So we begin.
We begin with a love song.
We begin with lovers, whose love for one another is a fruitful garden, a vineyard.
Until…until what? Something changes.
The love song ends, the garden goes wild and weed choked, the grapes go sour.
The shaky romance between God and God’s people.
We start with a love song in a lush vineyard and end with arguing and wild grapes in a trampled down garden, a waste land.
The blame casting.
The judging of who is in the right, who in the wrong, when did the infidelity really begin and who is at fault?
We can read the whole of scripture in light of this shaky romance, the going back and forth of who can be trusted, can we trust God, can God trust us, who forsakes who first.
“Since my people forsake me I will abandon them to the Chaldeans and to the Babylonians. The vineyard will be trampled.”
“Well God maybe we left for a reason, maybe we felt lonely and neglected, afraid, we suffer, perhaps the infidelity begins in heaven not on earth! Did you ever think of that?”
And so it goes, a lovers spat, back and forth.
Scripture bears witness to this heated dialogue.
In Eden, in Hosea and his wandering Gomer, in Job saying he is innocent, and God speaking from the whirlwind and saying how would you know?
It is in Elijah hiding on the mountain, forsaken and hunted down, in Jonah running away, in the psalms haranguing God to restore God’s people, in Jesus dieing words “why have you forsaken me?” “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabathani?”, in the Apostle Paul saying “has God rejected his people?”
The shaky romance is there on every page of scripture and the Saints either explicitly or implicitly, sometimes between the lines, perhaps especially when it is unsaid, implied between the lines.
Lovers arguing in the unsaid, the unspoken, the unwritten, they know each other so well.
We call out longing for one another, searching out one another at great risk and cost, only to then spurn one another, saying we need more, we need more.
Soap Operas have nothing on this romance.
So here we are in the latest installment in the ongoing serial of our shaky divine romance.
The witness of sacred history says that this lovers struggle is important, it is where we learn love, it is where faith becomes something that is deep, it is where we learn to laugh at ourselves and abandon ourselves into the embrace of the God is holy, not like us, always more than we can even hope or dream.
The witness of sacred history is that ultimately it is God who can be trusted, and that our on again off again heated passions for one another lead us into worship, adoration, wonder and foolish hope.
It is the witness of sacred history that this lovers’ lane has no short cuts.
The road to faith and love and hope will be one that is unpaved and wandering and bumpy, but ultimately worth while, when those questions and accusations of who is at fault are surrendered in forgiveness…when the slow lover realizes that there is no one else with whom I would rather ague.
“Let me sing for my beloved my love-song concerning his vineyard.”