all praise we would render, o help us to see

'tis only the splendor of light hideth thee

a sermon on Isaiah's sermon about fruitless vineyards:

This passage sounds so, well, primitive! Doesn’t it? All this talk of GOD letting the people have it strikes our ears as problematic. It sounds needlessly retributive and wrathful. 

No, we know better. Don’t we? We know God would never do anything like that. Or, if God ever did, that was the God of the Old Testament, as we like to say. Since then, God has turned over a new leaf. These days, God is as treacherous as a leaf. Now, God is hopelessly merciful. 

A couple of things. First of all, that’s a heresy. And it’s an old one, too. The heresy is known as Marcionism, and the name comes from the founder, Marcion. 

Marcion was a theologian (of course) who lived in what’s now Turkey during the second century. And like us, he found the violence in the Old Testament distasteful. Like us, Marcion couldn’t reconcile the Old Testament’s depiction of God with the one Jesus revealed. Marcion couldn’t believe the God of Jesus would ever be so hotheaded. And so, what Marcion did was take our thought to its logical conclusion. Marcion determined the God of that the Old Testament must be different from the God of the New Testament. 

In 144, Marcion was excommunicated, and his teachings were deemed heretical. The early church, you understand, knew that you can’t just sand down the rough edges of the Bible. The key to orthodoxy is never the easy route. On the contrary, Scripture always comes alive when you really reckon with it, not when you try to get it to say what you want.

But, and I hate to tell you this, that’s not the only thing about our problem with today’s Scripture. The second thing is, it’s not even that modern! As you can tell, the issue had already sprung up by the second century! And there’s no reason to believe it wasn’t an issue before that, too! 

The offense, then, isn’t modern! Rather, it’s a human affront. And what’s more, it’s always been so, too! 

And as such, let’s take our turn. Let’s have a go! Let’s get into it!

…Nowadays, we shrug our shoulders. Life is random, we say. It’s all just a roll of the dice. No one knows why anything happens. However, we can all agree that God couldn’t have had a hand in it. 

But you know what? While that might sound enlightened, it’s really just callow. Trying to get God off the hook only puts us on it! Ask anyone who’s going through it, and that might be you today. When, not if, when you’re in the thick of it, the problem is never that God might be behind it. No, the torment comes from the fact that God is nowhere to be found!

Am I right? I think I am. 

A string of tough breaks is bad enough. But it only makes it worse to hear God has nothing to do with it. Yes, such talk might rescue us from the hand of God. But ultimately, it just leaves you alone in a cold, dark, and unfeeling universe. Truthfully, our attempts to be broadminded are really more cruel than God in today’s Scripture. 

A quick word: This does not mean you have the right to tell anyone else it was all a part of God’s plan. Got it? 

As we discussed in confirmation, God holds in Thy hands the deepest depths and the highest heights. So yes, nothing is out of God’s reach. But if life has taken the knees out from under someone, you don’t get to tell them it’s God’s plan! Ok? That’s what Job’s friends did. And guess what? When God showed up, God told those friends they’d have done better to have kept quiet.

So, if you find yourself with someone who’s had a rough go of it, take a cue from our Stephen Ministers. It’s not your job to cure anyone. God will take care of that. All you need to do is care for the person. And as we all know, the best way to be cared for is to have someone saddle up next to you, tell you they’re there for you, and then pray with you. It’s as easy as that!

Gosh! I wish I didn’t have to say that. But too many people have had a tough time made a little worse by words like that. So it’s important.

…Alright, though, back to the matter at hand. In today’s Scripture, it’s God who’s doing the destruction. But you should note this is a particular sort of damage. Isn’t it? God’s not active. No, God is letting the people have it, as it were. The punishment isn’t coming from God’s activity. No, it’s coming from God’s inactivity. God’s passivity.

Luther, an Old Testament professor, noted this. Luther said the most awful thing God can do to us is absent Thyself. The worst kind of famine, said Luther, who lived through a few famines, was a famine of the word of God. For Luther, the most terrible thing God can do is sit back, do nothing, and leave us to our own devices. 

In fact, that distinction was a hot one in Luther’s day. There was a debate raging as to whether God actively punishes or just allows punishments to happen. Luther, though, could only laugh. Luther understood that when you’re in the pinch, it makes no difference! When trouble befalls you, it doesn’t matter if God’s doing it or letting it happen. Either way, it’s God who’s your problem.

This is what Luther, picking up on theologians before him, called the “Deus absconditus.” The hidden God. The God that is so far off so as to be virtually nonexistent. And that’s the God today’s Scripture proclaims. Isn’t it?

But you’ll also notice that Scripture is not saying God is hidden because God is powerless or indifferent. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth! Instead, Scripture says something far more radical! Scripture is insisting that God’s absence is actually a manifestation of God’s presence! 

God is not doing nothing out of helplessness! No, rather, God is not doing anything out of a great big power and love! God is not silent because a cat’s got God’s tongue. No, God is mystically, albeit painfully, speaking loud and clear through the catastrophe! This is what  called another kind of silence, “one that is composed of many syllables and notes—the often sung silence in the inner sanctuary of the unseen and unknowable majestic voice of divinity.”

But you know what? That line about another kind of silence may sound poetic. But there’s nothing romantic about it when God’s silence descends upon you. Is there? No, it’s not. When that happens, God’s silence becomes literally deafening. It’s painful. And nothing could be harder to hear.

…With that, we’ve touched upon the whirring live-wire of faith. Haven’t we? We’ve approached the electric nerve center of existence itself. It’s intense, I know. But this passage is intense. And you know what else? So is life. 

We do ourselves no favors pretending day-to-day life is some cakewalk. Luther was right! It’s God we’ve got attend with. And God isn’t about to walk quietly off into the night. In fact, in Christ, God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, has hurled Thyself into the dark, silent void. 

Here’s the crux: Now, the dark night of the of the soul positively glows with Golgotha. Now, silence rings with that final earthly breath Christ drew when he breathed his last. And now, emptiness is crammed with the presence of Christ! Christ, who took our prayer, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” and made it his own. Now, nothing is God forsaken anymore. Now, those places are full of God’s best blessing, Christ.

When life chips you down, you’re really closer to God than you know! When you’re knocked down, you really learn to kneel. Kneeling isn’t an act of devotion, you know. No, it’s one of desperation. As we say, God’s office is at the end of your rope.

What brings you to faith isn’t potential. It’s pain. As today’s Scripture makes abundantly clear, potential isn’t nearly enough. Not by a long shot! The vineyard had all the potential in the world. Yet, for all that, none of it was enough to get the people to God. So, instead, God came in the cross.

This is the cross-shaped nuclear core of salvation itself! It’s never pleasant. In fact, when you hear God’s silence descending, you run for the hills every time. The old sinner in us will not countenance the death of the self this silence portends. 

Nevertheless, on the other side of the ear-splitting silence is the Gospel shout! The Gospel shout that chases away Death itself and raises the dead to life everlasting! What’s more, it’s always happening, too! 

…It’s true! Isn’t it? I mean, here YOU are. None of us have walked such a cleared path that we don’t have broken branches and bruised fruit in our lives. And yet! And yet, somehow, impossibly even, God has been at work through the calamity. The silence did break with the thrum of Christ’s pulsing heart! And that sacred sound was nothing less than the very whisper of faith itself!

It was! Wasn’t it?!? I know I’m not whistling in the dark here, either. I’ve talked to enough of you to know better. There are living saints in our midst right now. There are people here who have trudged through the valley of the shadow of death. And at the deepest depth they found, indeed, they were held ever so securely in the unfailing, though wounded, hands of God in Jesus Christ!

But you know what else? I don’t just have to appeal to experience. Do I? No, there’s also Scripture. Isn’t that what today’s passage is all about?!?

Thank God the church knew better than to listen to Marcion! Huh? If we had, we’d be left with some imaginary God. An imaginary God that’s nice but ultimately powerless. 

Instead, we know of the one true God revealed in Scripture! The strange God. That God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Three in one. United and yet never commingled. And this strange God is so powerful in God’s own way as to work through powerlessness itself!

The key to orthodoxy—and orthodox just means “right praise,” by the way—but anyway, the key to orthodoxy is the harder reading. Yes, it’s provocative to our ears. But that’s always been the case! And the not-so-secret secret has always been that the more difficult interpretation is always the most comforting one whenever life gets really hard! 

You don’t come up with a God whose strength is made manifest in weakness by yourself. Do you? No, you don’t. Only Scripture would dare to say that. BUT when you’re really helpless, that’s the God you really need. Isn’t it?

…Yes, God lets the people have it. But that’s not the end in and of itself of the matter. Is it? No, it’s not! Rather, God is clearing the ground to plant God’s strongest tree, the cross! The cross, that accursed tree Christ hung up. 

“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse.” The stump! God doesn’t need lives as mighty as oaks! No, God works from the dead stump. As the old saying goes, God does some of God’s best work in cemeteries! 

And what’s more, God is so generous with this gift that God doesn’t wait around until your death to give it to you! No, God is even right now raising you from the never-ending Death of Sin, self-righteousness, and despondency, too! Painful as that may be to the old sinner in you. And, by the way, it is painful to that old creature in you that is dying to prove itself.

This means if life has cut you down, you’re fertile ground for God’s best work! God doesn’t want you trying to stand on your own. First of all, it’s impossible! Second of all, it’s idolatry! And most importantly, it’s unnecessary!

God really wants to be there for you! God really wants to be the one you rely on! In other words, God really wants to really be God for you! God wants to be your deliverer! God wants to be the holy fire in your bones! 

Remember, in Christ, God is passionate. And you are desirable to God. And the sooner you get used to that, the better.

God isn’t about to leave you alone. No, that would be the worst punishment God could inflict. Instead, in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and at the unalterable command of God, the shoot of Christ’s evergreen righteousness shall come out of the stump of your deadlock! And nothing less than the branch of his cross shall grow out of your very roots! Now, the spirit of the Lord SHALL rest on you, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord. And from now on, your delight shall be in the fear of the Lord! Yes, your delight! 

Now, the fear of the Lord is no longer just a healthy respect and humbled awe. No, now it is so much more! Now, the fear of the Lord will be that deep-seated conviction that God really is at work in your life! At work in your life through thick and thin. And incredibly, albeit mysteriously, at work even in the thin places. Especially in the thin places

The thin places. And Lord knows you and I have more than enough of them in our lives. Don’t we? But now, by the upside-down power of God, those thin places are truly what the Irish knew all about with their concept of thin places. 

Now, the thin places in your life are spots where the veil between this world and eternity itself is so thin as to be nonexistent! Now, the thin places in your life are utterly jam-packed with the presence of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!

…Words fall short here. Don’t they? If you’re in the thick of it right now, the only response is reverent silence. HOWEVER, although weeping may endure for the dark night of the soul, joy shall cometh in the morning of Christ’s eternal resurrection dawn!

And so, assured of that great last day, when the trumpet shall sound, and Christ himself shall be our sun that never sets, we look up, raise our heads, lift our voices, and join the hymn of those who stand on the other side of God’s greatest work!

And if that’s you, if Christ has recently pulled you through death to himself and his resurrection, sing twice as loud! Witness to the rest of us! Strengthen our voices. Remind us of the surety of this promise!

As Julian of Norwich said—and she knew what it was like to watch your life slip through your fingers: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

The end is poetry. It’s hymnody. It’s praise. And in Christ, it’s all ours! Amen?

Good. Well, then, let’s get to it. Shall we? 

Scripture has taken us there. The great heavenly chorus is not so far off! As such, let us lift our voices and join the ever-so-near praise of paradise itself!

Blessed Be the God of Israel, ELW 250