The Gospel we heard today has a context. At the beginning of this chapter in Matthew, Jesus has entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. From that glorious entry the Lord goes to the temple where He cleanses God’s house from the business that had displaced the worship God had commanded. Then a poor unsuspecting fig tree gets cursed for not having fruit when it was not the season for it. By this time the religious leaders of the day had had enough. They confronted Jesus with the question that is at the heart of Matthew’s Gospel. By whose authority do you do this? Jesus answers with the parable of the two sons – one who says he will do the work of his father but does not and one who says he won’t but changes his mind. Now Jesus has their attention.
Then comes the reading we heard today. It is a history lesson in parable form. The vineyard is Israel – a people whom God created from no people to bear the good fruit He desires. The servants who call the people of God tending His vineyard to give the Lord what is His are the prophets whom God sent through the ages. These servants of God are beaten and thrown out of the vineyard and then killed for daring to call the people to repentance and faith. The owner, the Lord, has great determination. He will not walk away from what belongs to Him. So He sends His one and only Son to receive what belongs to the Lord. The people to whom the Son is sent refuse Him and throw Him out of the vineyard and kill Him. This is a reminder that Jesus Himself would not be killed in Jerusalem but thrown out to be crucified on Calvary – outside the city walls.
It is obvious what will happen. The scribes and Pharisees get what Jesus is saying. The vineyard will remain but the tenants will change. Here is the application for us today. The Church will always endure. The gates of hell will not prevail against her. God has put His seal and promise on this. But those who are in the Church will change. Just as those who refused to believe in Jesus were cast out of the kingdom and replaced with Gentiles who had no prophet or law or lineage to commend them. They had only the mercy of God and this they did not refuse. The kingdom of God was taken from the people of Israel and it was done just as Jesus said. It will be given to a people who produce the fruits God desires – the fruits that are a living and practiced faith. Now this was too much for the religious leaders to bear. They forgot their plan to deal with Jesus and rushed to arrest Him at that very moment but they could not because the crowd believed Jesus.
My friends, the Church will not die. The Church will not disappear. The faith will not depart from the earth. But do not get too comfortable in this. The promise of God is that the Church will endure every assault, every enemy, every heresy, and every threat. But nowhere does God promise that the people whom He has called His own will endure without faith. We see God’s judgment against His own people but it is not God who changes – it is the people who have lost their faith and given up their hope in God. The kingdom endures but it will endure among those who believe and live this faith.
The word of judgment in this parable is that the people now in the Church may not remain unless they believe. Let me be blunt here. Grandparents and parents alike need to hear that the Church is not ours by entitlement but ours by faith. Those whose names are written on membership rolls need to hear this blunt warning that the kingdom of God is not ours by entitlement but only ours by faith. While this is what happened in Matthew’s Gospel at Jesus’ own prophetic word, we have seen this happen among us. Look around you are those who used to belong, whose voices used to be joined with ours in faith and praise, who once believed but now have lost their faith and lost their way. Their place was replaced by others who sat where they sat, who confess now what they once confessed, and who believed as they once believed.
It happened among us and still happens. The terrible truth is that there are not many Lutherans left in Luther’s homeland. The terrible truth is that every year the numbers of people who say they are Christians diminishes here in our own nation. This is what it means when Luther warns that the Gospel rains down upon the grace and mercy of God but without reception and response of faith, like a summer rain it moves on to other places. Jesus is telling us that this is what happened to the Jews who rejected Him. But Jesus is warning us that the same thing can and will happen to us if we lose faith and depart from the vineyard of God’s Church.
The cornerstone is Christ. On the one hand, it holds up and unites all the living stones of God’s people into the house that is the Church. On the other hand, it comes crashing down to destroy those who reject Him. The Kingdom of God is not our achievement and is only God’s gift. But without faith to receive that gift, the Kingdom of God will be given to others who will receive it with faith and rejoice in the salvation God has accomplished. He is the cornerstone holding everything together and the stumbling stone on which we fall.
We are not here because, like the Jews, we have a heritage. We were brought into the Kingdom when others lost their place. What happened to give us a place and an identity as the people of God will happen to others when our hearts are empty of faith and we no longer have time or a desire for God and the things of His House. The Kingdom of God will not end nor will the Church ever be overcome by Satan and the world. But our place within that vineyard may be lost to us and given to another when faith no longer lives in our hearts and we become a stranger to God’s House. This is the warning. But this is also a promise. Those who endure in faith cannot lose the Kingdom.
This is certainly a parable against those who are too comfortable believing that they have time to deal with faith, that the things of this life are more urgent than the things of the life to come, and that they do not have to do anything to remain within God’s favor heart. Of course you do. The fruits that Jesus is talking about are not some great and difficult things for us to accomplish. They are the simplest works a child can do. To believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and to live in His House as your own home of grace and mercy.
My friends, once we were a mighty Church, sending missionaries to far off places so that the pagans might hear of the God who loves and redeems them. Now we are living in a pagan land and the mission fields are sending people to proclaim the Gospel to us because they do not want us to be replaced by others. The Gospel rain may be moving to other fields. But you and I are still here. And we have faith to believe that God is speaking to us with mercy and grace to forgive us and to bring us to everlasting life. Let us not take this for granted or become too comfortable or casual about God and the things of His House. Let us not presume what we think is our right when it is only ours by faith. Let us not give our time and energy to the things of today only to lose eternity. God keep us from presuming the vineyard instead of showing forth the fruits of faith. Amen.
Thank you... I often have to come to your sermons to make sure I understood the readings or, more often than not, to learn/understand the meaning of the readings.
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