Neil Diamond (a singer of my generation) sang this little ditty.  “Song sung blue, everybody knows one, song sung blue, every garden grows one…”  Don’t we all know a time when our life is like this?  Things are in a minor key, nothing seems to fit.  Our reliable connections – transferred to another college/university, switched majors and is no longer in our classes.  Life is no longer on autopilot – but struggling along.  Song sung blue…    Today’s reading from Isaiah – is a classic blues song.  And ultimately, it is the story of God and his unrequited love for his vineyard.  “Let me sing you a song about my friend’s love for his vineyard.  How I looked for grapes, but only found wild grapes.” You can hear the blues in his voice…  

Many have felt the sting of this same disappointment. – Song sung blue about your child – the recipient of your heart and your love, yet who rewarded your loving with a lifetime of rebellion.  Song sung blue about the company that rewarded your dad’s  20 years of faithful work with a pink slip.  Song sung blue – about lost love on the pavement of an affair.  Song sung blue about innocence lost.  Song sung blue – about the church that betrayed you…  There are a thousand ‘blues’ that we can sing in our lives. 

So how did God respond to the abject failure of his vineyard?  Some might expect nothing.  Perfect love means letting people walk all over you.  Other might expect that God would torch the whole field.  God does respond.  Make no mistake about it.  God’s response is his judgment.  And it is both measured and merciful.  Here is God’s judgment on the vine.  He gave the vine its wish.  He left it alone.  It is a terrifying picture of wrath.  He withdrew. 

When God withdraws, honoring the flagrant and rebellious demand of his creation, He allows the weeds and insects to retake the garden.  Which turns the Paradise of God’s care into a chaos of our own undoing.  Ask any farmer.  The only thing you have to do to insure the failure of the crop is to not show up.  Nature will do the rest. 

But know this about God’s announcements of judgment.  They are spoken as a desperate last effort by God in the hope that they will never come to pass – that His song sung blue will break our hearts and turn us to Him.  They are his last ditch efforts to waken us to the tragedy before us so that it will never befall us. 

Because here is the wonderful truth about God. He never gives up.  God never stops loving, never ceases to find a way to bring forth the best wine, even if it costs God everything.  Because in the end, God is intent on sharing that vintage with the whole redeemed creation, raising the glass in celebration of our love for Him and each other, because we finally offered it freely and passionately, the way His love was first offered to us.  Then, and only then, will we be able to sing the final triumphant and happy stanza of God’s Love Song.  Because that is what God wants – not a song sung blue, but a love song… 

So, whether you are singing the blues for yourself these days, or like Isaiah, for a friend’s love for their vineyard/life – know it is not the final stanza of the song.  The final stanza of any blues song was written by God’s Son, upon the cross – a song of sacrificial love.  Sung so that we might know – whatever we’ve done, however low life has sunk, however we’ve made a mess of God’s gift and God’s life to us – God has come for us upon the cross, and will come to bring us home…