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For Circuit #14 Monthly Winkle, Pilgrim Lutheran Church, Kilgore, TX
+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers in the Ministry of Circuit 14 and fellow saints here at Pilgrim,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Gospel Reading read moments ago may be fresh in your mind as it is in mine, as the Reading was appointed for this past Sunday, the Fifth Sunday in Lent, by Lutheran Service Book’s three‑year lectionary series. The chief priests, scribes, and elders had questioned Jesus’s authority but had refused to answer Jesus’s question about John the Baptizer’s authority and so got no direct answer from Jesus. Instead, with the hostile Jewish leaders standing right there, Jesus began to tell the people this “Parable of the Wicked Tenants” against the Jewish leaders, making for a tense, dramatic scene. In my study of the text in preparation for this morning’s Circuit Pastors’ Conference, I was particularly struck by verse 10, where Jesus tells that, when the time came, the lord of the vineyard “Sent a Servant” to the tenants. A more literal translation might be that he “apostled a slave”—I understand that English might not use the word “apostle” as a verb, but I do not accept the tendency to translate doulos as “servant” where “slave” is meant. With most of us here called and ordained “slaves” of the Word, who, when the time came, were sent to a particular corner of the Lord’s Vineyard, I have us focusing this morning on the theme “He Sent a Servant”, or perhaps better “He Sent a Slave”.
The “Parable of the Wicked Tenants” has a rich Old Testament background, such as that found especially in Isaiah chapter 5’s “Song of the Vineyard”, with which St. Matthew’s account of the Parable is paired in Proper 22-A of LSB’s three-year series. But, unlike in Isaiah where the problem with the vineyard is its failure to produce fruit, here the question is the actions of the tenants, the farmers or vinedressers—“sharecroppers” they might be called down here in the south. The lord of the vineyard made them his stewards, as it were, trusting them to look after his vineyard while he journeyed into another country for a long while, or a sufficient time. At harvest time, “He Sent a Servant”, apostled a slave, whom, having beaten, the tenants sent back, literally “ex-apostled”, empty. As St. Luke records the Parable, the lord of the vineyard apostles a total of three slaves, each of whom the tenants treat progressively worse. Jesus clearly indicts the Jewish leaders and their predecessors for their shameful treatment of the prophets who came before Him—we might even say their “traumatizing” of the prophets, a transliteration of the word the English Standard Version translates “wounded”. But, that is nothing new; in this morning’s Old Testament Reading (Jeremiah 7:21-29), we heard the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, indict all the people for ignoring the prophets, the servants or slaves, He sent to them.
In expounding a text, preachers exercise some degree of homiletical license. (I am resisting a temptation to extend that term and hermeneutical principles into an analogy about driver’s licenses and speed limits.) If you preached on this Parable this past Sunday, your sermon may have likened your lay hearers to the wicked tenants, or your sermon may have avoided that comparison, as mine did, because lay hearers really are not in the same position as the wicked tenants. As we consider this Parable this morning, I am suggesting we who are pastors find ourselves in the Parable in the persons of the three servants or slaves, those who were sent by the lord of the vineyard and shamefully treated by the wicked tenants.
Servants of the Word, or Slaves of the Gospel, really ought to expect shameful treatment. When I was teaching at Concordia University-Texas, I had occasion to talk with the “Min-Prep” class, those preparing to go into ministry, including those men preparing to go to the seminary and thus into the ministry. They were shocked at some of the real-world experiences of pastors. Maybe pastors are not physically beaten, but in some cases they are certainly emotionally and spiritually wounded or traumatized, and they are even literally sent away empty—their salary or benefits being cut to get them to leave, their being forced to resign in some other way, or their having their calls wrongfully rescinded. How do you and I deal with such treatment? One of the reasons the word “slave” may be a better translation for doulos in the Gospel Reading is that the word “slave” emphasizes that the service is not a matter of choice, that he performs the duties whether or not he likes it, that he is subject to another’s will, and that ultimately he is passive.
At times you and I may sinfully resent how we as sent-slaves are treated, for we remain sinners. For now, our sinful nature still clings to us. So, unlike those to whom Jeremiah was sent who ignored God’s call for repentance, we repent. We turn in sorrow from our sin—not only from our sin of resenting our treatment as sent-slaves, but we turn in sorrow from all our sin—we trust God to forgive our sin, and we want to do better. As in the Gospel Reading, where the lord of the vineyard’s destruction of the tenants is still in the future tense, as are the breaking to pieces of those who fall on the Rejected Cornerstone and the crushing of those on whom He falls, now is the time for such repentance. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives our sin for the sake of His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ.
In the Parable, the wicked tenants killed the lord of the vineyard’s beloved son, and the Jewish leaders against whom Jesus told the Parable fulfilled His prophecy that they would do the same to Him. Admittedly, Jesus Christ is the beloved son of the Parable, but in some sense He also was a sent-servant or slave, as St. Paul writes to the Philippians:
[T]hough [Christ Jesus] was in the form of God, [He] did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant [or slave], being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:7-8).
But, His death for us was not the end! Unlike the son in the Parable, Jesus rose from the grave! Because He lives, we, too, shall live. By grace through faith in Jesus Christ God the Father forgives our sins. He gives us life with the forgiveness of sins through His Means of Grace: preaching, Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and the Sacrament of the Altar. These are the ways the Holy Spirit both saves us and continues Jesus’s work, as in the “believers’ prayer” we heard in the Epistle Reading (Acts 4:23-31): the word spoken with all boldness and signs and wonders performed through the name of Jesus.
Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve, namely, by giving His life as a ransom for all, and whoever would be first must likewise be slave of all (Mark 10:44-45). As Jesus served, so we are willing to serve, for no slave is above his Master (John 13:16). And, we should expect to be treated the same as Jesus was treated, if not worse. As we here at Pilgrim, in our reading of the LSB combined passion narrative, last night heard Jesus Himself ask rhetorically: if they do such things to Him, the green wood, what will they do to us, the dry wood? God “Sent a Servant”, Jesus, to save us, and God likewise has sent us as His slaves. May He grant that we ever live in His forgiveness of sins and faithfully serve Him until such time as He sees fit to deliver us to the freedom of eternal life in heaven.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +