Matthew 21:33-46
33 "Listen to another
parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it,
dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants
and went to another country. 34 When the harvest time had come, he sent his
slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. 35 But the tenants seized his
slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36 Again he sent other
slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. 37 Finally
he sent his son to them, saying, "They will respect my son.' 38 But when
the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, "This is the heir; come,
let us kill him and get his inheritance.' 39 So they seized him, threw him out
of the vineyard, and killed him. 40 Now when the owner of the vineyard comes,
what will he do to those tenants?" 41 They said to him, "He will put
those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants
who will give him the produce at the harvest time." 42 Jesus said to them,
"Have you never read in the scriptures: "The stone that the builders
rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is
amazing in our eyes'? 43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken
away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. 44
The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush
anyone on whom it falls." 45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees
heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. 46 They
wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as
a prophet.
Behind a two-story house on Coffee
County Road 606, rusting away in a barn is an old delivery jeep. Once upon a
time, it was likely used to carry equipment and personnel on a military base,
and sometime after that it was used as a work and recreation vehicle for some
hunter in the panhandle of Florida. I know that because that was the first
place I ever saw that jalopy. It was about a one hour drive pulling a car
trailer, and once we got there, we pushed and pulled that junk heap on that
trailer with the help of a come-along. My buddy’s dad had paid $100 for that
jeep just so my friend could have a project, something to do to keep him busy,
maybe even get a little work vehicle to haul hay and feed for some horses. Now,
as some of you know, I have a bit of experience as a mechanic, so my friend and
his dad asked if I’d help get the old jeep running, help keep it running, and
in return I may even get to drive the jeep from time to time. Of course I
agreed to help out my friend, not because of any deal they struck, but simply
because he was my friend and I like tinkering around with old vehicles.
When we got back to his house with
the jeep, we rolled it off the trailer, and proceeded to push it on four flat
tires on to the cement slab in the center stall of the barn. We opened the
hood, and I messed around with the carburetor, checked out the clutch, and just
gave it a general once over. That jeep was like Frankenstein’s monster: it had
a four cylinder engine and a five speed transmission from an eighties model
Nissan pickup, along with an assortment of unidentifiable pieces from part
stores of all brands. It didn’t run, and even if it did it couldn’t stop: it
needed a new carburetor, fuel pump, clutch master cylinder, tires, exhaust…the
list seemed endless. That, however, didn’t stop us from daydreaming about what
it was going to be like when that jeep was finally running: we talked about how
we’d use to drive to Buckmill Creek and set nets out for sucker fish, how we’d
be able to fit a square bail in the back along with a couple of saddles and
tack, how it’d just be a fun thing to drive around the community.
We sat out in the barn, drinking
Winn-Dixie brand “cokes” talking about what we were going to do when we got all
the pieces and parts for that jeep. I was even able to get the engine to run a
little bit (so long as I was kneeling on the fender, leaning over the engine
and pouring a slim stream of gasoline down the carburetor). We sat out there
for hours, until dark talking about what it was going to be like when that jeep
finally ran, and then…we never touched it again! It quickly became obvious that
that jeep needed time and parts, and, well, we just had other things we’d
rather do with our time and what little money we had. As far as I know, it is
still sitting in the barn behind my friend’s parents’ house.
I suppose if we’re all honest, we’re
like that with a lot of things, aren’t we? We daydream about the end result, or
we fantasize about the future without taking into account what is right in
front of us, those steps, those tasks, that lie between our present and the
future. In a very real way, that is what Jesus’ parable we’ve heard this
morning is about.
It might be difficult to hear that word in this parable at first, but
let’s consider its context: Jesus has entered the temple in Jerusalem, and his
authority has been questioned by the religious leaders he met there, so Jesus
offers three parables in response—the one before us this morning is the second
of those parables. Now, in this particular parable, Jesus tells the story of a
landowner who leases his vineyard to some tenants (the description of the
vineyard is most surely meant to call to mind the vineyard of Isaiah chapter
five). When the harvest time comes, the landowner sends slaves to gather his
produce from the tenants, but when they arrive, the tenants deal with them in
progressively harsher ways (beating, killing, and then stoning). The landowner
(rather than seeking retribution on the tenants) sends more slaves, who are
treated in the same harsh manner as the first group, and eventually, the
landowner sends his son.
Now, in verse 38, “when
the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let
us kill him and get his inheritance.'” That verse says a couple of
things to us: it shows us that the tenants truly have no respect or fear of the
landowner and all they are genuinely concerned about is the son’s inheritance. In
other words, these tenants want what belongs to the landowner and his son, and
they want it without doing the very thing the landowner has asked them to
do—tend to the vineyard. In their rejection of their duties, they see the son
of the landowner as an obstacle in their way, as one who will keep them from having
their way, from getting the inheritance—the goods—they want. In other words,
for these tenants who are focused on a future that they have conjured up in
their own minds of wealth and an inheritance, the son is a problem, and
impediment to having everything they want (even if what they want isn’t
necessarily what they have been promised).
We hear through the conversation that follows this parable in verses 40 through 46 that the chief
priests and Pharisees figure out that this parable is actually about them, and
they’re offended to the point of wanting to arrest Jesus, but they resist
because of the crowds and their admiration of Jesus as a prophet. Still, it points to the deeper meaning of this
parable (which may be better categorized as an allegory): God has put tenants
(i.e. religious leaders like the chief priests and Pharisees) in charge of
overseeing his vineyard (i.e. the Jewish people, or in our day the Church), yet
in their desire to obtain a future reward, that they have in many ways come up
with themselves, they have rejected God and labeled God’s Son as a stumbling
block between them and their “reward.” And here’s the thing friends… we do the
very same thing all the time!
Somewhere along the way, in the history of Christ’s Church, the end
result, our “inheritance,” heaven, became the primary focus of all that we say
and do as believers (especially as evangelicals in the West). The afterlife
became the moral imperative, the reason we did some things and abstained from
many other things. Our post-death destiny became the sole reason we
evangelized, because we wanted people to join us in heaven and avoid hell. At some
point, we became so focused on the hereafter that it even became the nucleus of
our theology, even redefining salvation as a simple change in one’s destination
on the other side of the grave. This is especially evident in the relatively
recent development of dispensationalism and the popularity of books like Hal
Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth, and
Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’s best-seller the Left Behind series (which was released as a major motion picture
this week). Christianity has become a religion focused on the end, on what lies
on the other side of this world and on the other side of death.
Now I know for some of you, that is what you’ve always believed, that the
point of religion in general is what happens to us when we die, and that is most
assuredly a large part of it. It’s also extremely important, however, to
understand that our faith is indeed a faith concerned about the future, though
it may not be in the way the so-called “popular theology” of premillennial
dispensationalism (the eschatology of the Left
Behind series) would have us believe. You see, when our faith becomes
completely defined by what we believe to be some future reward, when salvation
is only about where we’ll spend
eternity, well, then Jesus—the Son of God—becomes little more than the ticket
that gets us into the heavenly gates. With a faith constructed completely on
the notion that the only thing that matters is what we’ll get when the dust
settles after Armageddon Jesus is little more than our benefactor who paid the
entry fee for eternity. When our faith consists only in a belief in the
afterlife and Jesus as a means to an end, then the actual, embodied, Christ,
the one who ate with sinners, loved the rejected, healed the hurting, and
taught all who would follow him to do the same becomes little more than a
stumbling block between us and our imagined inheritance!
When our faith is only about that, when it is only about what we’re going
to get when it’s all over, well my friends, then we miss the point, for the
kingdom of heaven isn’t about what we’ll get when we get there. Our faith isn’t
only about what happens “then and there;” it is most certainly about what fruit
we bear for the kingdom “here and now.”
Hear again what Jesus says in verses
42 through 44: 42 Jesus said to them, “Have
you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has
become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our
eyes’? 43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you
and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. 44 The one who
falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom
it falls." Jesus (using a line or two from Psalm 118) explains to
these religious leaders who were more concerned about the power they would
receive from their offices and the eventual reward they believed they would
obtain as such powerful religious leaders that they have failed to bear fruit
for the kingdom. They have failed to produce fruit because of their own selfish
ambitions, so the responsibility of the kingdom will be given to different
people, to those whose love for God and devotion to Christ produces kingdom
fruit. Furthermore, Jesus explains that this “cornerstone” (referring to Christ
himself and his gospel) will “crush anyone on whom it falls.” That’s a
frightening proposition indeed! It as if Christ said to those chief priests and
Pharisees, “In your selfish pursuits, in your misplaced focus on your imagined
inheritance, you have ignored and stumbled over the truth right before you,
here and now, and because of your arrogant ignorance you will be crushed!”
Like those religious leaders of Jesus’ day and like the tenants in his
parable, those of us who call ourselves Christians are stewards of the
vineyard: we are given the task of watching over what God has given us and
bearing fruit for the kingdom. Being good stewards of the vineyard, bearing
kingdom fruit is about more than what we think we’ll get when the final day arrives.
It’s about more than our own selfishly contrived notions of rewards and
inheritances. Whenever our faith makes Jesus out to be a means to an end,
whenever our faith makes Jesus to be anything less than all that Jesus is, then
we miss the point of our faith altogether.
The reason we still rejoice when one passes through the waters of baptism
is not only because they have
signified their place among the saints in the hereafter. We rejoice because
they have entered into a life of faith that begins right here and right now, a
life of faith that is as important on this side of eternity as it is the other
side. We rejoice because they enter a growing relationship with Christ that
encompasses their entire lives both “here and now” and “there and then.”
The reason we lay hands and ordain those to the ministry is because our
faith is about how we serve and love others in this moment, how we show others
the fullness of Christ in this life so that they may be drawn to our Lord to
follow him in all the peace, joy, and hope Christ brings to us. We still ordain
deacons and ministers because we believe that there is still a vineyard that
needs tending.
The reason we gather around this table is, as the apostle Paul said, to
“proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” We proclaim that death that sealed
our fate, that death that showed to the world that the power of sin has been
overcome in selfless love, that death that calls us to fruit-bearing life! We
gather around this table in remembrance of the Christ who is present with us
here and now, who calls us even this moment to the work of the kingdom.
So as we come to the table this morning, may we lay aside our
selfishness, our Christ-less faiths, our hate, our pride that keeps us from
knowing and loving all of who God in Christ is. May we come to this table,
proclaiming the Lord’s death, remembering all that Christ has done for us that
we may live in the presence of God right here, right now, and for all eternity.
May we gather around this table this morning, serving one another and Almighty
God as stewards of the vineyard. Amen.
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