Grace, Mercy, and Peace be unto you from God our
Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Amen
There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a
winepress in it and built a tower and leased
it to tenants, and went into another country
In the Name of Jesus
The master
have planted a vineyard, dug a winepress, and built a tower. Everything was perfect. The only thing missing was someone in the
vineyard to tend to the plants and keep the operation running. As any good landowner would do, went and
found tenants to lease the land to.
Everything was fine, going according to plan, until it came time for the
master to receive the fruits of his land.
When he sent his servants to gather the grapes, they met their doom. Jesus says that the first one was beaten and
send away empty handed. The next was
beaten and treated shamefully and the third was also beaten. Both sent away empty handed. The master was in a pickle. How was he supposed to get his crops if they
beat each servant he sent and sent them away empty handed?
The master
faced complete and utter rejection. The
tenants have undoubtedly broken the agreement that the master had made with
them. Their job was to tend to the crops
and when the time came, give the fruit which the ground yielded back to the
master. This sounds like a very familiar
story doesn’t it? If it doesn’t it
probably should. This is the story of
the human race and of the story of existence of the earth. Our master, God, made the earth and the
heavens and everything in them. When
everything was perfect, he placed the human race on his creation to tend to its
needs. And when the time comes, we are
to give back to fruits the earth has produced, to God, the creator, the
master.
We are the
tenants in the parable. And like the
tenants, wen servants of our Master come to us to ask where the fruits of the
earth are, where our worship and praise for the creator and sustainer of the
land is, we reject them and pretend they never existed. We go about our day as if we are the only
ones who matter. And it is not just us,
today, who reject the messengers of God.
Throughout the entire Bible, both Old and New Testaments, we read of
countless messengers of God who are sent to the unbelievers and even sent to
the believers, who are outright rejected and are beaten, stoned, and killed.
After many
attempts by the master to retrieve his prize grapes, he finally decides to send
his son. He is sure that the tenants
will respect his son and give him the crop that is rightfully his. But at first sight of the son, the tenants
saw their chance to get what they thought could be theirs. They think that if they kill the master’s
son, then they will get his inheritance.
So they reject the son, throw him out of the vineyard and kill him.
Again, we
are the tenants. When the Word is
preached to us, we decide that it is not for us and turn away from what it says
and do our own thing. We thank that we
can get what we want without listening to the voice of the Master’s Son. In essence we say Sorry God, thanks for all
the help you have sent to us, but we can do this whole salvation and faith
thing on our own. Yes we know that you
are all powerful, but we are pretty sure we can take it from here. And by rejecting each of the messengers, we
are rejecting his Son. Oh and by the way
God, no need to send any more help either, we know all we need to know, we’re
good, thanks anyway.
So there is
the parable set before you. The master
builds the vineyard, places tenants in it, and when it comes time to gather the
crops, death comes to whomever the master sends. Jesus, speaking to the chief priests and the
Pharisees at the time, asks what will happen to the tenants when the master
comes and confronts them with what has happened to his servants and more
importantly to his son? And the
Pharisees have this one all figured out, even they can’t get this one wrong
right? They say that the master will
come, kill the tenants like they killed his son and servants, and find new
tenants who will give him the fruit in due season. Order will be restored and everything will be
better. Seems reasonable doesn’t
it? Seems like the punishment that the
evil tenants, and us for that matter, deserve.
We deserve to be rejected and killed in the same way we have done to all
those who have been sent by God to us.
After all, isn’t that the Golden rule?
But Jesus says
to the Pharisees, you who claim to devote your life to the study of God, you
who claim to be the spiritual leaders, have
you never read the scripture?
Through the rejection of the Master’s son, by the death of God’s Son,
the entire human race is saved. The
Master comes to the tenants and says, you rejected and killed my servants which
I sent to you. You failed to give back
to me what was rightfully mine. You
rejected and killed my son and you deserve to die. But you know what? My Son is risen. He is living, and only because he is living,
are you freed from the punishment deserve.
The sins which you have committed against me, against my son, and
against your fellow man will no longer be remembered or counted against
you.
Jesus brings
to the attention of those listening to him, those who have just questioned his
authority before this parable remember by
what authority do you do these things, and who gave you this authority, a
passage from Psalm 118. Jesus says the stone that the builders rejected has
become the cornerstone. Jesus is
doing something simply amazing here. By
quoting this passage he is pointing the chief priests and elders to scripture
which points to him, to what would soon happen.
Later on in this same Psalm the words are written which the crowds had
just finished chanting, as this encounter happens shortly after the triumphant
entry into Jerusalem Holy Week. Save us now, we pray, O Lord, which in
the Hebrew is Hosanna, we pray, O Lord. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the
Lord. Everything, everything bears
witness to our Lord and what had gone on, what was going on, and what was about
to happen.
Christ is
the stone which the builders rejected.
And he has become the cornerstone of our salvation. On Christ’s death and resurrection our faith
and salvation stand unwavering. If he
had not died, then we would be doomed to death.
If he had not resurrected from the dead, then we would have no
hope. But Christ is risen and through
his resurrection we are assured of the inheritance which belongs to Him. Through our selfish sinning, which caused the
master to send his son to his death, we are assured that we will be presented
blameless before God, and that we will be brought into the kingdom of
Heaven.
The church
is an heir of another great inheritance through Christ. Those in the church are called to be
ambassadors of Christ. As Paul writes in
2 Corinthians, If anyone is on Christ,
he is a new creation. The old has passed
away; behold, the new has come. All this
is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the
ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to
himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the
message of reconciliation. Therefore, we
are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be
reconciled to God. Men are called
into the Office of Holy Ministry, called to be missionaries; you and I are
called to proclaim Christ in our everyday life.
WE are not placed in positions of authority as the owner is; we are
placed in the humble role of servants.
We are to be the voice of the master through our thoughts, our words,
and our actions among the tenants. We
are the messengers who are sent into the vineyard and we are the messengers who
will inevitable be rejected. We are the
messengers who will be persecuted for living a life based on the Gospel and the
message of Salvation. Some maybe even to
the point of death. But for us, death is
not something which needs to be feared.
As we
continue to draw near to the Advent and Christmas where we celebrate our Savior’s
birth, and as we go from there to the season of Lent where we prepare ourselves
for Christ’s death and resurrection we are really preparing ourselves foe the
ultimate unraveling of Satan’s power and grip upon us. While Jesus succumbed to death and lay in its
grip for three days, he overcame that and rose to life again. By doing so he rendered death powerless.
The Lord God
says of Israel in Hosea shall I ransom them from
the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from Death? O Death,
where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your sting? Paul speaks of these words in 1
Corinthians the sting of death is sin,
and the power of sin is in the law. But
thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ took
our sin, our inability to fulfill the law perfectly, to the cross. Everything we could do but did not,
everything we should not do but did, He paid the price. He became what we could not be. The sting of death is no more for death is
only a temporary rest for physical bodies.
The grave can only hold our bodies for a time because they have been
marked by Christ the crucified at your baptism.
The master
builds a vineyard, digs a winepress, leases it to tenants so that his Son could
be sent to it and be killed. Thanks be
to God for the salvation and in heritance which is ours.
Amen
+SDG+
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