Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
This morning’s Gospel lesson, the parable of
the wicked tenants, is strange because it has no direct teaching for us on this
5th Sunday of Lent, 2025.
Jesus was speaking to the Jewish leaders of
Israel, using the parable as a subversive, allegorical way of talking to them,
wanting to warn them of the danger that they were in unless they repent and
turn to Him in faith as their Savior.
Jesus is using an old image from Isaiah 5:7,
“The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of
Judah are His pleasant planting.” Knowing that, then the interpretation of the
parable is easy and straightforward, direct and immediate for His audience.
The
landowner is God the Father.
The vineyard is the
people of Israel.
The three servants represent
the prophets called by God to proclaim, “Thus saith the Lord.”
The tenants are the
leaders of Israel – Pharisees, Sadducees, priests.
The son, of course,
is Jesus, the Son of God.
The story is likewise easy to interpret. The
leaders of Israel were entrusted with stewarding, that is caring for, the
people of Israel while God patiently waited for Israel’s repentant return to
Him. Instead of leading Israel in faithful watching and waiting for God’s
deliverance through the Messiah-to-come, for centuries, they determined to take
the power, authority, and glory for themselves. When confronted by prophets who
proclaimed God’s Word, they were dismissed, abused, and even killed.
The parable, though, is more than just a
historical spin on Israel’s history. It is a prophetic description of what is
already happening behind closed doors. The rising conflict in the story that
begins when the landowner sends His son to collect the harvest, is a subversive
way for Jesus to tell the Pharisees, Sadducees, and others that He knows full
well what they are planning to do to Him in the days ahead which will culminate
in His own death.
We’re still a week from our celebration of
Palm Sunday, but this reading takes place probably Tuesday or Wednesday of Holy
Week. In Luke’s narrative, Jesus had already entered Jerusalem to the crowd’s
shouts, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven
and glory in the highest!” The jealousy was already verbally expressed by the
pharisees, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” Jesus rebuked them instead: “I
tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” By the time the
parable is told, the conspiracy is in; Judas’ betrayal is secured. They are
only waiting for the last piece, the kiss of betrayal.
They are so invested in the plot to kill
Jesus that they don’t even realize that they miss that the parable is about
them and that they are, in fact, the villains in the parable. Their reaction,
“Surely not!” to the vineyard owner’s violent response is all the more sad and
ironic.
You know how the parable’s story arc is
replaced by the events of Holy Week. You know Jesus will be conspired against,
arrested, and brought before those very same people who listened and
misunderstood the parable. They will wrongly condemn Him to death as a heretic
when He was speaking the truth, that He is the Son of God in the flesh and that
He would die and rise on the third day. They will crucify him, taking Jesus
outside the vineyard walls of the city of Jerusalem. They will kill him so that
they can have what they think they deserve and they can retain their power and
positions of wealth and honor.
So, with this about the Jewish leaders, the
people of Israel, and the plot to kill Jesus, like I said, the parable has no
direct meaning for us. You did not act to kill the prophets. You did not
conspire to murder Jesus. You are not the people of Israel who are waiting for
Messiah to come. You are the 21st century church for whom Jesus
entered Jerusalem to rescue, redeem and save. You see the parable for what it
is: a prophetic description of the prelude to Jesus’ passion.
It does not have direct meaning, but it does
still have a word of application for us, and with it comes both a word of
warning and a word of blessing. See the landowner as God the Father; the Son as
Jesus; but, now, see the vineyard as the church – a pictograph of Jesus’ words,
“I am the vine, you are the branches,” if you will; and see the villains as
satan and his minions who want nothing more than to consume and destroy the
vineyard.
In the parable, why did the landowner send
his son? It wasn’t to save the servants who had been abused. The son was sent
to redeem the master’s vineyard and the vineyard’s harvest. It’s the master’s
vineyard, his harvest, his fruit, that needs to be rescued and redeemed, to be
made the master’s again. Jesus comes to rescue and redeem the vineyard from the
evil tenants; Jesus comes to redeem and rescue the church from satan, to make
it the master’s again. Jesus comes to redeem and rescue God’s church.
We use the word church in a lot of different
ways. You probably said this morning, “We’re going to church.” That can mean
either going to worship and receive the gifts of God, or it can mean the church
building, as in “the red-brick church next to the school.” We can speak of the
congregation, Zion, or even the church body, the Lutheran Church – Missouri
Synod. We can even speak of all Christian churches that proclaims Christ and
Him crucified make up the Christian church on earth, and the saints who have gone
before us and are at peace with Jesus awaiting the resurrection of all flesh
make up the church in heaven. There is the church in heaven (sometimes called
the church triumphant) and on earth (the church militant), all of which is
God’s. It is His Church. Think Church
with a Capitol C.
Years ago, the congregation that I served was
squabbling about something and it was quickly dividing into two groups: “us”
and “them.” I wrote a newsletter article about this sinful, divisive mindset,
saying instead that it is “our” church. A very wise churchman, his name was Al,
politely corrected me, and I’ve never forgotten this. He said, “Pastor – I
understood what you were trying to say and do by calling it ‘ours,’ but don’t
ever forget whose Church it really is: it’s God’s Church.”
It’s God’s Church. It is ours only in the
sense that we are connected to it. We do not own it; we do not possess it. To
be clear, I am not speaking in an earthly, legal sense – yes, I understand that
there is Zion Lutheran Church, Inc., with a title to land and a business
license for the State of Texas and a Federal Tax ID number, and there is LCMS,
Inc. In that sense, but only in that sense, dare we speak of this as “ours.”
Remember: Jesus doesn’t redeem Zion, Inc. He doesn’t redeem the property
addressed at 12183 FM 236. He doesn’t redeem our articles of incorporation. He
redeems His Church: the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, as we
say in the Creed.
In every other sense, in the only way that
truly matters, it is God’s Church. That’s important to remember. If we dare
think the Church belongs to us, that it is ours, that it is our possession that
we can do with it as we please, we mistake our place in the story. We’re the
vineyard, remember? A field, a vineyard, is incapable of caring for itself.
You’ve seen enough land tracs around here that have been left to its own: it is
soon overwhelmed, overgrown, and overcome by weeds and weesatch, thistles and
thorns, useful for nothing. The land must be redeemed, reclaimed, restored by
the owner.
So the landowner does just that. God does
that to His vineyard. God does that for His Church. It’s quite remarkable,
isn’t it? The field already belongs to the Master, the Church already belongs
to God, yet He redeems it, He buys it back, to restore it to Himself. He does
it by sending His Son.
He redeems the vineyard, the Church, for a
purpose: to produce spiritual fruit. As a vineyard that has been redeemed
through the crucified Christ, we live the crucified life as well, with our Spirit-infused,
Baptized life crucifying our sinful desires. The fruit of Christ’s spirit
dwells within us, and we show that fruit in loving our neighbors as Christ
loved us, sacrificing ourselves for the wellbeing of others, and setting aside
selfish wants and desires out of care and concern for those around us. Filled
with Christ’s Spirit, we produce spiritual fruit: love, joy and peace filling
our mind and heart to be Christ-like ; patience, kindness and goodness
impacting our relationships with our neighbors; faithfulness, gentleness and
self-control guiding our lives as God’s people. Filled with His Spirit, the
Church, God’s vineyard, produces fruit for the world around us to receive,
drawing them to the Vineyard as well.
I began this sermon saying the parable has no
direct teaching for us as New Testament Christians, but it does have
application for us. It reminds us of who
we are, the Church of God, and whose we are, God’s. He doesn’t redeem His
Vineyard so it lays fallow. He fills us with His Spirit so that we produce
spiritual fruit to share with those around us, demonstrations of God’s love for
us and the rest of the world.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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