same time it includes a repetitive refrain containing the people’s cry to God for help. That is part of our problem we don’t want to cry out, don’t want to get help, want to pretend that everything is ok and we don’t need anyone. As long as we keep our suffering a secret the enemy wins. We are all in our own personal vineyards, with our own personal walls being torn down, with our own personal boars tearing things up. The vineyard may have been destroyed by the wild boar, but the vineyard can be restored. There is help coming from the best gardener in the business. C. S. Lewis said “When you love someone you don’t want them to suffer. I feel like that. Why doesn’t God?” But C.S. Lewis also said that while he no longer had answers, he continued to have faith.
The restoration and salvation that they are talking about is not just for eternal life, not just for the future the restoration and salvation is now. The vines planted by the gardener’s right hand, access to favor. There is vine imagery all over the Bible, and I am reminded that we need God in times of trouble. We need to be able to hold on to the true vine in the vineyard.
John 15:5 (New King James Version)
5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
In the vineyard God can provide us with protection, in the vineyard God will give us a foundation to hold on to, in the vineyard we can see God’s face. We have to hold on to God and if we can’t hold on, we have to be able to cry out, if we cry out to God in our times of trouble we will be restored.
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