The Repenting God?

You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land. Why then have you broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit? Turn again, O God of hosts; look down from heaven, and see; have regard for this vine, the stock that your right hand planted. [Psalm 80:7-9, 12, 14-15, NRSV].

The Psalm that we number 80, from which this week’s Psalter reading is extracted, Psalm 80-7-15 [Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, RCL, Year A], is in the form of a communal lament. The noted OT scholar, Robert Alter suggests that the Psalm likely was composed at a moment within which the northern kingdom of Israel was threatened but, on the basis of the content of the poem, not yet destroyed by Assyria. That would be sometime just before 721 B.C.

In the opening verses, not included in this week’s reading, God is referred to as Israel’s Shepherd. The Psalmist seeks rescue and restoration for the people and asks, “How long will You smolder against Your people’s prayer?” [80:4, emphasis is mine].

Our reading this week consists of what some call an extended parable of Israel as a vineyard planted and then cultivated by the God of hosts. For a time, the vineyard flourished; it blessed all those around it (even those who were not in the blood line of Jacob/Israel). But something happened—the Psalmist doesn’t clearly indicate what that something might have been—and God broke down the protective walls around the vineyard. In the Psalmist’s parable, the wild boar has rushed through the breech in the wall to feed upon the vineyard. The Assyrian army is imagined in the parable as other than human, perhaps a ravenous swarm of insects or other “moving things” [80:13].

One is left to question why would anyone go to the trouble of transplanting a vine (from Egypt to Canaan), clearing, and tending to the ground around the vine, then cultivating it so as to produce astounding fruit, if only then to tear down its protective barriers and allow wild beasts to consume it? Might it be that God has done so because of the level of Israel’s sin [see 80:18, which hints in this direction].

Yet I think we must not be too quick to search for the “why.” In one of the better commentaries on the Psalms, Dr. James Luther Mays posits that an important part of the power found in Psalm 80 is the Psalmist’s “anguish and bewilderment” over the contradiction between “what God began and what He has now done” [Psalms: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching.

Can we see that, as with any parable, there is more to the word picture than at first meets the eye? While we all too often think the parable must be “about us,” I think here, the Psalmist is beautifully weaving a narrative about the nature of God. God is no ancient figure clothed in white, with a flowing beard and an engaging smile. Nor is God merely a powerful presence as depicted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Rather, God is a passionate lover [see the Isaiah 5:1-7 reading also appointed for this Sunday], who is deeply invested in the response of those whom He loves. God is One who desires deep and abiding relationships with His created order. And because God desires to be in relationship with humanity, it matters tremendously how humanity responds to God’s overtures, God’s gifts, and God’s commands. As counter intuitive as this may sound, the Almighty God demands intimacy.

As many of you know, in late August, Jane and I celebrated out 52nd wedding anniversary. On multiple occasions in recent years, we have remarked to each other that intimacy isn’t so what is so often depicted in movies and magazines. Instead, it is something that slowly develops over many years. As smitten as we were with each other in our courting years, we are ever so much closer now, for slowly together we have managed to build our life though sadness and chagrin, through the heartache of losing family members, through two heart-breaking miscarriages many years ago, through countless other challenges, but also through life’s high moments—the birth, growth, and maturity of four children, the love we share for our seven grandchildren, and the comforting closeness we feel among so many good and wonderful friends.

One thing Jane and I have learned over these many years is that good and true relationships require adjustment—almost continuous adjustment. I am not the man she married so long ago. Nor is she “the Jane” who said “I do” in front of God, the Rev. Dr. Charlie Shannon, me, and about 100 friends and family in the First UMC Chapel in Gastonia.

Intimate relationship requires almost continuous adjustment. I think that’s what the Psalmist is banking on. The Psalmist clearly thinks/hopes that God will adjust God’s relationship with Israel. God the Gardener will someday take loving hold of the vine again. God the Shepherd will return to tend to His sheep.

Take a careful look at verse 14 in this week’s reading. The Psalmist presumptuously tells God to “turn again,” to look upon the people of Israel with love once more. A number of OT scholars have noted that the word used here for “turn again” can just as easily mean “repent.”

The Psalmist wants God to repent? It is a brazen statement, but it’s the sort of statement that cannot be made except by someone who deeply loves God and hopes—no, trusts—that God will not always be turned away from the people of Israel, and that, in some future moment, God will turn again, back to His flock.

I won’t be as presumptuous as the Psalmist. I won’t say that God repented. I will say this. God did turn again. God did so by sending His only Son to die for us. As Paul would later vividly tell the church in Rome, “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” [Romans 5:8].

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!