The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Matthew 21:33 “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who PLANTED A VINEYARD AND PUT A WALL AROUND IT AND DUG A WINE PRESS IN IT, AND BUILT A TOWER, and rented it out to vine-growers, and went on a journey. 34 And when the harvest time approached, he sent his slaves to the vine-growers to receive his produce. 35 And the vine-growers took his slaves and beat one, and killed another, and stoned a third. 36 Again he sent another group of slaves larger than the first; and they did the same thing to them. 37 But afterward he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38 ‘But when the vine-growers saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and seize his inheritance.’ 39 And they took him, and threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40 Therefore when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine-growers? 41 They said to Him, ‘He will bring those wretches to a wretched end, and will rent out the vineyard to other vine-growers, who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons.’ 42 Jesus said to them, ‘Did you never read in the Scriptures, THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone; THIS CAME ABOUT FROM THE LORD, AND IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES? 43 Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you, and be given to a nation producing the fruit of it.” (NASB)
This morning’s parable is not subtle. Its meaning is not hard to divine. This weeks parable It follows the one we considered last week about two sons, both of whom were told to go and work in the vineyard. One son says yes, but does not go and the other says no and goes to work anyway.
In this morning’s parable Jesus continues with the image of a vineyard. Isaiah 5:1-7 and Psalm 80:8–16 serve as the foundation for the parable. These two texts were well known to the priests and elders and just about any other mildly educated Hebrew. Most of the players in the parable are pretty easy to figure out.
• The landowner is God the Father.
• The vineyard is the church, the Hebrew people, Old Testament Israel.
• The tenants are the Jews, specifically the religious leaders of the day.
• The wall, winepress, and watchtower represent the temple, the Word of God, the worship services and sacrificial system, and the offices required to carry out the ministry of God’s Word.
• The Owner of the vineyard sends two waves of servants to collect what He is owed (vss. 35–38). Those two groups are the Old Testament prophets. One group is the greater prophets whose names we know because they are on the various scrolls of the Bible. The other are the lesser prophets, who served as rabbis and priest who did their jobs in season and out of season.
• The new tenants are the Gentiles who will come into the church in the wake of the Jew’s rejection of the Gospel.
• The Son of the landowner is of course Jesus Christ.
Seven hundred years before Jesus, God sent Isaiah, one of the greater prophets to sing a song and tell a parable about God and His relationship to His people Israel. 1 “Let me sing now for my well-beloved A song of my beloved concerning His vineyard.”
In this morning’s parable Jesus retold Isaiah’s parable and applied it to the religious leaders of His day. He said, “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who PLANTED A VINEYARD AND PUT A WALL AROUND IT AND DUG A WINE PRESS IN IT, AND BUILT A TOWER.” (v 33). Jesus was bringing to mind the Isaiah 5 picture painted by Isaiah.
The picture was of the Lord God who loves His children Israel and took great care in building and planting a vineyard. Isaiah took create care in describing just how the Lord God went about building His vineyard. The vineyard was the owner’s first love. “He dug it all around, removed its stones, And planted it with the choicest vine. And He built a tower in the middle of it And also hewed out a wine vat in it.” He also put a wall and fence all around it.
The Lord God prepared the ground. Gave the vineyard protection and built watch tower so a watchman could watch over the people and watch out for any approaching danger. He planted the best vines to grow the best grapes and put a wine press so they could make the best wine. In both Isaiah’s and Jesus’s parable, the Lord God did everything to make sure His vineyard would be fruitful and pleasing to Him and to His people.
When it was all ready “[the master] leased [his vineyard] to tenants” (v 33). All the tenants had to do was their jobs and share the fruits of the vineyard with the Owner. Theirs was a partnership and the landowner was rightfully owed His share.
When harvest time came, the Owner sent His servants to collect what was owed Him, but the tenants had forgotten that they were in the vineyard only because the owner prepared it for them and put them in it.
The landowner “sent his slaves to the vine-growers to receive his produce. 35 And the vine-growers took his slaves and beat one, and killed another, and stoned a third. 36 Again he sent another group of slaves larger than the first; and they did the same thing to them.”
Bible scholars call them the “former prophets” and the “latter prophets.” The prophet Jeremiah was beaten and imprisoned. Oral tradition says that even the great Isaiah was martyred, sawn in two under the orders of king Manasseh. Zechariah was stoned to death in the temple courtyard. John the Baptizer was decapitated.
The tenants in the parable schemed to take as their own something that wasn’t and could never be their own. They conspired to make themselves the masters of their own vineyard. Remember the vineyard is the church, the people of God who exist around His Word and sacrament ministry. In other words, they planned to take control of the church in an effort to make themselves out to be gods, to self-deify!
Until recently some of Jesus’s parables seemed a little far fetched. Some of the characters in His parable just acted in some of the most unreasonable ways. People of common sense and faith found it hard to understand how Jesus could construct a parable with characters that were just plain old stupid. The actions that some of them undertook were simply contrary to their own self-interests.
A wedding guest who rejects the required and provided wedding garment so he is thrown out. The unforgiving servant who is forgiven a fortune only to throw his neighbor into jail for owing him a little. The people who were invited to a wedding feast, free food and a joyful celebration but they did not come so the homeless and down trodden were invited to take their places. In today’s parable a father sends his son to a murderous clan that is trying to seal something they can’t have and will bring most certainly end in justice.
Given what we are seeing in our own time, in our own schools, in our own streets, and in the halls of government where people are doing the most destructive things to established institutions, traditions, and laws, it is becoming easier and easier to see that Jesus understood just how self destructive sinful human beings can be when blinded by hate and self-righteousness. Such people will destroy and kill anything that gets in the way of their power. They make gods for themselves and their gods turn out to be themselves.
We would all do well to listen to I Corinthians 4:7, “What do you have that you did not receive?” James 1:17, “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.”
Two groups of servants were sent to collect what was owed and all were rejected, some murdered. And what was owed. While some use this parable as a “stewardship” text, the parable is not about what you put in the offering plate. It is not a parable about a business arrangement between God and His people. The harvest the Owner was looking for was faith, fidelity to the Word of God, right doctrine and worship services, and the reception of the promised Messiah. These are the things that the owner sought from the people in his vineyard.
But the tenants weren’t the only ones acting in a way contrary to their own self interest. The owner appears to be doing the same thing. In the parable the master reasoned to himself, “They will respect my son’” (v 37). Is the owner among the group of stupid people? “They will respect my son.”
“But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.” (vv 38–39)
That is made very clear in the concluding verses of the parable. 42 “Jesus said to them, ‘Did you never read in the Scriptures, THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone; THIS CAME ABOUT FROM THE LORD, AND IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES?”
Jesus the teller of the parable and the Son sent to the vineyard, was under no illusion. He as not naive about the motives and the outcome of the parable, which by now is looking like a metaphor for the history of Israel and a prophecy of what was about to happen to Him.
They were in the process of rejecting the Stone, the church’s foundation. The Father and the Son in the parable knew what would happen, just as God the Father and God the Son– Jesus knew what was going to happen. God the Father not only knew His Son would die, He purposed His Son’s death. It is a picture of God’s love for us, of His patience, of His grace, and the lengths to which the two of them would go to save us from our sins. That’s why Jesus concluded His parable with the end of Psalm 118:42, “IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES?”
What took place on Good Friday did not appear good, but it was for us. Thus the name. That’s the idea here.
Jesus asks the religious leaders, “When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” (v 40). They know the right answer. The owner “will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons” (v 41). They have the right answer. The problem is they don’t see themselves as the villains in the parable. They don’t see themselves as the ones rejecting the prophets, though they refused to answer last week’s question about John the Baptist’s baptism. Even though they are planning the death of Jesus, their’s is a justified death penalty because Jesus is committing blasphemy. They just don’t see themselves a miserable sinners.
That is the first truth we must never lose – we ought to see ourselves in very parable as the ones who fail, who stumble, who do stupid things, because we are sinners. Jesus is always the hero, the one who does rightly, the one who forgives, the one who sacrifice even himself for the ones who do wrong.
“I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you, and be given to a nation producing the fruit of it.” In the immediate context Jesus was telling the religious leaders of His day that their rejection of Him, of His Father, of the Holy Spirit, and of His words/teachings would result in the kingdom of God being given to another nation that would produce fruit.
He is saying here what He said to some Pharisees on Palm Sunday. (Luke 19:39-40) “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Him, ‘Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.’ But Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, if these become silent, the stones will cry out!’”
Yes, Jesus warns the faithless that the kingdom will be taken from them and given to another. In verse 44 (not included in today’s reading, Jesus says, “The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.” (v 44). God kills to make alive (Deut 32:39). God creates faith!
By God’s grace little Immanuel has not had the kingdom of heaven taken from her. Not many so called Christian congregations can say that these days. A great many of them have rejected the Christ of God, the Christ of Scripture. They have rejected His words and His teachings.
God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, has chosen us, His “new Israel” (cf Gal 6:16), to be His blessing to all people. Today is our day to “produce the fruits” of God’s vineyard– faith, repentance, hope, and love.
God the Father and Jesus seemingly acted against their own self-interest when the Son of God took on flesh and sacrificed Himself on the cross to save us from our sin and bring us into the vineyard.
He has given everything we need, His Son, the gift of faith, and all the good works faith produces to you, me, and to this little congregation. He has given Himself. His own person. His shed blood. His glorious resurrection. His life giving Water in Holy Baptism. His body and blood given for you for the remission of sin. Your sins are forgiven.
AMEN
May the Peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.