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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.
The Divinely-inspired Old Testament prophet Isaiah sang a love song for his beloved Lord about the house of Israel and the men of Judah as the Lord’s vineyard (Isaiah 5:1, 7). Isaiah described how the vineyard was on a very fertile hill; how the Lord dug it, cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; and how the Lord built a watchtower in the midst of it, hewed out a wine vat in it, and looked for it to yield grapes (Isaiah 5:2). So, the Jewish leaders and people in Jesus’s day would have been familiar with the figure of speech that Jesus used in today’s Gospel Reading—a figure of speech that He used both to warn the leaders and to comfort the people. An important part of what Jesus said for them then and for us today is that the owner, or “Lord” (KJV, ASV), of the vineyard sent his beloved son, and so, as we consider the Gospel Reading this morning, we direct our thoughts to the theme, “The Lord of the Vineyard sent His Beloved Son”.
In the broader context of St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, one day in the week before His crucifixion, Jesus was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the Gospel, when the chief priests and the scribes with the elders came up (Luke 20:1). The Jewish leaders asked Jesus a question about His authority, and Jesus responded by asking them a question about the baptism of John (and arguably implicitly about John’s authority), and, when the Jewish leaders would not answer Jesus’s question, then neither did Jesus answer their question (Luke 20:2‑8), but Jesus returned to teaching the people and preaching the Gospel by telling the parable that we heard to the people, with the Jewish leaders still standing right there listening to and being the primary target of the parable.
You maybe thought that there was a tense and dramatic moment on the Oscars stage last Sunday night! Well, the scene in the Gospel Reading is all the more tense and dramatic (Lenski, ad loc Luke 20:9, p.976)! The Jewish leaders were not giving the Lord the fruits of faith in keeping with their vocations—fruits such as sorrow over their sin, faith in God’s forgiveness, and the resulting good works (Lenski, ad loc Luke 20:10, p.977). The Jewish leaders had violated the Lord’s trust in them, the stewardship He had entrusted to them (Marshall, ad loc Luke 20:9-19, p.726; confer TLSB, ad loc Luke 20:9-15, p.1758). As their ancestors previously had beaten, dishonored, and wounded the Lord’s prophets, so the Jewish leaders in a matter of days would kill the Lord’s Beloved Son. Their attitude towards those sent by the Lord with His authority indicated their attitude towards the Lord Himself and so essentially determined how they would spend eternity (Marshall, ad loc Luke 20:9-19, p.726; confer TLSB ad loc Matthew 21:33-46, p.1630).
The parable of today’s Gospel Reading applied uniquely to the Jewish leaders, but the parable applies also to us. We do not always give the Lord the fruits of faith in keeping with our vocations—fruits such as sorrow over our sin, faith in God’s forgiveness, and the resulting good works. We violate His trust in us, the stewardship He entrusts to us. We do not always honor as we should those whom the Lord sends to us, including His Beloved Son. In effect, our sinful nature and all our actual sin put that Beloved Son on the cross. Our faith in Him or our rejection of Him essentially determines how we spend eternity.
As the Lord demonstrated extraordinary patience and took extraordinary action to call and so enable His people then to repent—well more than three prophets and possibly three years leading up to the sending of His Beloved Son—so the Lord also demonstrates extraordinary patience and takes extraordinary action to call and so enable us today to repent. And, when we repent, then the Lord forgives us: our sinful nature and all our actual sin, whatever our sin might be. The Lord forgives us because He sent His Beloved Son.
One Lutheran pastor essentially suggested that if human parents sent their son to what was certain death as God did, people might call child protective services (Payton, CPR 32:2, p.24)! But, that is how much God loved the world! The faithful people listening to Jesus would have heard of that love then, and we also hear of that love today. As Abraham essentially sacrificed his only son Isaac whom he loved (Genesis 22:1-19; confer Hebrews 11:17-19), so God sacrificed His only Son Whom He loved, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life; God sent His Son into the world in order that the world might be saved through Him (John 3:16-17). In the parable of today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus in effect reveals Himself to be God’s Son and so His long‑promised Savior, and the parable prophesies of the Jewish leaders’ plot to kill Him, which, by the end of the Reading was advanced, and a few days later was carried out. The Lord’s Beloved Son, Who took on our sins in His baptism (Luke 3:22), carried our sins to the cross and there died for us, in our place. And, He rose three days later, in part demonstrating that the Lord accepted His sacrifice on our behalf. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Philippians 3:8‑14), through faith in Him we are righteous.
As prophesied in the Gospel Reading, the Lord came and destroyed the wicked tenants and gave the care of the vineyard to “others”. Though the “others” are also sinful by nature, the faithful among them live in the Lord’s forgiveness that they distribute to His people, exercising His authority by carrying out the responsibilities of His Office of the Keys, preaching His Gospel and administering His Sacraments: the Sacrament of Baptism, the Sacrament of Absolution, and the Sacrament of the Altar. The mentions of water in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 43:16-21) and Psalm (Psalm 126; antiphon v.3) can point us especially to Holy Baptism (confer Payton, CPR 32:2, p.23), where we take on Christ’s righteousness and are adopted as God’s children and made fellow-heirs with Christ of His Kingdom (Galatians 4:4-7; Romans 8:17). Baptized, we confess, to those whom the Lord sends, the sins that we know and feel in our hearts for the sake of individual Absolution, and, in turn, they admit us to the Sacrament of the Altar where we eat bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and drink wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, and so we also receive the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
Forgiven and so transformed through the Lord’s Word and Sacraments, we produce fruit in keeping with our vocations. We at least try to keep His trust in us, the stewardship He entrusts to us. We at least try to honor those whom He sends to us. As the Old Testament Reading described, as people the Lord formed for Himself, we declare His praise. As the Epistle Reading described, for Christ’s sake we count everything else as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord and the power of His resurrection; we share in His suffering; we are not already perfect, but, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, we press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus; and ultimately we attain the resurrection of the dead—and the perfection that comes then!
“The Lord of the Vineyard sent His Beloved Son”. There is nothing more to do for His vineyard than He has done for it (Isaiah 5:4). As the Lord was Isaiah’s beloved, so the Lord is our beloved. The Lord enables us to repent of our sin and trust Him to forgive us for the sake of that Beloved Son, and so we are forgiven and inherit eternal life. We are joyous returning exiles! In the words of today’s Psalm antiphon, the Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad!
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +