“They made me the keeper of vineyards,

but mine own vineyard have I not kept.”

(Song of Songs 1:6)

Scout Sunday is a big day for us all. What a joyful processional when all this young life, happy and handsome, starchly uniformed, bejeweled with the badges of their wholesome accomplishments, lead by the colors of their country and their order, flanked by their proud leaders, marches into our sanctuary! Why, it makes us want to stand up and shout, “Hurrah!”

Today climaxes a great week, too, for we have been celebrating the 40th anniversary of scouting at Idlewild Church. A banquet here on last Wednesday night gathered together many of the principal participants in this congregation’s scouting activities across almost half a century. The bulletin lists today some of the historic milestones and some of the dedicated people who have been in that scouting procession.

Now a great occasion like this calls for a great text. We need a word of scripture to catch up the meaning of such a day. We need a word of scripture to challenge not only our Boy and Girl Scouts, our Cubs and Brownies, not only their leaders who work and play with them in scouting, but also this worshiping congregation at Idlewild Church which is the proud sponsoring institution of the scout program here.

I have given considerable thought to the selection of an appropriate text. I have chosen a line from an ancient Hebrew love poem, The Song of Songs. It goes like this: “They made me the keeper of vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept.”

What is a vineyard? It is a garden where grapes are grown. The Hebrew people in Palestine had many vineyards. The Bible makes frequent reference to vineyards. Because the people had vineyards and worked in them, they thought and talked a great deal about them. The hopes of the Hebrew captives down in the land of Egypt when they were longing for a native land of their own was often expressed in terms of a land where large grapes would grow abundantly. The Hebrew ideal of personal and family well-being as expressed by many a prophet was for each man to dwell in his own house under his own vine and fig tree.

As the vineyard is a place where grapevines grow, a vineyard keeper is a gardener who cares for the vineyard. How does he keep it? He waters the plants and pulls the weeds and prunes the vines. He watches over the vineyard to drive away men and animals who might steal or destroy the fruit. When the harvest comes, the keeper of the vineyard gathers the grapes.

What is the message of this line from the scripture: “They made me the keeper of vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept?”

One would think that the one thing a man could do who had been made a vineyard keeper would be to keep his own vineyard. But the old text laments the fact that that is just what he has failed to do.

There is an old proverb about the shoemaker’s children going without shoes. We’ve seen perhaps the physician, who was ever so skillful in healing others and could tell anybody how to stay well, and yet seemed to destroy deliberately his own health. There are teachers who can discourse with wisdom and truth on the world situation, but who handle their own personal affairs carelessly and foolishly. Many a minister can serve multitudes in the things of the spirit, but cannot or will not minister effectively to the spiritual needs of his own household.

“They made me the keeper of vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept.” How tragically true of too many human situations!

But let it be said triumphantly, this day and every day, that it is the conspicuous glory of the Scouting program that it has saved over and over again this congregation from this tragic human failing. For the church as a human institution has this human failing of having its eyes on the ends of the earth and being almost blind close at hand. The church jumps to the job of staffing a hospital in the Congo, of evangelizing the people in the Andes, and of airing the gospel over the radio. Sometimes the church has not pondered the proposition: “What shall it profit a church to gain the whole world and lose the souls of its own boys and girls?”

Thanks be to scouting that it has found a way through its marvelously well adapted programs to meet the needs and interests of young people and so saved the church from voicing too late the sad lament: “They made me the keeper of vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept.”

And yet there is in our text a solemn warning for every adult here this morning: scout leaders, parents, churchmen, and citizens about putting first things first in our personal living. With every one of us there is the disposition to bend our energies to organizing the movement, outfitting the troop, the pack, the den — fix up the facilities and then go off about our other bigger business.

Don’t we know that our youth and scouting program won’t function, our church school won’t teach, our homes won’t hold together, the evangelistic arm of our church won’t reach without the love, the presence, and the untiring concern of the whole heart of everyone of us? There are things we can never delegate. When we assume that we can delegate intimate, personal responsibilities, or that other realities of material things and human relationships will substitute for us, inevitably comes the appalling debacle and the sad lament: “They made me the keeper of vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept.”

Last Sunday night in this sanctuary, something over 1200 teenagers sat in wrapt attention to listen to a past-middle-aged woman talk for an hour and twenty minutes about the tragic story of her blasted life — a life marked by several marriages and divorces, by alcoholism, and finally attempted suicide, until miraculously she was rescued by the relentless love of God. But, Mrs. Behannan as she talked, made it clear as crystal the reason for the tragedy of all those wasted years.

She was the child, the only child, of wealthy parents. She lived in a luxurious apartment in New York’s Waldorf Astoria. Her father was very busy and very successful and he made lots of money and was seldom at home. She remembers about her mother only four things: that she was very beautiful, she smelled sweet, made a rustling, swishing sound when she walked, and she saw her less than 30 minutes a day. Mrs. Behannan is convinced that a major part of the tragedy of her life is traceable to the insecurity of those early years when the lap of luxury and the retinues of servants and governesses, and a thousand other substitutes could not make up for the lack of her parents’ presence with her and the lack of their expressions of love for her.

“They made me the keeper of vineyards and mine own vineyard have I not kept.”

Toulouse-Lautrec, the French painter, “was born to a family of landed gentry whose line went back to the time of Charlemagne, but who preferred the company of disreputables, and lived out his short life in the pleasure haunts of Montmarte, dying of ruinous dissipation at the age of 37.” Why this tragedy?

The father of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec early outlined a careful program for his son’s life in the manner of the landed gentry of that day: horsemanship, falconry, supervision of the family estate, but he lost interest in the boy’s development when his son broke both his legs in a childhood accident and it became clear that the boy could never endure a strenuous physical life.

How many another child who has failed to fit exactly into the pre-conceived parental pattern has been rejected, perhaps not as dramatically, but just as emotionally really, and has sought acceptance among the wasters and rotters.

“They made me the keeper of vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept.” As John Ruskin said, “There is no wealth but souls,” so must we also affirm that the ultimate vineyard to be cultivated is always the soul of man and the only culture which will nourish the soul so that it can grow in beauty and creativity is love and acceptance.

At last, there is an important message in our text for our boys and girls — our scouts and brownies and cubs. I’m sure that most of them have already got it, but just to be sure let me spell it out.

Each of you has a wonderful possession — yourself, your personality, which is more valuable than anything you could acquire. God gave it to you.

Your most important assignment throughout your whole life is the keeping of this vineyard of your personality for your God. Your body is a part of you. It requires rest and food and exercise. Your mind is a part of you. It needs study and the discipline of honest, pure, true thinking. Your soul is a part of you. It needs worship and prayer and love for God and other human beings.

No matter how furiously and gloriously you wear yourself out in athletic contests for your school, no matter how many honors and offices you win among your classmates, no matter how many accomplishments you achieve in community and business life later, unless the center citadel of your life is kept for God, you will come to the bitter and dismal conclusion: “They made me the keeper of vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept.”

The scout oath contains this truth and proclaims it: “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country: to obey the scout laws, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.” See how the oath of scouting, starting with the self under God, leads us on out into the world of our responsibilities to our nation and neighbors, but then it brings us back to the constant vigilance to tend the vineyard of one’s own body and mind and soul. This is your own vineyard, which, above all else, must be kept.

Here is where we all need help most. The vineyard of the personality is safely kept only by the Creator of all souls. Unless we turn over to Him the control of our lives they will not be kept in safety, security, and strength.

Here is the paradox of personality — how to keep the vineyard of one’s own life? Why, give it away. Jesus says to us: “He who would save his life shall lose it, but he who will lose his life for my sake and the gospels shall save it unto life eternal.”

I was in the home of a young couple last week where a new baby had been born. When I asked the mother the child’s name she proudly said: “We have named him Christopher.”

You know there was a day among the early Christians when “Christopher” was about the most popular and most stylish of all names. It remains distinctly Christian, for it is the Greek for “Christ-bearer.” The name signifies one who bears Christ, or carries Him in his heart.

Studdert Kennedy who named one of his sons Christopher, wrote this poem to express the mystery and the reality of bearing Christ, of taking His name, of wearing His colors, of being obedient to His commands:

“Bear thou the Christ,

My little son,

He will burden Thee,

That Holy One.

For by a mystery,

Who beareth Him, He bears

Eternally,

Up to the radiant heights

Where angels be,

And heaven’s crimson crown of light

Flames round the crystal sea.”

So there is a triumphant way we may quote the old lament from the Song of Songs when we give it a good New Testament conclusion: “They made me a keeper of vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept, for I could not keep it alone. I have turned it over to Jesus Christ, my Savior, and He is keeping it for me unto life eternal.”