"I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard:
My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. 
He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines.
He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well.
Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. 

"Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. 
What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it?
When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad? 

Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard:
I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed;
I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled. 
I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there.
I will command the clouds not to rain on it." 

The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah are the vines he delighted in.
And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed;
for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.  

I am one of the vines in God’s vineyard. God planted me, and took the very best care of me, and I have grown, but I don’t always produce the best grapes – in fact, there have been times when the grapes I’ve produced have been really bad grapes – they weren’t even good raisins.

Let me say this more clearly – God created me, has fed me and cared for me, and has surrounded me with a family that loves me – first, the family that I was born into, and then the family that my wife and I made after we married, and then the family that my faith community has become.

But there have been times – plenty of times – when I have not done God’s will, when I have broken God’s law, when I rebelled against God’s love, and when I have not heard the cry of the needy.

I am not proud of this, but it’s the truth. How could Jesus be my Savior, if I didn’t need to be saved?

We serve a God of miracles, and when a vineyard planted on fertile soil produces good grapes, that’s not much of a miracle. I’ve got a brown thumb, and even *I* could do that!

The prophet Isaiah tells us that God – who planted the vineyard, and did all the work – sees that his vineyard does not produce good grapes, he has every right to take the vineyard apart and do something else completely.

It wouldn’t be a miracle if God did that, either – sooner or later, any of us would do the same thing.

Jesus tells a vineyard story in the Gospel of Luke, too. That story goes like this:

A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, 'For three years now I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?'
'Sir,' the man replied, 'leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it.  If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.'

It seems to me that this is a miracle – that a man might look at the fig tree that produces nothing for years, and be willing to wait a little longer – not because of what the fig tree has done in the past, but because of what the fig tree might do in the future.

The miracle of the man who is willing to wait a little longer reminds me of an even bigger miracle – that God might look at us in our weakness and humanity and be willing to wait a little longer – not because of what we have done in the past, but because of what we might do in the future.

Our Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.

Let us give God thanks, for being that kind of a God, and for waiting for us, while we are sinners.

This week, please pray with me for:

The angry.

Those leaving, and those staying.

Those who must finally say something, years later.

And have a great week.

Christ lives in you.

Spencer the wonder hamster