"Warning Labels"
08-19-07
Have any of your ever removed the warning label from a mattress? My
mattresses at home have a tag that clearly says "Do not remove under
penalty of law." My heart pounds every time I rip one off. I feel like a
criminal. Well, this week I discovered the story behind the warning labels on
mattresses. Back in the early 1900’s, mattresses often contained a host of
vermin and disease-carrying materials. To protect consumers, the government
required dealers to post
tags on their mattresses listing the contents. Later, the Feds
added a warning to the content tag with the ominous message, "Do not remove
under penalty of law," in big, black letters.
The government requirements may have deterred deceptive mattress dealers, but
for years it has confused consumers who didn't know that the threat wasn't meant
for them. Confronted by fear of prosecution, consumers all over the world have
left the tags on their mattresses. Recently, the Feds addressed the
misunderstanding by changing the label
to: "This tag may not be removed except by the consumer."
In a society full of frivolous lawsuits, companies can’t be too careful. To
protect themselves from lawsuits, most companies slap common-sense warnings on
their products. This has given birth to a new cultural phenomenon: the wacky
warning label. What I find funny is they probably have put such labels on their
products, because someone has actually tried to do some of the things they warn
against. Here are some of my favorites:
A label on a baby stroller warns: "Remove child before folding."
A flushable toilet brush warns: "Do not use for personal hygiene."
A household iron warns users: "Never iron clothes while they are being worn."
A cartridge for a laser printer says: "Do not eat toner."
A 13inch wheel on a wheelbarrow reads: "Not intended for highway use."
An Auto-Shade Windshield Visor warns: "Do not drive with sunshade in
place. Remove from windshield before starting the ignition."
A box of birthday candles says: "Do not use soft wax as ear plugs or any
other function that involves insertion into a body cavity." Can you imagine
the singing being so bad, that uncle Fred grabs a couple of candles and sticks
them in his ears?
The fifth chapter of Isaiah begins with a warning label...and it is a bit wacky.
It is a warning in the form of a love-song, sung by the prophet Isaiah. The song
tells of God and God’s vineyard. Now for many of us, the very word 'vineyard'
has a romantic glow. It breathes into the air a sense of mildly exotic holidays,
of sunny evenings sampling the local produce, of an apparently leisured and
gracious way of life. We bring back bottles of wine not only to entertain our
guests but to tactfully show off our intimate knowledge of secluded corners of
Oregon or California, or France. It all seems a long way from the hard business
of agriculture in our own country. But, of course in Israel, vineyards are
simply working farms where people are gaining a living from the soil. Everybody
likes the result; but the farmers are under no illusions about how much effort
it takes to get it right, or how easy it is to get it wrong. I can imagine
though that God’s vineyard is a fertile and sweet place.
"My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill," sings Isaiah.
"He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice
vines." God built a watchtower in it, and hewed out a wine vat. God
"expected it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes" (Isaiah
5:1-2). The Lord did everything he could to prepare the vineyard for a crop of
good grapes, but it produced only bad fruit (NIV). That so stinks! As a brown
thumb person who dreams of greenness in my life, I know the feeling of trying
everything I know to produce a healthy plant. I give it good soil, water, light,
food, some classical music, tell it jokes, and give it a smile, and it doesn’t
produce anything that looks remotely like what it is supposd to be. It stinks.
God is unhappy with the outcome of God’s crop, so God brings a legal case to
the people of Judah. "Judge between me and my vineyard," says the
Lord. "What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in
it? I’ve loved it, I’ve guided it, I’ve watered it, I’ve protected it, I’ve
shone upon it, I’ve planted it in a fertile land. When I expected it to yield
grapes, why did it yield wild, inedible, rotten grapes?" (vv. 3-4). The
Lord followed all the proper vineyard procedures, but still got bad fruit. So
God asks the people of Judah to settle the case and determine who is to blame.
Are the wild grapes the fault of God, or the fault of the vineyard? Are they the
fault of the manufacturer, or the fault of the customer? If Fred has to go to
the emergency room to have a birthday candle extricated from his ear, we have to
blame Fred, not the candle company. If Lindsay steps on a 12-inch rack for
compact disks, while hanging a poster of her favorite movie star and promptly
falls on her head, we have to blame her for not obeying the warning label that
was prominently placed on the CD rack: "Do not use as a ladder." In
the case of the bad fruit in God’s vineyard, the same is true: The fault lies
not with God’s agricultural practices, but with the vineyard itself.
In case you’re not quite sure, this passage really has nothing to do with
vineyards, and everything to do with the behavior of the people of Israel.
"For the vineyard of the LORD is actually the house of Israel, and the
people of Judah are God’s vines; God expected compassionate and wise action.
God expected sweet, nourishing fruit. God expected justice, but saw bloodshed;
righteousness, but heard a cry!" (v. 7). Although the people of Israel and
Judah were planted and watered properly, they turned into bad fruit. Instead of
practicing justice and righteousness, they fell into violence and dishonesty.
Instead of growing into the good people God intended them to be, they turned
into wild and unruly, self-serving people.
Some hearing Isaiah’s love-song warning, still will not heed the warning
labels. They won’t bother listening, think they can figure it out on their
own, will have lapses in judgment, and/or won’t take the warning seriously.
How many times must a child hear, "you’ll poke your eye out with
those," before the child will stop running with scissors? The people of
Israel failed to be what they were created to be. They were not fruitful,
faithful, activists, honest, giving, self-aware, or other aware for that matter.
Of course it is easier to sue someone after the damage is done. It is easier to
blame our neighbors, our spouses, our children, our parents, our jobs, our
doctors, or God for why we make some of the choices we do. There is always
someone or something else to blame. The sidewalk was too uneven, the coffee too
hot, the boss is too domineering, the children are too demanding, the dog ate my
homework, the knife was too sharp, the accelerator was too sensitive, the
computer is stupid. Seriously, how often when we can’t figure something out do
we throw up our hands and say, "this is stupid!" or "You stupid
computer, do what you are supposed to!" We have become such a sue-happy
nation that Bob Dorigo-Jones, president of Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch, reports
that the Girl Scouts of Metro Detroit now have to sell 36,00 boxes of cookies
simply to pay for insurance coverage-just in case they are sued. Why do people
sue the Girl Scouts? Because "they were in my way when I tried to go into
the store" or maybe "my cookies were stale!"
I think this parable points to a couple of deep theological issues; perhaps, the
most critical one being accountability. Yes, there it is, the "a" word
that we demand, but don’t always want to live. Why is so difficult to admit
that we make dumb choices sometimes? Why is it so difficult to follow the
warning labels? Why when we are equipped with everything we need to live into
the people we were created to be, do we struggle so much to do so? Why is our
Christian faith full of holes? I suspect there are probably lots of reasons. I
suspect we wouldn’t need many ministries in this church and world if we
already had everything all together. Isaiah’s warning tells us, when we are
dismembered, emotionally injured, face death, produce rotten situations and
fruit, based on our choices, that we can’t keep blaming everyone and
everything else around us.
Now I don’t want you to hear that we control everything that happens to us. I
don’t believe that. We don’t control the choices of others. We don’t
control natural laws. We don’t control random flaws and flukes, but we do have
control of our actions. We can choose to read instructions and labels. We
can choose to read scripture. We can choose to ask important
questions and to pray. We can choose to be patient and treat others with
respect. We can choose to examine our feelings and our actions. We can
choose to work for justice, be a voice for the voiceless, participate in the
messy issues of our lives and communities. We can choose to share our
resources. We can choose to trust someone or some process, or something.
We can choose to claim our actions and feelings as our own, whether appropriate
or questionable, and work with them. We can choose to be fruitful…the
kind of fruitfulness that nourishes, and has enough to it that the sweetness
drips on everything we touch. I’m talking about the kind of fruitfulness that
believes we serve a God of abundance and allows us to live lives of abundance. I’m
talking about the fruitfulness that has the courage to admit when we have made
poor choices and seeks to made amends. I’m talking about the fruitfulness that
mirrors Christ’s love in the world. I’m hoping that most of us have
experience such fruitfulness and has a sense of what that is.
We always have a choice. If someone has a gun to our head, we can choose to
cooperate or choose not to. No matter what the choices, even if all of them are
rotten choices, God helps guide us toward the best decisions. God will help prop
the vine toward the sun, make sure it has the water and soil that it needs. I
hope that we choose right relationship with God and neighbor. Anything else is
going to hurt us. That’s a warning label in need of some attention.
Thanks be to God. Amen
Illustrations from a Homiletics article by the same title, "Warning Labels". Article found in the July-August 2007 edition of Homiletics periodical.