Scriptures: Matthew 21:33-46; Isaiah 5:1-7; Philippians 3:4-14
Every parable usually has one main overarching theme or message – to reveal to us something about the nature of God. Whether it’s the prodigal son showing us how God welcomes back the lost, or the parable of the Good Samaritan that tells us who God views as our neighbor.
And then you get a parable like this that makes you start going… “That landowner... he’s not too bright.” Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results.
But that’s how this landowner acts. He keeps persistently sending servant after servant to these tenants, hoping that they will eventually do what they’re supposed to – then finally sends his son, who also is rejected, beaten and killed.
From a worldly perspective – we look at God and say, “Ummm, yeah – not the brightest move.” But on another level, it shows us the patience and persistence of God. How God continually keeps trying to bring his people around, to get his people to do what they were supposed to do – be a priestly nation to the world. His representatives to the other nations. He sends prophet after prophet – then ultimately he sends His son.
But they continued to refuse to bear the kind of fruit God was after.
And then Jesus asks the question… what should the landowner do? What should the landowner’s response be to this?
The Pharisees give the expected response – the response the world would expect: put the tenants to death and lease it to new tenants who will take better care of it. Simple enough.
Naturally, the Pharisees don’t see themselves as the tenants initially – so they’re quick to pass that judgment. At which point Jesus turns to them and wants to know if they’ve read their scripture.
First – they should have understood immediately when Jesus started talking about vineyards he was talking about Israel. The Old Testament scriptures frequently used vineyards as a metaphor for Israel. As Isaiah 5 stated – the vineyard is Israel, the seeds were the people of Judah. But what grew up was not what God expected or wanted – he expected justice, but found bloodshed. He expected righteousness, but instead found people crying out in distress.
They missed the obvious references to what the vineyard represented, Israel, and how they were the tenants –the leaders who were entrusted with the care of the people of God and had failed miserably in their job. They didn’t see themselves as the tenants.
Not until Jesus directs their attention to Psalm 118 and places himself as the cornerstone that they are rejecting and then being rather blunt about telling them how the kingdom will be taken from them and given to those who will nurture the vineyard so it bears fruit.
That’s when they suddenly realize – Jesus was talking about them! That Jesus is the son that has been sent that they will kill. How dare he compare them with these ruffian tenants! Let’s kill him! Ummm…
By highlighting himself as the cornerstone, he is revealing that their rejection of him is how their relationship with God is broken and shattered. They’ve spent so much time worrying about their own personal sanctification and their own personal works of the law, they missed what God was wanting from them as a people.
They missed that Jesus was the foundational piece upon which God’s relationship with humanity is based upon. Some translations call him the capstone rather than the cornerstone – which instead of the foundational piece, is the piece that is put on top that holds everything together. Either way – if you remove either the cornerstone or the capstone – the whole thing falls apart.
Remove Jesus, and the relationship with God falls to pieces.
Now as Christians, we tend to make the exact same mistake as the Jewish leadership. We read this and assign someone else – namely the Jewish leadership – to the part of the tenants, and assume WE are the new tenants that the vineyard has been handed over to in order to produce fruit.
Yet we too need to recognize how we also stumble and fall on the cornerstone.
American Christians in particular tend to treat faith like it’s some kind of commodity. Like it’s something to possess, that we’re privileged because we have faith while someone else doesn’t. A non-Christian friend of mine once called it even an arrogance.
We tend to treat God like our own personal spiritual ATM. Give ME what I need for right now so I can show everybody else how spiritual and good I am. We point fingers at those who don’t share our faith or who aren’t living their lives the way we feel they should be.
We sometimes scoff and scorn those who don’t have what we do. And in the process… We forget why the kingdom was given to us to care for.
We tend to view our relationship with God as a personal self-improvement project, rather than recognizing that our election as part of the family of God is for the purposes of God’s mission to restore relationship with humanity as a whole. His relationship with us is BIGGER than us.
The Jewish leadership made the same mistake – they thought their special relationship with God was all about just them, forgetting they were supposed to be a priestly nation that cared for the other nations of the world.
Caring for the kingdom is bigger than just my own “personal” salvation – it’s about what God is doing for the WORLD. Not just me. It’s not about my personal preferences, my personal worship styles, my personal prayer time… it’s about how God is acting – how God is reconciling the WORLD to himself through Christ. How God is using all those things that we use on a “personal” level to benefit the people around us.
Paul eloquently hits on this point in the Philippians reading we had earlier. He was a doer of the Law, a Hebrew of Hebrews. He was as devout as they came, because it was his own personal glory he was seeking to attain, his own special sense of privilege because he was a Jew. His own personal relationship with God through the workings of the law made him special.
It took a confrontation with Christ to break him, to separate him from his past and move him to a new future. If Christ wasn’t the foundational piece around which he did all those things – then everything he had done was rubbish.
And if Christ is the foundational piece – that means – we’re not. Our achievements, our works, everything we do is rubbish. Everything falls apart if it’s not built on Christ as a foundation. We build ON the foundation – building on the kingdom of God for the sake of the world – not for the sake of our personal wants and desires.
And whether we like to admit it or not – we stumble and fall on that cornerstone all the time. With the same result as what Jesus said. We break apart. The confrontation with that stone causes a break from the past. It’s a break from the way things have been done before as we look forward into something new for the future.
It’s a break from how we have seen ourselves in the past. It’s a break from our own stories and experiences that we thought defined us – like Paul thought his being a Jew and a doer of the law defined who he was. It’s a break from self-centeredness. It’s a break from our former identity as we are shoved into a new life that is built on Christ – not built on our own wants and desires.
Jesus is where our past and our future meet. It’s Jesus’ faithful obedience that nullifies the power of our past and liberates us for a new future. It’s Jesus who tells us who we are – not our past. Don’t look backwards to dwell on where you’ve been – like a runner who keeps looking backwards and slows down because of it… but always look forward to the new future in Christ.
This putting our past and our history behind us is something we have to do daily. As Lutherans, we call this daily dying and rising. Dying each day to the sins we’ve committed, and rising each day to look forward to that new life in Christ.
To know each day that Christ has claimed us and made us his own. Because as Paul points out – we are not yet there. We are not yet “mature” – we are not yet “perfect.” We have not yet obtained the goal – but that’s ok. We have our sights set on it, and since Christ has already claimed us and made us his own – we know Christ will join us to himself and make us perfect.
So if we think that the ones who fall over the cornerstone and are broken is relegated to mean only the Jewish leadership Jesus was addressing, then we don’t understand ourselves and our relationship to God all that well.
Because when we fall on Christ – we know we’re broken. We know we’re imperfect. We know our relationships with each other are broken. Our relationship with God is broken.
Yet we have a persistent God who continues to come after us. A God who takes that brokenness upon himself so that we might have a new future. A God who, when beaten and taken outside the city gates to be crucified, pleads for those tenants, saying, “Father, forgive them… for they know not what they do.”
Every parable usually has one main overarching theme or message – to reveal to us something about the nature of God. Whether it’s the prodigal son showing us how God welcomes back the lost, or the parable of the Good Samaritan that tells us who God views as our neighbor.
And then you get a parable like this that makes you start going… “That landowner... he’s not too bright.” Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over, but expecting different results.
But that’s how this landowner acts. He keeps persistently sending servant after servant to these tenants, hoping that they will eventually do what they’re supposed to – then finally sends his son, who also is rejected, beaten and killed.
From a worldly perspective – we look at God and say, “Ummm, yeah – not the brightest move.” But on another level, it shows us the patience and persistence of God. How God continually keeps trying to bring his people around, to get his people to do what they were supposed to do – be a priestly nation to the world. His representatives to the other nations. He sends prophet after prophet – then ultimately he sends His son.
But they continued to refuse to bear the kind of fruit God was after.
And then Jesus asks the question… what should the landowner do? What should the landowner’s response be to this?
The Pharisees give the expected response – the response the world would expect: put the tenants to death and lease it to new tenants who will take better care of it. Simple enough.
Naturally, the Pharisees don’t see themselves as the tenants initially – so they’re quick to pass that judgment. At which point Jesus turns to them and wants to know if they’ve read their scripture.
First – they should have understood immediately when Jesus started talking about vineyards he was talking about Israel. The Old Testament scriptures frequently used vineyards as a metaphor for Israel. As Isaiah 5 stated – the vineyard is Israel, the seeds were the people of Judah. But what grew up was not what God expected or wanted – he expected justice, but found bloodshed. He expected righteousness, but instead found people crying out in distress.
They missed the obvious references to what the vineyard represented, Israel, and how they were the tenants –the leaders who were entrusted with the care of the people of God and had failed miserably in their job. They didn’t see themselves as the tenants.
Not until Jesus directs their attention to Psalm 118 and places himself as the cornerstone that they are rejecting and then being rather blunt about telling them how the kingdom will be taken from them and given to those who will nurture the vineyard so it bears fruit.
That’s when they suddenly realize – Jesus was talking about them! That Jesus is the son that has been sent that they will kill. How dare he compare them with these ruffian tenants! Let’s kill him! Ummm…
By highlighting himself as the cornerstone, he is revealing that their rejection of him is how their relationship with God is broken and shattered. They’ve spent so much time worrying about their own personal sanctification and their own personal works of the law, they missed what God was wanting from them as a people.
They missed that Jesus was the foundational piece upon which God’s relationship with humanity is based upon. Some translations call him the capstone rather than the cornerstone – which instead of the foundational piece, is the piece that is put on top that holds everything together. Either way – if you remove either the cornerstone or the capstone – the whole thing falls apart.
Remove Jesus, and the relationship with God falls to pieces.
Now as Christians, we tend to make the exact same mistake as the Jewish leadership. We read this and assign someone else – namely the Jewish leadership – to the part of the tenants, and assume WE are the new tenants that the vineyard has been handed over to in order to produce fruit.
Yet we too need to recognize how we also stumble and fall on the cornerstone.
American Christians in particular tend to treat faith like it’s some kind of commodity. Like it’s something to possess, that we’re privileged because we have faith while someone else doesn’t. A non-Christian friend of mine once called it even an arrogance.
We tend to treat God like our own personal spiritual ATM. Give ME what I need for right now so I can show everybody else how spiritual and good I am. We point fingers at those who don’t share our faith or who aren’t living their lives the way we feel they should be.
We sometimes scoff and scorn those who don’t have what we do. And in the process… We forget why the kingdom was given to us to care for.
We tend to view our relationship with God as a personal self-improvement project, rather than recognizing that our election as part of the family of God is for the purposes of God’s mission to restore relationship with humanity as a whole. His relationship with us is BIGGER than us.
The Jewish leadership made the same mistake – they thought their special relationship with God was all about just them, forgetting they were supposed to be a priestly nation that cared for the other nations of the world.
Caring for the kingdom is bigger than just my own “personal” salvation – it’s about what God is doing for the WORLD. Not just me. It’s not about my personal preferences, my personal worship styles, my personal prayer time… it’s about how God is acting – how God is reconciling the WORLD to himself through Christ. How God is using all those things that we use on a “personal” level to benefit the people around us.
Paul eloquently hits on this point in the Philippians reading we had earlier. He was a doer of the Law, a Hebrew of Hebrews. He was as devout as they came, because it was his own personal glory he was seeking to attain, his own special sense of privilege because he was a Jew. His own personal relationship with God through the workings of the law made him special.
It took a confrontation with Christ to break him, to separate him from his past and move him to a new future. If Christ wasn’t the foundational piece around which he did all those things – then everything he had done was rubbish.
And if Christ is the foundational piece – that means – we’re not. Our achievements, our works, everything we do is rubbish. Everything falls apart if it’s not built on Christ as a foundation. We build ON the foundation – building on the kingdom of God for the sake of the world – not for the sake of our personal wants and desires.
And whether we like to admit it or not – we stumble and fall on that cornerstone all the time. With the same result as what Jesus said. We break apart. The confrontation with that stone causes a break from the past. It’s a break from the way things have been done before as we look forward into something new for the future.
It’s a break from how we have seen ourselves in the past. It’s a break from our own stories and experiences that we thought defined us – like Paul thought his being a Jew and a doer of the law defined who he was. It’s a break from self-centeredness. It’s a break from our former identity as we are shoved into a new life that is built on Christ – not built on our own wants and desires.
Jesus is where our past and our future meet. It’s Jesus’ faithful obedience that nullifies the power of our past and liberates us for a new future. It’s Jesus who tells us who we are – not our past. Don’t look backwards to dwell on where you’ve been – like a runner who keeps looking backwards and slows down because of it… but always look forward to the new future in Christ.
This putting our past and our history behind us is something we have to do daily. As Lutherans, we call this daily dying and rising. Dying each day to the sins we’ve committed, and rising each day to look forward to that new life in Christ.
To know each day that Christ has claimed us and made us his own. Because as Paul points out – we are not yet there. We are not yet “mature” – we are not yet “perfect.” We have not yet obtained the goal – but that’s ok. We have our sights set on it, and since Christ has already claimed us and made us his own – we know Christ will join us to himself and make us perfect.
So if we think that the ones who fall over the cornerstone and are broken is relegated to mean only the Jewish leadership Jesus was addressing, then we don’t understand ourselves and our relationship to God all that well.
Because when we fall on Christ – we know we’re broken. We know we’re imperfect. We know our relationships with each other are broken. Our relationship with God is broken.
Yet we have a persistent God who continues to come after us. A God who takes that brokenness upon himself so that we might have a new future. A God who, when beaten and taken outside the city gates to be crucified, pleads for those tenants, saying, “Father, forgive them… for they know not what they do.”
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