Pentecost XVII (Proper 22 A) [Matthew 21:33-46] (5-Oct-2014)

This sermon was preached at St Mark's Lutheran Church, Mt Barker, 8.30am, 10.30am.

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

The sermon text for today was inspired by the Holy Spirit through the apostle St Matthew. And we read from this gospel reading today:

Finally, he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

At the beginning of Matthew chapter 21, we read about Jesus’ wonderful entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. The crowds welcome Jesus into the city as their king, and they shout, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” We call this event in Jesus’ life “Palm Sunday”, because in John’s Gospel we read that the people welcomed Jesus into the city by waving palm branches, which was the way in which people in those times would normally welcome a hero who had fought in a battle and had defeated the people’s enemies. The people welcome Jesus on Palm Sunday with this kind of a celebration.

Now five chapters later, in Matthew 26, we read about Jesus’ final night with his disciples, before he is betrayed, arrested, before he suffers, is crucified, and dies and then is buried, before we read in the last chapter of Matthew about how Jesus rises from the dead.

Now in the history of Jesus’ life, Palm Sunday occurs exactly one week before Easter Day. In the church calendar, we also re-enact this by also celebrating Palm Sunday exactly one week before Easter. Now, if Palm Sunday happens in Matthew 21, and Easter Sunday happens in last chapter of Matthew, Matthew 28, then we can see that the things that happen in these last 8 chapters of the book of Matthew follow the events which happened over the course of only one week. We normally call this week “Holy Week”, because this is the week where Jesus does his most holy work of suffering and dying for the sin of the whole world, and then rising from the dead in wonderful victory.

Now just imagine if you knew that you were going to die at the end of the week? What do you think you might do? Well, here—what does Jesus do in his last week? He basically dedicates himself to one thing: teaching, teaching, and then—you guessed it!—teaching.

And so in our Gospel reading today, we read about a parable which Jesus tells his disciples about a master of house who leases a vineyard out to tenants. And we need to keep in mind that this is a parable that Jesus tells in the last week before he dies.

But also, after Jesus had entered into Jerusalem on the donkey on Palm Sunday, he had entered into the temple and found all kinds of people in there buying and selling. And he threw them all out. What they were doing was compromising the temple as a house of prayer. And Jesus says to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

Now, as you can imagine, many of the priest and elders who looked after the temple came to Jesus and were angry that Jesus had done this.

So we read: And when [Jesus] entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”

You can hear their annoyance here. Jesus had caused such a scene, and they probably said to themselves, “Who does this guy think he is, walking in here as if he owns the place?” Who does Jesus think he is?

But Jesus answers their question by throwing a little question back at them. He says: I also will ask you one question and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, from where did it come? From heaven or from man?

Jesus is asking them about the events where right at the beginning of the Gospels, three years earlier, Jesus’ relative, John the Baptist, who was six months older than him, had come preaching in the wilderness, and calling people to repent. He was baptising the people in the river Jordan. Now we read about John that he called himself: The voice crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord.

John’s whole ministry had been foretold many years before by the prophet Isaiah. Now the question that Jesus wants the priests and elders to think about is this: do they think that John was actually preparing the way of the Lord, or not? Was he doing God’s work, or was he just messing around? Was what he said true, or was it false?

We also have to realise that there hadn’t been a prophet like John the Baptism for many hundreds of years, and so maybe people had stopped believing that God could send a person like this. They also probably began to think that their authority was the only authority—their authority really was God’s authority, and unless something had their approval, then it wasn’t really from God. But here comes along John the Baptist—a real eccentric, someone whom the world had never seen before, doing something that people had never seen before—and he simply upsets their apple cart!

And so, Jesus puts it to them, Do they think that God sent John or not? And so we read: And they discussed it among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From man,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet. So they answered Jesus, “We do not know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

This little question about John the Baptist reveals that these chief priests are such hypocrites. They sit on the fence and say: We do not know. They don’t actually want to come out and say that John was actually a prophet, because they know that if he was a prophet they should have believed him. But they also don’t want to get themselves in trouble with the crowd and say that we wasn’t a prophet. Now, if you were a person looking to your spiritual leaders for guidance in those times, what would you think about these people when they said to Jesus, “We do not know”? These people are supposed to be experts, and yet they sit on the fence. They reveal that they know nothing, and they also show that they won’t teach anything or make a stand on anything if it’s going to upset the apple-cart, and cause the people to get upset. So who are the priests and elders afraid of? The people. And if this is the case, then what do you think prevails in their preaching? The pure word of God or whatever the people want to hear? Of course, if the priests are just afraid of people think, then it’s the will of the people that prevails and not the will of God. And so it’s no wonder that when Jesus asks them this question, they’ve just got nothing to say. They say: We do not know.

And so, Jesus says to them, Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. If you can’t recognise the work of God in John, then obviously you’re not going to recognise the work of God in me, says Jesus. And at the end of the day, you won’t take a stand on anything, because you’re just afraid of the people.

And so in order to explain this whole business, Jesus tells the parable in our reading today. He says: 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.

So you can see here: Who’s the master of the house? God the Father is the master of the house. And who owns the vineyard? God the Father does. Whose winepress is it? Whose tower is it? It belongs to God the Father, the master. And we read that the master leased the vineyard to tenants. Can you see that the priests of God are the tenants? Jesus is telling this parable to the chief priests and the elders of the people. However, the chief priest came up to Jesus as if they were the owners of the vineyard. They’re not the owners at all! God the Father is the owner. The priests are only called to look after the vineyard that belongs to their master.

And so what happens in the parable? We read: When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. And he sent other servants, more than the first. And they did the same to them.

You can see that the tenants have no respect for the master’s servants. The priests and elders think they are the owners now, and so when the master sends his servants to collect the fruit, they reject them and treat them badly and kill them. The servants here are God’s messengers all throughout the centuries: the prophets and faithful preachers of the word of God. When God sent the prophets, he wanted to use them to call them to repent and to change them from preaching their own human opinions to preaching the pure word of God. The prophets were to call the priests to return to teaching God’s word with God’s authority, instead of teaching whatever the people wanted. And so when a prophet came along, they were so often rejected and killed. All this happened because they thought that they were the owners of the vineyard instead of God.

Then Jesus says: Finally [the master] sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’ And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

We can see such a wonderful prophecy here where Jesus tells exactly how things are going to happen with his own death. Remember: Jesus tells this parable in the week before he dies. After centuries of sending prophets and messengers, God the Father finally sends his own Son. God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him will not die, but have eternal life. Here the tenants do not believe in him, and so they reject him, and kill him.

But we know that this is not the end of the story. The parable doesn’t end by saying that the tenants then carried on living in the vineyard happily ever after. No—the owner of the vineyard is alive. So we read: When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? They said to [Jesus], “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”

So Jesus tells the chief priests and the elders: Because you have rejected the authority of God, and even throw God’s Son out of the vineyard, God will also take away your authority, and punish them for teaching human opinions instead of God’s word.

Then Jesus says: 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 marvellous in our eyes?” Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.

Jesus is this stone which the builders have rejected. He is chucked out on the rubble pile. He is killed and thrown out of the vineyard. But that’s not the end of the story. Jesus, who suffered for you, and was crucified for you, and died for you, who was thrown out of the vineyard for you, is now resurrected from the dead. He has returned from death, and now he is alive. He was laid out dead in the tomb, and now he has stood up and walked out of the tomb, and he rules his church and his world even now—not through human words and human opinions but—through his pure word. He has become the cornerstone, the piece of stone which holds all the other stones together. And this is not our doing. This is God’s doing. Jesus says: This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. Is this marvellous in your eyes? Do you understand just what a wonderful thing it is to be in the presence of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus?

We can see in our reading today how Jesus warns us against falling away. And that there is always a certain structure in this. First, people reject the messengers that God himself sends. And then, because people reject the messengers, they reject the Son. And then because they reject the Son, they reject the Father. Jesus says: No one comes to the Father except through me.

But also, no one comes to the Son, except through the preaching of his words. Jesus says to the apostles: As the Father has sent me, even so, I am sending you. You can see just how important it is that pastors preach not their own opinions, or whatever will make people happy, because otherwise the authority in the church would be simply human, and we would be rejecting God’s own cornerstone, Jesus Christ. And it’s so important, that if you think your pastors are not preaching God’s word, then for the sake of the church and for everyone here, you need to tell them, and pastors need to listen to people who criticise them to test if what they are saying is from the Holy Spirit or not. But then, if a pastor actually does preach the word of God, then we should also not reject this word, but listen to it, and cherish it, and study it, and learn it. Because when we reject God’s messengers, then we will reject the Son, and if we reject the Son, then we will also reject the Father.

Much of our society has also rejected the church, and also rejects the Son, and the Father. And if this is case, then God has every right to carry out his threat to take away this gift and give it to others. This is the way the history of the church works: when people reject the gospel, it is taken away from them and their whole society is laid waste, and it is given to others. The gospel moves throughout the world, pouring rain down in one place and then moving to the next. There is still time for us and hope for us—if only we hold to God’s word, and God’s word alone, and not our own human opinion, and our own human authority.

So let’s rejoice in what the Lord has done among us here in our church today. He has raised his Son from the dead. Jesus is the stone which the builders have rejected, and God has established him as the cornerstone.

This is Lord’s doing, and is it marvellous in our eyes! Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you for your teaching, which brings life and light to us. Send us your Holy Spirit, that we may be faithful to you, and give us glad and joyful hearts in hearing your holy, precious and saving word! Amen.