Keith Robinson | 26 October 2010
A few weeks ago I began a course of bible and theology study. It’s run by Southwark Diocese at Trinity House. We’ve started, naturally enough, with the Old Testament and then we will go on to the New Testament before we do doctrine, ethics, worship and liturgy.
We’ve got seven weeks for the Old Testament which is not very long so we are studying selected books. So far we have looked at Exodus, 1 Samuel and Amos.
One of the things that have struck me by looking at these books in depth is how harsh and vengeful God can be. There is an awful lot of punishment and there is an awful lot of killing. And God seems very demanding of obedience, and what seems like blind, unthinking, unfeeling obedience.
So, for instance, when Saul is told to attack the Amalekites, he is also told by God that he must utterly destroy them, man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. And when he does not carry this out to the letter, he is punished.
I thought at first that today’s reading from Isaiah was the vengeful and punishing God in action again. He has invested a lot of time and energy in this vineyard. He has chosen a good site, cleared it of stones, planted it with choice vines, done everything he could to get a crop of good grapes but all he gets are the wild ones which are small and bitter and useless for making wine or anything else.
Now the next bit of the reading from Isaiah, which we didn’t have today, tells what God is going to do with his vineyard that’s produced only bitter grapes:
And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured
I will break down its wall and it shall be trampled down
I will make it a waste, it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns
I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it
For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel
And the people of Judah are his pleasant planting
He expected justice but saw bloodshed
Righteousness but heard a cry.
It sounds a bit like punishment and retribution but I think there is another way of looking at it. What God is doing is withdrawing his protection and support, taking away the hedge and the walls and leaving us to fend for ourselves and see what sort of mess we make of it.
God expects justice. He expects us to love and care for each other. We’re not very good at doing that anymore than we were in the time of Isaiah.
When some of us were in Rome a couple of weeks ago we visited the Sant’ Egidio soup kitchen. Providing food is one of many things that the community does in Rome and in other places in the world. Whilst there are many, many ways in which we treat each other badly, hunger and starvation whether in a city like Rome or in Africa is one of the worst of injustices which we inflict on each other
A few weeks ago someone called James Walters preached the sermon at St Peters in Walworth. He is the Anglican Chaplain at the London School of Economics. His theme was the way that food futures are traded on the stock market and how this is forcing prices up to a level where poorer countries are unable to buy basic foodstuffs like grain and rice.
Food has been traded as a commodity in developed countries for 100 years or more. So a farmer can agree in January what he will sell for in July. But until recently this was trading that was strictly regulated and only those concerned with food production and distribution could take part.
But a few years ago those regulations were abolished and the contracts between farmers and the food buyers became things which could be bought and sold by people who had nothing to do with food or agriculture but just wanted to make money. So a farmer’s contract for £10,000 worth of wheat could be traded and sold by people like Goldman Sachs until it was worth £20,000 or £30,000 and this then became the price at which the food was sold. I mention Goldman Sachs particularly because it is estimated that they made $1 billion from speculating on food derivatives in their last financial year.
The effect of this trading is that basic foodstuffs become very expensive. In 2007-8, in one year, the price of wheat shot up by 80%, maize by 90% and rice by an incredible 320%. It is estimated by the UN that close to 200 million people were no longer able to buy food during 2007-8.
Thankfully, because of the recession and the banking crisis, trading in food derivatives has fallen and prices have come down - but not enough. Traders are still making money out of the starvation of others and there are poor countries that are still feeling the effects of high food prices today.
One of the things that James Walters said when he was speaking about this – and I don’t know if this is true or not – is that the idea that the world cannot produce enough food to feed everyone is simply untrue. Food is produced and wasted. It’s available but people are denied the basic human right of having enough to eat because prices are being kept artificially high.
There are a number of charities and other organisations lobbying to reintroduce regulations to stop speculation on food prices. When we are thinking about justice and causes which the Isaiah Community might support, perhaps this could be one of them.
We’ve got seven weeks for the Old Testament which is not very long so we are studying selected books. So far we have looked at Exodus, 1 Samuel and Amos.
One of the things that have struck me by looking at these books in depth is how harsh and vengeful God can be. There is an awful lot of punishment and there is an awful lot of killing. And God seems very demanding of obedience, and what seems like blind, unthinking, unfeeling obedience.
So, for instance, when Saul is told to attack the Amalekites, he is also told by God that he must utterly destroy them, man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. And when he does not carry this out to the letter, he is punished.
I thought at first that today’s reading from Isaiah was the vengeful and punishing God in action again. He has invested a lot of time and energy in this vineyard. He has chosen a good site, cleared it of stones, planted it with choice vines, done everything he could to get a crop of good grapes but all he gets are the wild ones which are small and bitter and useless for making wine or anything else.
Now the next bit of the reading from Isaiah, which we didn’t have today, tells what God is going to do with his vineyard that’s produced only bitter grapes:
And now I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge, and it shall be devoured
I will break down its wall and it shall be trampled down
I will make it a waste, it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns
I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it
For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel
And the people of Judah are his pleasant planting
He expected justice but saw bloodshed
Righteousness but heard a cry.
It sounds a bit like punishment and retribution but I think there is another way of looking at it. What God is doing is withdrawing his protection and support, taking away the hedge and the walls and leaving us to fend for ourselves and see what sort of mess we make of it.
God expects justice. He expects us to love and care for each other. We’re not very good at doing that anymore than we were in the time of Isaiah.
When some of us were in Rome a couple of weeks ago we visited the Sant’ Egidio soup kitchen. Providing food is one of many things that the community does in Rome and in other places in the world. Whilst there are many, many ways in which we treat each other badly, hunger and starvation whether in a city like Rome or in Africa is one of the worst of injustices which we inflict on each other
A few weeks ago someone called James Walters preached the sermon at St Peters in Walworth. He is the Anglican Chaplain at the London School of Economics. His theme was the way that food futures are traded on the stock market and how this is forcing prices up to a level where poorer countries are unable to buy basic foodstuffs like grain and rice.
Food has been traded as a commodity in developed countries for 100 years or more. So a farmer can agree in January what he will sell for in July. But until recently this was trading that was strictly regulated and only those concerned with food production and distribution could take part.
But a few years ago those regulations were abolished and the contracts between farmers and the food buyers became things which could be bought and sold by people who had nothing to do with food or agriculture but just wanted to make money. So a farmer’s contract for £10,000 worth of wheat could be traded and sold by people like Goldman Sachs until it was worth £20,000 or £30,000 and this then became the price at which the food was sold. I mention Goldman Sachs particularly because it is estimated that they made $1 billion from speculating on food derivatives in their last financial year.
The effect of this trading is that basic foodstuffs become very expensive. In 2007-8, in one year, the price of wheat shot up by 80%, maize by 90% and rice by an incredible 320%. It is estimated by the UN that close to 200 million people were no longer able to buy food during 2007-8.
Thankfully, because of the recession and the banking crisis, trading in food derivatives has fallen and prices have come down - but not enough. Traders are still making money out of the starvation of others and there are poor countries that are still feeling the effects of high food prices today.
One of the things that James Walters said when he was speaking about this – and I don’t know if this is true or not – is that the idea that the world cannot produce enough food to feed everyone is simply untrue. Food is produced and wasted. It’s available but people are denied the basic human right of having enough to eat because prices are being kept artificially high.
There are a number of charities and other organisations lobbying to reintroduce regulations to stop speculation on food prices. When we are thinking about justice and causes which the Isaiah Community might support, perhaps this could be one of them.
