"May this never be!"

Luke 20:9 He went on to tell the people this parable: "A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. ¹⁰ At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. ¹¹ He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. ¹² He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out. ¹³ "Then the owner of the vineyard said, 'What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.' ¹⁴ "But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. 'This is the heir,' they said. 'Let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' ¹⁵ So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. "What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? ¹⁶ He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others." When the people heard this, they said, "May this never be!" ¹⁷ Jesus looked directly at them and asked, "Then what is the meaning of that which is written: "'The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone'? ¹⁸ Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed." ¹⁹ The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid of the people.

How do you react when bills, taxes or other charges are due? When bills are due, do you worry and fret? Do you grumble when you send off your taxes? Do you gripe that filling up your vehicle costs you over $50? Do you regret spoiling your children at Christmas or spoiling yourself on vacation when the credit card comes due?

I hope you don’t react like the tenants in Jesus’ parable by beating up the mailman when he brings your bills or berating the clerk when she calls to inform you that your bank account is overdrawn. This parable applies to us and how we react to our Divine Landlord and His messengers when He comes looking to collect fruit from you. May our reaction to the Lord and His messengers be the same as those who heard Christ’s words the first time: “May this never be!”

“A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time.” Renting out vineyards in the Jewish culture was a common practice just as renting our farmland is common today. The tenants had entered into a business arrangement with the owner to pay Him a fair share of the profits from the vineyard, but when the servants came to collect, the tenants abused them and sent them away empty-handed. They even went so far as to kill the only son of the owner in the hope of stealing his inheritance. They knew that if the owner had no heirs when he died, the land would then revert to the tenants.

Those who heard this parable that day understood it immediately. The children of Israel were the tenants of God’s promised land of Canaan. They had entered into a contract covenant with God. He would bless them as His favored people and they were to worship and serve Him alone. But they continually broke their contract with God. Look at the way God’s people treated God’s prophets, His faithful servants. The people ignored them, battled with them and killed them. Moses’ authority was constantly being challenged as he led the unruly Children of Israel. It got so bad for Elijah in Israel that God sent Him to the Gentiles. Tradition says that Isaiah was sawed in two in Jerusalem. Jeremiah was living in exile in Egypt where he is rumored to have been stoned to death. The writer to the Hebrews sums up how God’s prophets, these servants whom the landlord sent to the tenants, were treated, “others were tortured … some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-- the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.” (Hebrews 11:35-38)

At our confirmation, we entered into a contract with God. God promised at our baptism that He would make us His own children, wash away our sins, send His holy angels to protect us and give us His Holy Spirit to live daily for Him. At our confirmation, we promised God that we would continue steadfast in His teaching and endure all things, even death, rather than fall away from it. We promised to make faithful use of His Word and Sacraments as long as we live. How well is God keeping His side of the contract? Now, how well are you keeping your covenant confirmation promises?

How do you treat the Landlord when He makes a claim on your life? The sin of the tenants was that they refused to give the landlord his rightful reimbursement. Don’t we do the same thing?

God has given us the Vineyard of His world and His Church. We are strangers here, tenants who owe everything we have, everything we are to the Landlord. We don’t own anything. But like those selfish tenants, we act like this is all our stuff, we own it, and the Lord will get His share when we are good and ready to give it to Him. If you’ve ever owed rent to a landlord or owed the bank for a mortgage, you know you cannot get away with only paying a fraction of what you owe. So why do we act as though we can skimp on our Lord and expect Him to be fine with it?

We cheat God when He asks us for our time, but we tell Him we are too busy right now. We cheat the Savior when He invites us to worship but we have other things on our schedule. We cheat the Lord when He suggests a use for our talents in His Vineyard, but we’d rather use them elsewhere to our glory and benefit. We cheat the Landlord when we bring meager portions of our income to Him, but then shop online for all the cool things we can spend our money on. We cheat God out of time with Him, maybe not by killing the prophets by certainly avoiding their message. We cheat the Lord when we do not hold ourselves accountable to the confirmation vows we made to Him.

“May this never be!”

That’s how we often treat God. How do we treat God’s servants who come looking to collect fruits of faith from us? Perhaps you have heard your pastor struck a raw nerve or two in his sermons. He told you something that your old sinful self did not want to hear. Maybe it felt like the pastor hit just a little too close to home. Your sinful nature rebels and rises up and lashes out at God’s called messengers.

There is a dire warning in this parable, and we would do well to heed it. Reject the kindness and mercy of God, and you will lose it all. The Landowner will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.

“May this never be!”

There is a lot of Law in this parable. Jesus is directly pointing out the sins of the people. So where is the Gospel? It is seen in the patience of the Landowner. See how He continues to send servant after servant to point out our sins and call us to repentance, servants like pastors, elders, teachers and other concerned Christians.

The landowner is so patient and hopeful that he sends his own son, his “beloved son,” to the vineyard to collect the fruit owed to the family. When the tenants saw the landowner’s son, though, they killed him. They didn’t kill him and then throw his body out of the vineyard. No, they threw Him outside the walls of the vineyard … and then they killed him. What’s the difference? This sequence of events is a prophecy of exactly what happened to Jesus, the Landowner’s only Son. The writer to the Hebrews describes how Jesus was thrown out of Jerusalem and then killed: “and so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood” (Hebrews 13:12).

But there is a difference between the parable and the real-life event. In the story, the owner assumes that the son would be treated with respect. In reality, God sent His Son into the world, not just knowing that He would be rejected and killed, but for the very purpose that He be rejected and killed. In the parable, the son remained dead. In reality, the Son was raised from the dead. All of this would happen in less than one week from when Jesus spoke this parable. It would all be accomplished. It would all be finished. Our redemption, our atonement, our forgiveness, won by the death of God’s Son at the hands of wicked tenants. But as He so often does, God used rejection and evil for His good. He used death to defeat death.

So, how do we escape the fate of the wicked tenants? Jesus gives the answer by quoting Psalm 118: “’The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone?’  Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.” That’s kind of cryptic, and it really doesn’t sound like good news. But it is! Because it makes an important distinction between those who are broken and those who are crushed. While both hurt, one is permanent and the other is not.

Jesus is the stone. Christ and His cross are a stumbling stone to all of us who want to be self-sufficient, who think that we can live however we want; who like the name of Christian but don’t want Christ to make any claim on our lives; who try to give God our fruits, but those fruits are damaged, they are weak, they are the leftovers. We stumble over Christ; we trip and fall and break apart. And that’s a good thing! We must first realize that our lives are broken, our marriage is broken, our home life is broken, our love life is broken, our attempts at Christian lives are broken.

Then, when we finally admit that we are broken, that we have stumbled over Christ and His cross, that we really are the wicked tenants who despise God and the preaching of His Word, then there is hope. Once broken by the cross, we are made whole by the resurrection. God humbles us so He can exalt us. He lowers us so He can raise us up. He breaks us so He can heal us. God sends faithful preachers to confront you with your sin, so then they can announce Christ’s forgiveness for that sin. God does not want His called servants to hold anything back, so that means that they will preach both the sternness of God’s Law and then the sweetness of God’s Gospel. God and His preachers know that it is better for you to be broken by the cross and face your sins now, so God can take them away now.

The alternative is to be crushed – to not be broken and saved by the cross, but be crushed by its weight. Then you will go into the afterlife believing you were whole and then standing before the Judgment Seat of the Almighty Landowner who will charge you with killing His beloved Son. No one wants that!

There is hope at the end of this parable. There is hope for us wicked tenants. Hope, for when the owner of the vineyard returns, He will not see us as those who killed His Son, but as ones for whom His Son died. And He will raise us broken ones, and give us His inheritance. And, in fact, He is doing that even now. For here we come before Him broken, as repentant tenants, as sinners, and He is raising us up in forgiveness. He gives us a seat at His Table, where He feeds us. The body and blood of His Son, still coming to us, still giving Himself for us. Building our hope upon nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.

Fellow tenants in the Lord’s vineyard, worship your Divine Landowner. Listen to His called servants. Allow Him to make a claim on your life. Gladly give your fruits of faith to Him. Keep your promises to the Landowner to whom you owe everything. Build your faith upon Christ the cornerstone.

“May this ever be!” Amen.

 The video of the sermon: May This Never Be