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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
“Squatting” seems increasingly to be in the news. No, not “squatting” as crouching or sitting with one’s knees bent and one’s heels close to one’s butt, but “squatting” as unlawfully occupying a building or land that the squatter does not own, rent, or otherwise have lawful permission to use. For example, a deployed US Army reservist from Houston recently went to court against her tenant who had stopped paying her rent but remained in her home (ABC7). Maybe our friends or family or we ourselves have had similar or other problems with tenants. The “tenants” in the parable of today’s Gospel Reading are “vinedressers” (NKJV), apparently hired as “workers” (ATT) of the vineyard in exchange for a portion of its fruit, while the owner of the vineyard was on a journey. However, when the time came, the tenants did not “pay their rent”, as it were, but instead did such things as kill the owner’s servants and even his son, in a futile attempt to make the vineyard their own. As we heard, Jesus led the Jewish leaders to express their own judgment from the parable of the tenants of the vineyard, and then Jesus broadened His application of judgment to both those who fall on the stone that the builders rejected and those on whom that stone falls.
Today’s Gospel Reading with “The Vineyard and the Stone” is the third consecutive Gospel Reading that we have heard with a “vineyard” parable (Matthew 20:1-16; 21:23-32), and it is the second consecutive Gospel Reading reporting Jesus’s Holy Week interactions with different groups of Jewish and other leaders, which interactions we will continue to hear about for two more Sundays. As today’s Old Testament Reading with its love song concerning a vineyard makes clear (Isaiah 5:1-7; confer Psalm 80:1-19), the vineyard for some time had been a figure of speech for the people of Israel—God’s graciously bringing the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and planting them in the Promised Land, doing everything that He could do for them—and we might expect more parallels between the Old Testament Reading and Gospel Reading (confer Gibbs, ad loc Matthew 21:3346, p.1089 n.19). But, while in the Old Testament Reading the problem is with the vineyard itself, in the Gospel Reading the problem is with the tenants. And, while in the Old Testament Reading the inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah did not answer the question put to them and so did not condemn themselves (Keil-Delitzsch, ad loc Isaiah 5:3-4, p.163; compare Brockman, CPR 27:4, p.83), in the Gospel Reading the Jewish leaders did answer the question put to them and so did condemn themselves.
But, the Jewish leaders are not the only ones condemned. As I mentioned, by talking not only about the vineyard but also about the stone, Jesus broadened His application of judgment to both those who fall on the stone that the builders rejected and those on whom that stone falls. You and I may not fail to give God the fruits in their seasons as the Jewish leaders failed, but, in one way or another, we all fall on that stone or have that stone fall on us. By nature we all reject Jesus, and all of our actual sins are the reason why He died on the cross. No owner of a vineyard imaginable would act the way God does in patiently showing mercy, not only to the vineyard tenants but also to us, who deserve to be broken to pieces and crushed eternally, apart from God’s calling and so enabling us both to turn in sorrow from our sin and to trust God to forgive our sin. When we so repent, then God forgives us. God forgives our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, whatever our actual sin might be. God forgives us for Jesus’s sake.
Jesus is the Stone the builders rejected. While today’s Gospel Reading mentions a master of a house, his building a tower, and the stone the builders rejected—all of which use related Greek words—Jesus seems to introduce the particular quotation from Psalm 118 (Psalm 118:2223) in order to show that, while the vineyard’s tenants killed the owner’s son, Jesus as the Son of God in human flesh would be exalted by rising from the dead. Psalm 118, just a few verses earlier than the part that Jesus quoted, seems to speak of resurrection (Psalm 118:17-18). And, whatever literal historical reference, if any, the Psalm’s verse about the stone’s rejection might have had, some had understood the verse as figuratively referring to the promised Messiah, which is how Jesus applied it to Himself. Truly, the teaching in today’s Gospel Reading really is understood only in light of Jesus’s death and resurrection, which the Divinelyinspired St. Matthew narrates later in the Gospel account that bears his name (confer Scaer, Discourses in Matthew, 353). The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther says that in today’s Gospel Reading Jesus provoked the Jewish leaders “against His own neck” (Luther, Sermon on Matthew 21:33 [1538], AE 68:113), and Jesus did so successfully, for the Jewish leaders did eventually arrest Him, in the absence of the crowds (Matthew 26:50; confer Luke 22:6). Yet, Jesus lived a perfect life, suffered, and died on the cross for us, in our place, dying the death that we deserved. As the Divinely-inspired St. Paul said of himself in today’s Epistle Reading (Philippians 3:4b-14), we who repent have a righteousness from God that both comes through and depends on faith in Christ.
After today’s parable of the vineyard tenants, the next parable in the Gospel according to St. Matthew is that of a king’s giving a wedding feast for his son (Matthew 22:1-14), and the two parables are sometimes taken as being connected, as if the owner of the vineyard’s son who was killed has been resurrected and then people are invited to and attend his wedding feast (for example, Scaer, Discourses in Matthew, 192193). We, who in Holy Baptism are made God’s own and become heirs with Christ (for example, Galatians 3:27-29), and who are instructed and examined in private confession and then individually absolved (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, XV:40), are in turn admitted to the Holy Supper of Christ’s Body and Blood, which anticipates the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:6-9). From this Altar we receive forgiveness of sins, and so also life and salvation, benefitting from the Lord’s, as it were, letting out the vineyard to other tenants, who will give Him the fruits in their seasons.
To be sure, our fruitfulness is not the point of the parable of today’s Gospel Reading, though our fruitfulness of good works certainly follows from our being forgiven through faithful ministry of Word and Sacraments. Our suffering also follows. The Gospel Reading makes clear that our suffering also follows (confer Luther, ad loc Psalm 2:10, AE 12:62-63), as does the Epistle Reading. Like St. Paul, we count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord, sharing His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible we may attain the resurrection from the dead. And, so we do! With daily sorrow over our sin and faith, we live in the forgiveness of sins now, and we praise God for all that He does for us, including in His way and time delivering us from this life, if necessary resurrecting our bodies, and then glorifying them in order for us to dwell with Him for eternity.
Today’s Gospel Reading with “The Vineyard and the Stone” may make us think of squatters, such as the one against whom the army lieutenant had to go to court in order to get back her home. But, we will not be squatters in heaven, for we will be there saved by God’s grace, through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +