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+ + + 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 and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
You need not have studied logic or rhetoric in order to be at least somewhat familiar with the informal fallacy (or faulty argument) known as a “false dilemma”, when something is claimed to be an either-or situation despite there being at least one other alternative (Wikipedia). For example, someone might say that in an election you have to vote for a Democrat or a Republican, when there might be candidates of other parties in the contest, not to mention the option of not voting at all. In today’s Gospel Reading, with the so‑called “Parable of the Wicked Tenants” and the narrative that follows, Jesus might wrongly be taken as presenting a “false dilemma”, as if Jesus says either you fall on the stone that the builders rejected and are broken to pieces or it falls on you and you are crushed. In fact, for the people to whom Jesus spoke then and for us today there is another alternative: namely, being built on that stone. So, today we consider the Gospel Reading under the theme: “Broken, Crushed or Built”.
For today’s Gospel Reading we have come forward some five chapters in St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, from outside of Jerusalem into the Holy City, into the events of Holy Week, with the Jewish leaders no longer on the sidelines as they were in last week’s Gospel Reading, (Luke 15:1-3, 11-32) merely grumbling that Jesus receives sinners and eats with them, but are already seeking to destroy Jesus (Luke 19:47) and so they were questioning Jesus’s authority, but themselves refusing to answer His questions about John the Baptizer’s authority (Luke 20:1-8).
Jesus told “the Parable of the Wicked Tenants” primarily to the people, but Jesus told the Parable primarily against the Jewish leaders, highlighting their wickedness in treating the prophets God had sent in the past and indirectly prophesying both of their killing Him and of the destruction it would bring upon them. When someone objected to the way the Parable ended, Jesus (apparently) looked directly at the Jewish leaders and asked them how else to understand what Psalm 118 (Psalm 118:22) said about the stone the builders rejected. For, as Jesus explained it, everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and, when it falls on anyone, it will crush him or her.
One might say that those who fall on the stone are those who actively oppose Jesus, or those He sends, or the Father Who sent Jesus; and, one might say that those on whom the stone falls are those who are indifferent to the Gospel (so Arndt, ad loc Luke 20:18, p.405). Do you and I actively oppose Jesus, those He sends, or the Father Who sent Jesus? Are you and I indifferent to the Gospel? If so, our outcome will be being broken to pieces or being crushed, unless we repent! Even if we do not sin in those ways that the Jewish leaders did, we sin in other ways, and so we are no better by nature than the Jewish leaders or the people to whom Jesus spoke the Parable then. Apart from repentance, we all deserve destruction, one way or another. Jesus may have told the Parable primarily against the Jewish leaders but He surely also intended the people who heard it then, and us today, as the vineyard not only to continue to produce fruit in keeping with repentance but also to recognize the Jewish leaders as the wicked tenants and so to turn from them to the other, faithful tenants to whom the care of the vineyard would be given.
Now, we do well to note that Jesus did not say people would “either” be broken to pieces “or” crushed; rather, Jesus said “and”. There are two different ways that the stone the builders rejected might destroy people: their falling on it, or its falling on them. However, there is another alternative in regard to that stone: not falling on the stone or having it fall on you but rather being built on the stone. Perhaps referring to that verse from Psalm 118, God through the prophet Isaiah said that whoever believes in the Precious Cornerstone will not hastily flee but will stand firm and so ultimately will not be ashamed (Isaiah 28:16, via the LXX into, for example, Romans 9:33; 10:11). When we repent and believe in the Precious Cornerstone, in Jesus, then God forgives our sin for Jesus’s sake, and so He saves us from the destruction we otherwise would deserve.
With apparent reference to the same verse from Psalm 118, St. Peter later told the Sanhedrin that there is salvation in no one else other than Jesus, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:11). Those Jewish leaders conspired against Jesus and, when the time was right, they did deliver Him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor. For their own false motives, they crucified Him, but He died on the cross in our place, out of His great love for us. He was true man so that He could die, and He was true God so that His death would be a sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, including your sins and my sins. As we sang in today’s Psalm (Psalm 126; antiphon: v.3), the Lord has done great things for us, and so we are glad!
Referring to that prophecy from Isaiah, the Divinely‑inspired St. Peter writes that as we come to Jesus, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, we ourselves are like living stones being built up as a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:4-6). Most of us can point to the Baptismal Font as the time and place when and where by Holy Baptism we first were made by God to be part of His spiritual house through water and His Word. We are kept in God’s house by the continued exercise of the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven in the reading and preaching of God’s Word and through their application to us who privately confess our sins in individual Holy Absolution. And, the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar strengthen and preserve us in body and soul to life everlasting. In faithful preaching, by the other, faithful tenants of the vineyard, these Means of Grace are necessarily repeated for they are the very means of our ongoing salvation.
St. Peter continues that we are built up as a spiritual house in order to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:5), proclaiming the excellencies of Him Who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9). Similarly, today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 43:16-21) describes the people God has formed for Himself as declaring His praise. Likewise the Divinely‑inspired St. Paul for the Ephesians describes Christ Jesus as the cornerstone, the apostles and prophets as the foundation, and us as being joined together in Christ as a whole structure, a holy temple in the Lord, being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Ephesians 2:20-22). And that, despite St. Paul’s imprisonment and other suffering! So that, in today’s Epistle Reading (Philippians 3:4b-14), he can write to the Philippians and to us to share in Christ’s sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible we may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Today we have considered the Gospel Reading under the theme “Broken, Crushed or Built”. We might mistake today’s Gospel Reading as presenting a false dilemma of being either broken or crushed by the stone the builders rejected, when in fact, as we repent and believe in Jesus Christ, we can also be built upon that stone. Yet, we see nevertheless that there really is a true dilemma in the Gospel Reading, for being broken or crushed is arguably a distinction without a difference, in contrast to being saved. Being lost or being saved truly are the only two alternatives. We thank and praise our loving God Who works through His Means of Grace always to lead us to repent and believe and so to receive His forgiveness through those same Means of Grace. And, we pray that He will always bring forth from us the fruits of faith, such as praising Him now and for eternity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +