The rejected Son came to receive you.

 

Sermon for Lent 5, April 6, 2025

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.  All who do his precepts have good understanding.  Amen.

Luke 20:9-20  ⁹He began to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, leased it to some tenant farmers, and went away on a journey for a long time.  ¹⁰When it was the right time, he sent a servant to the tenants to collect his share of the fruit of the vineyard.  But the tenant farmers beat the servant and sent him away empty-handed.  ¹¹The man went ahead and sent yet another servant, but they also beat him, treated him shamefully, and sent him away empty-handed.  ¹²He then sent yet a third.  They also wounded him and threw him out.  ¹³The owner of the vineyard said, ‘What should I do?  I will send my son, whom I love.  Perhaps they will respect him.’  ¹⁴But when the tenant farmers saw him, they talked it over with one another.  They said, ‘This is the heir.  Let’s kill him, so that the inheritance will be ours.’  ¹⁵They threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.  So what will the owner of the vineyard do to them?  ¹⁶He will come and destroy those tenant farmers and give the vineyard to others.”  When they heard this, they said, “May it never be!”  ¹⁷But he looked at them and said, “Then what about this that is written: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.’  ¹⁸Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush the one on whom it falls.”  ¹⁹That very hour the chief priests and the experts in the law began looking for a way to lay hands on him, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them.  But they were afraid of the people.  ²⁰They watched him carefully and sent spies, who pretended to be sincere, so that they could trap Jesus in something he said and then deliver him up to the power and authority of the governor. (EHV)

The rejected Son came to receive you.

Dear friends in Christ,

            If there were an indictment for these crimes, there would be an incredible list of charges against those tenants.  The list begins with theft when they refused to turn over a portion of the harvest to the owner.  However, they immediately also escalated their guilt with assault of the servant, and their crimes increased from then on.  Those tenants were obviously guilty of theft but also fraud for not intending to carry out the agreed-upon contract.  Then there were the numerous assaults and the conspiracy leading up to intentional first-degree murder of the vineyard owner’s son.

It really makes for a shameful, disturbing case, and few would blame us for being shocked at the blatant evil displayed.  At the same time, would we really look any better if brought before a judge?  If we go down the list of the Ten Commandments, how many are we guilty of breaking?  Any confirmand will advise you that we are guilty of breaking them all.  We too have been guilty of theft in some way or another.  We too have found ourselves scheming for riches or hating another person.  We too have shamelessly defied our parents and superiors.  We too have lusted after another person, if only secretly.

I know, I know, I shouldn’t accuse anyone without certain evidence, but can any of us honestly deny our guilt?  Here is the deal, however.  Jesus was not indicting a group of tenant farmers for stealing grapes.  Instead, much like Nathan told a story to King David one thousand years earlier in order to convict David of his great sins, Jesus tells this horrific parable to bring the leaders of Israel to repentance.  The parable vividly pictures the wickedness that consumed the scribes, priests, and other leaders God had put in positions of authority over His people, and those leaders “knew he had spoken this parable against them.”

Therefore, we need to understand what the parable is teaching.  Here, the tenants were the leaders of Israel.  The vineyard is God’s Church on earth, and the fruit God expected was a harvest of faithful believers.  God had chosen the descendants of Israel as His people.  He had built a wall of protection around them and poured great care into making that people a productive environment for His kingdom to grow.  Sadly, by Jesus’ day, we have the situation pictured in the parable, in which the leaders were conspiring to kill God’s Son lest they lose control of their power and prominence on earth.  Jesus tells this story, not to ridicule but to call them to repentance, and to teach that The rejected Son came to receive you.

The whole Bible is God’s message of what He has been, is, and will always be doing to work out the salvation of sinners, because God truly desires to save sinners from condemnation.  He sent His own dear Son into this world to accomplish that mission, and He has no desire for any person to miss out on the joy and glory of heaven.  Yet, there is a serious warning here for all people.  There is only one way that anyone can or will be saved, and salvation comes only through believing that Jesus is the Holy One of God and the One and Only Savior and Redeemer from sin and death.

Many of the Jewish leaders in those positions of authority, as Jesus lived among the people on earth, fell into the trap of assuming that peace with God is something they deserved.  Others, like the Sadducees, refused to believe that there is more than this life here on earth, so they were hyper focused on maintaining what they considered their good lives.  They didn’t want to risk their wealth and privilege on believing in this Prophet from Nazareth.  Unfortunately, you and I can be tempted by the same influences.

As we go about our daily routines, it can be all too easy to fall into the temptation of earthly wealth.  The prosperity gospel (which isn’t gospel at all, but Satan’s trap) is truly tempting to the sinful nature that wants to believe God rewards good behavior and pious prayer with riches whether deserved or not.  That same prosperity thinking, however, will also accuse one of being on God’s enemy list whenever things in this broken world aren’t going well.

Likewise, our sinful nature is powerfully tempted to believe the lie that we have to please God in order to have peace with Him.  Yet, that is nothing more than the devilish lie that brought pagan religions onto the world scene.  At the same time, our egos have a hard time processing the truth that there is nothing in fallen humanity that makes God love us.  The sinful nature inherited from Adam and Eve really doesn’t like to face our faults and failures in life.  We would rather hide from God’s law and from His righteous judgment.  Because of all those temptations and traps, it is good and right for us to thank and praise God that The rejected Son came to receive you.

Going back to the parable, we read, “So what will the owner of the vineyard do to them?  He will come and destroy those tenant farmers and give the vineyard to others.”  When they heard this, they said, “May it never be!”  Jesus gives a blunt warning that anyone who rejects Him, rejects also His Father who sent Him to save people like you and me.  Consequently, He boldly shares that they will face eternal damnation for their cruelty and unbelief.

Notice their response, though.  Were they saying, “May God never be so just?”  Or perhaps, “May we never be so unrighteous?”  It appears to be the former rather than the latter, because those same men were already plotting to kill Jesus lest He cause a loss in their earthly positions.  They were jealous of Jesus’ popularity, in addition to being afraid of His righteous words.

So, where does that leave us?  Honestly, we have been saved not because of any good in us, but because God, in His love, was working through the rejection of those leaders to send His beloved, holy Son to the cross to die for all people.  St, Paul later wrote, “When the set time had fully come, God sent his Son to be born of a woman, so that he would be born under the law, in order to redeem those under the law, so that we would be adopted as sons.  And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts to shout, ‘Abba, Father!’” (Galatians 4:4-6)

The Israelites had been God’s people for thousands of years—sometimes, many of them were very faithful—yet, many times, the majority wandered from believing in the God of their fathers.  Still, this always remained the way that God would bring salvation to all who will believe in Jesus.  Exactly at the right time and involving certain people who so violently opposed the Lord that they would willingly send His Son to death, a death that unbeknownst to them would also pay for their sins.  Thus, they did their dirty deeds, but you and I are among the beneficiaries.  We are granted forgiveness because God planned to win it for us through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus.  It is because of God’s mercy that Jesus entered the world when He did, and it is because of His love that we are adopted as heirs through faith in Jesus given to us by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel in Word and Sacraments.

Therefore, the message for us to today is not to imagine that we are better than those people, but that God used them to deliver us from a fate worse than physical death.  God rescued us from eternal damnation through everything Jesus did to live and die for us.  Christ Jesus lived the blessed righteousness we need to stand before God in peace, and He carried all our guilt to that cruel, bloody cross to experience the death and separation from His Father that you and I by nature and right deserved.

Then, just as the Lord had been doing in Israel for over fourteen hundred years, God sent His messengers to tell His elect about the peace with God Jesus has won.  That’s truly what the Christian Church is all about.  We are here in this cruel world to share the Good News of what Jesus has done for all people.  We are here to walk among this depraved and often cruel people who don’t yet know Jesus, but not in order to make us suffer or gloat, but rather, so that while we endure the ills and hardships of life on earth, we too are reflecting God’s love upon others, so that they see what Jesus has done to give eternal life.

Dear friends, this peace with God that surpasses all understanding was brought to you through the Gospel and the water and Word of Baptism.  It was shared again and again with you through the proclamation of God’s salvific Word in the Bible.  Through these things, the Holy Spirit granted to you faith in Jesus so that you have become productive branches on Jesus’ vine in God’s vineyard.  Remember Jesus’ words to His faithful followers:

I am the Vine; you are the branches.  The one who remains in me and I in him is the one who bears much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.  If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers.  Such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.  My Father is glorified by this: that you continue to bear much fruit and prove to be my disciples. (John 15:5-8)

Jesus came into this world this first time to redeem us back into God’s vineyard, and to make us productive branches for his Father’s glory.  A day is coming when Jesus will once again return to collect for His Father the bounty of His vineyard by gathering into heaven all those who believe and trust in Jesus as the Son of God and Savior of the world.  Though rejected by many when He came to deliver us, and rejected by many still today, God’s Son paid the price to bring you back into His home of peace and the security of His kingdom.  He is coming soon to judge and dispose of those who refuse to believe, but primarily, The rejected Son will come to receive you into the glory and peace of heaven, where you will dwell for all eternities to come, because The rejected Son came to receive you.  Amen.

The one who testifies about these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.”  Amen.  Come, Lord Jesus!  The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with all the saints.  Amen.