Answering questions about God: Why is God so patient?

Matthew 21:33–43 ³³“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a tower. He leased it out to some tenant farmers and went away on a journey. ³⁴When the time approached to harvest the fruit, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit. ³⁵The tenant farmers seized his servants. They beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. ³⁶Then the landowner sent even more servants than the first time. The tenant farmers treated them the same way. ³⁷Finally, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said. ³⁸But when the tenant farmers saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance!’ ³⁹They took him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. ⁴⁰So when the landowner comes, what will he do to those tenant farmers?”

⁴¹They told him, “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end. Then he will lease out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him his fruit when it is due.”

⁴²Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes?

⁴³“That is why I tell you the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruit.”

St Paul teaches: As fellow workers we also urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. (2 Corinthians 6:1)

In our Old Testament lesson, we heard the shocking story of Manasseh (2 Kings 21:1-15). Though he was king of God’s people, he committed every evil imaginable. His wickedness knew no bounds. He worshiped idols and put false altars in God’s temple. He practiced witchcraft. He “made his son pass through the fire” which means he sacrificed his son on an altar. Tradition says he had the prophet Isaiah sawn in half. King Manasseh led God’s people into such apostasy that their sin was worse than the nations that God had driven out of the land.

God had been patient with Israel for 750 years, but the fruitlessness of Manasseh proved too much, even for our patient God. God vowed to destroy his vineyard of Israel. “Pay attention! I am bringing such disaster on Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of all who hear of it will tingle” (2 Kings 21:12). God had been provoked to anger from the day he brought the Israelites out of Egypt. His patience has run out and he vowed “I will wipe away Jerusalem just as someone wipes a bowl clean and turns it upside down” (2 Kings 21:13). That is a vivid picture of destruction!

Even more shocking than Manasseh’s sin, though, is the story of God’s grace. In 2 Chronicles 33 we learn that Manasseh was carried into captivity by the Assyrian nation. His feet and hands were in shackles. He was led around by a hook in his nose. Yet God used this humiliation to call King Manasseh to repentance. Manasseh finally heard God’s call and cried out to the Lord.

And what did God do? God forgave Manasseh.

Did you hear the list of everything Manasseh did? Everything he led his people to do? The witchcraft, idolatry and child sacrifice? And God forgave him! “He prayed to the Lord, and the Lord responded to his prayer and heard his plea for mercy. He brought him back to Jerusalem into his own kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord is the true God” (2 Chronicles 33:13).

It boggles the mind that God could be so patient with Manasseh. That God could forgive Manasseh. That God would even return Manasseh to the throne in Jerusalem.

But it also boggles the mind the effect that God’s patience, call to repentance and forgiveness had on Manasseh’s life. He produced the fruits that his God had patiently sought: he removed the altars, got rid of the false gods, worshiped the true God and encouraged all of Judah to do the same.

Today we continue with our series on Questions about God. We are asking “Why is God so patient with us?” To find the answer, we look at Jesus’ parable about wicked tenants. But it is really a story about God’s patience.

The parable of the wicked tenants is a strange one. A landowner plants a vineyard, rents it out, and leaves for a far away country. When the harvest comes, he sends servants to collect his share of the fruit. The tenants refuse. Instead, they seized his servants. They beat some, stone some and even kill some.  

After being cheated out of his rent and having his servant beaten up, any reasonable man would never have dreamed of doing what the vineyard owner did next. He asks himself, “What shall I do?” But instead of answering, “I’ll teach them a lesson they’ll never forget!”, he says instead, “I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.” Not only does he give them another chance; he risks the very life of his son in doing so.

Instead of respect, there is rage; instead of payment, there is pulverizing; the beloved son is now a bloodied corpse.

Doesn’t this story bother you? Don’t you want to yell at the landowner, “Why are you so foolish? Don’t you get it? Those tenants need punishment, not patience!” We would get in the face of the landowner and say, “It’s just a vineyard. Why are you bothering? Human lives are worth more than your pay. Your son is worth more than a vineyard. Give it up!”

If this was any ordinary vineyard, perhaps the owner would give it up. But it’s not. This is God’s vineyard. He cleared it, planted the field, fenced it in and built a tower for it. This is Jesus’ inheritance as the Son of God. This is God’s world, and he isn’t going to give up on us.

God put his tenants – the children of Israel – in the Promised Land of Canaan. God’s people were to give a fair share of their profits to the landowner with their worship and service to him only. But they continually broke their contract with God. They killed God’s prophets, the ones he sent into the vineyard to reach out to his people. They even went so far as to kill the owner’s son – Jesus Christ.

You and I are also tenants in God’s vineyard. 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 benefit. We cheat the Landlord when we bring meager portions of our income to him, but then shop online and spend way more than we give in our offerings. We cheat God out of time with him, maybe not by killing the prophets but certainly avoiding their message. We cheat God when he finds tenants who become angry and violent when he asks for the bare minimum of decency and selflessness.

You wouldn’t blame God for giving up on his people who kept rejecting him. You wouldn’t blame God if he finally had enough of King Manasseh’s idolatry. You wouldn’t blame God if his patience ran out on you – his ungrateful, violent tenants.

This is a strange parable. It’s a story about the perversity of the tenants, but even more so about the patience of the owner. It’s about their evil, but even more about the owner’s good. This story is about the patience of God – a God of second chances, third chances, fourth chances, and even more.

Jesus portrays God as a man of business. But he doesn’t act like the business world acts. He is not a Lord of commerce, but rather a Father of compassion.

God has every right to give up on you. But he doesn’t! Your spouse may be done with you. Your parents may have had enough of you. Your siblings may not be able to stand you. Your friends may have turned their backs on you. … But the Father of all mercies does not. He sends his servants – his pastors – to you. He sends his Son – Jesus – to you. He doesn’t have to, but he does. He is patient with you. 

In Jesus’ parable, the tenants killed the owner’s son. 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.

Jesus is the son who is cast out and killed. But he who was cast out brings you back in. He died and is alive again. He comes back into the vineyard to claim you. To wrap his arms around you. To forgive you for what you have done to him with your sins and rejection. To accept you, not only as tenant in his Father’s vineyard, but as his own dear brother or sister through baptism. To sit down and eat a meal with you at his communion table.

A pastor was called on to see a man dying of a terrible disease. The man had Christian training in his youth but had turned away from it and had lived an awful life. Now on his deathbed, his thoughts returned to God. He repented of his sins, and the pastor announced God’s forgiveness before the man died.

One prominent member of the church said to the pastor before the funeral, “Pastor, you’re not actually going to bury that good for nothing scoundrel, are you? Because if he went to heaven, I don’t want to go there!” The pastor answered, “Don’t worry about that – you’re not going there.” “What?!” said the good church member. “This miserable man is in heaven, and I’m not going there?” The pastor said, “Not if that’s the sentiment in your heart. All have sinned. No one deserves heaven. And all are forgiven through faith in Jesus. There’s only one way to heaven — through Jesus!”

OK. We learned today that God is patient. Overly patient. Stubbornly patient. But we didn’t answer the question: “Why is God so patient with us?” St. Peter succinctly answers the question. “[The Lord] is patient for your sakes, not wanting anyone to perish, but all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). God is patient because he wants Manasseh to repent. He wants the religious leaders to listen. He wants the death bed convert in heaven. He wants you to no longer be wicked tenants, but to be his beloved sons and daughters, bear fruits of faith and share in Jesus’ inheritance.

Thank God for his patience. Amen.

Again, St. Paul teaches: “Look, now is the favorable time! See, now is the day of salvation! (2 Corinthians 6:13)