A new corner of the vineyard

Greetings from Oregon. We moved here several weeks ago and have been mostly consumed by trying to get control over this crazy house we now call home. In the midst of it we experience daily the wonder of the beauty of this place, from the tall Douglas firs surrounding our property, to the deer tiptoeing past in the neighbor’s yard, to the jewel-like lake nearby one direction and the magnificent rivers and mountains the other, and even to the giant raccoon (we thought maybe it was Sasquatch) pressed against our window the first night we cooked out.

Maybe it’s the thicket in our back yard that makes me chuckle when I ponder Isaiah 5, the Old Testament reading appointed for today. God’s love song for God’s beloved metaphorical vineyard turns to despair as the vineyard fills with wild grapes, then the hedges are torn down, all is devoured and trampled and overgrown. Yes, it sounds like our backyard all right. But of course, God is voicing through the prophet the truth of what happens when God’s people forsake the way of love, and justice and righteousness are replaced with disaster. It is a magnificent metaphor for the world spinning around us today.

It points directly to the climax of Luke 12 when Jesus berates the crowd: “You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

This metaphor of the vineyard has personal meaning for us as well, even if I’m stretching a bit here. We moved from Philadelphia to Wisconsin to take up academic work for which we had been recruited. That vineyard quickly filled with wild grapes and we determined to escape before the hedge crumbled. But as we determined to retire from the academy still we pondered whether to stay in the majestic beauty of Lake Michigan or to move away. It was life as gay people that convinced us to come to Oregon. Gay life in Wisconsin was too difficult; it was impossible to find contractors to work on our home, health-care providers refused to acknowledge our marriage and with great snarkiness referred to us as each other’s “friends,” at restaurants we got the worst tables and the worst service. I could go on and on, but in the end we decided we had had enough of those wild grapes.

Oregon is no perfect haven, but it is far and away a better “garden” for lgbt people; a place where we can live lgbt lives tended and nourished (not just tolerated) by God’s created vineyard. Oregonians, it seems, have continued to mature as good stewards of all of creation.

I went to college here many years ago. I have now almost daily the wonderful experience of a kind of sensual perception of my youth as the aroma of the fir trees transports me back to that magnificent time of wonder when as young people we first tried on the mantle of adulthood and prepared for careers and families. And the sun breaks through the morning fog and the trees outside gleam and reflect its rays in this particular vineyard, just as decades of lgbt life has brought the sun to shine on our wonderful families.

We will fix up our corner of the vineyard, not to worry. As Paul writes in Hebrews 11 we will do our best to “run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” And I don’t mean just in our garden, but in society as well to the best of our ability. Having joined Oregonians, we are fully aware that it requires us to take up the progressive cudgel that is God’s tool for tending and nourishing the greater vineyard of all creation.

We do what we can each day by giving love and by giving thanks to God for the love with which all of us have been placed in this magnificent garden.

 

Proper 15 (Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18; Hebrews 11:29-12:2; Luke 12:49-56)

©2019 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.