+ + + 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. (Amen.)
Perhaps nothing is more painful for us than love that is rejected. A serious boyfriend or girlfriend, even a fiancé or a fiancée, who decides that he or she does not want to spend the rest of his or her life with us after all. A child you have raised, prayed for, maybe even assisted through college, who then renounces everything that you stand for and vows never to come home again. A husband or wife who suddenly tells you that he or she has found someone else, or is getting a divorce for some other reason. Rejected love is the deepest kind of hurt. You look back to the moments of intimacy, affection, the promises you each made. You think about the emotions, the endless hours, even the money you invested in your loved one—the perfect dinner date, the rent and security deposit to set up that first apartment, the ring. You wonder what you could have or should have done differently. Did you give everything that you had to give? In today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 5:1-7), today’s Psalm (Psalm 80:7-19; antiphon: v.7), and today’s Gospel Reading, God suffers rejected love and knows that He really did give everything that He had to give. Yet, how does God respond? Deep depression? Bitterness? Anger? Humanly speaking, we would understand. But, remarkably, God responds with more love. (Adapted from Fickenscher, Getting Ready, 230.) “People reject God’s love, and God loves people more”.
As Jesus spoke the words of today’s Gospel Reading, we can easily imagine that He was picturing the closely‑related images of today’s Old Testament Reading and today’s Psalm (Fickenscher, Getting Ready, 230). Together, the three passages describe the Lord’s lovingly clearing land of stones and planting a vineyard with choice vines: putting up a fence and building a watchtower in the midst of the vineyard to help guard against thieves and wild animals, and hewing out of bedrock a wine press and vat in the vineyard. What more was there for the Lord to do for His vineyard, that He had not done? Nothing! No expense has been spared!
For a time, the vines took deep root and filled the land, extending from perhaps the Eliat mountains in the south to the cedars of Lebanon in the north, from the Euphrates River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west (for example, Keil‑Delitzsch, ad loc Psalm 80:9-20, p.386). But, later in the Old Testament when the Lord looked for the vineyard to yield the kind of cultivated grapes that reflected His love and care, it yielded only wild grapes that stank and were worthless for wine. Instead of justice, the Lord found among His chosen people bloodshed. Instead of righteousness, an outcry. Love scorned and spurned. We might think of our disregard for the Lord’s Day, our receiving from Him rich gifts but offering to Him only a pittance, or our countless other sins that flow from our sinful nature and warrant death and hell (confer Fickenscher, Getting Ready, 233). So, as the passages describe, the Lord removed the vineyard’s hedge and broke down its wall, and the vineyard was devoured by those who passed along the way and by all that move in the field, and it was trampled down by the wild boar from the forest; it became a waste, not pruned or hoed, with briars and thorns growing up, and the Lord commanded the clouds not to rain upon it. The vineyard was burned with fire and cut down. Until, through those like the psalmist, God led His people to call out to Him to turn again; to look down from heaven, and to see; to have regard for His vineyard, the stock that His right hand had planted, for the son whom He made strong for Himself. Israel was God’s son (Hosea 11:1), but from Israel one other Son was coming. (Fickenscher, Getting Ready, 232.) “People reject God’s love, and God loves people more”.
That figurative Old Testament vineyard, as if never destroyed or as if restored, appears again in Jesus’s parable in the New Testament, but, instead of a problem with the vines, the problem is with the vine-keepers. The master of the house has given his vineyard’s tenants, the Jewish leaders, everything that they need to produce fruit, but they would not turn over fruit. They beat one servant of the master, kill another, and stone another. He sends other servants, more than the first, and they do the same to them. Then He sends His Son, Whom they take, throw out of the vineyard, and kill. Indeed, days after Jesus spoke the parable, the Jewish leaders had Jesus, God in human flesh, put to death, but Jesus died on the cross for us. Today’s Hymn of the Day (Lutheran Service Book 544), which describes God’s great love, emphasizes how everything Jesus did was for us. The Son came, knowing what was going to happen and willing to endure it, because He loves all people who reject His love. He wants all people to bear the fruit of repentance and to receive His further love in the form of the forgiveness of sins for His own sake. (Fickenscher, Getting Ready, 233.) Enabled by the Holy Spirit’s working through God’s Word, with the psalmist we cry out, Restore us, O Lord God of hosts! Let Your face shine, that we may be saved! Give us life, and we will call upon Your Name!
The very next thing in St. Matthew’s Divinely-inspired Gospel account is a parable comparing the Kingdom of Heaven to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son (Matthew 22:1-14). That parable, which we will hear next Sunday, is often said to reflect the resurrection of the son in today’s parable and so also to reflect the resurrection of Jesus, to whom the son in today’s parable corresponds. And, we know that the resurrected Jesus entrusted the care of His vineyard of His Church to His apostles and their successors, pastors today, who give Him the fruits of the vineyard, as it were, in their seasons. We are given life and call upon God’s Name through pastors’ reading and preaching of God’s law and Gospel to groups such as this group and through their applying God’s Gospel to individuals with water in Holy Baptism, with touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread that is the Body of Christ and wine that is the Blood of Christ in the Holy Supper. “People reject God’s love, and God loves people more”.
Today’s Epistle Reading (Philippians 3:4b-14) is part of our more-or-less continuous reading of Philippians, but today’s portion perhaps providentially fits with today’s other Readings and such in two ways. First, as a Jewish leader, the man who became St. Paul had all sorts of reasons, including his zealously persecuting Christ’s Church, to think of himself as righteous, as the Jewish leaders thought of themselves as righteous in the Gospel Reading. However, St. Paul essentially gave up all things so that he could be found in Christ with a righteousness that comes through faith, making him an example of a Jewish leader who did not continuously reject God’s love but was transformed by God’s love. And, second, St. Paul goes on to love as God loves and to have people reject that love and even to persecute him as he had persecuted others. (Confer Eliott, CPR 36:4, p.33.) As we are in Christ, we, too, have a righteousness that comes through faith, and we love people more, as God loves people more, even if people reject that love and persecute us. Like the prophets, Christ, and the apostles before us, we should know what is going to happen and be willing to endure it, even as with daily contrition and faith we live in God’s forgiveness when we fail to do what we should do, as we will fail.
At the beginning of this sermon, I mentioned significant others and parents whose love might have been rejected. Other people’s love can be rejected, too, of course, not only in the family but also in the other estates of society and church. So, we might think of a sincere government official who genuinely cares for his or her constituents and who acts on their behalf and in their best interests but is not re‑elected. Or, we might think of a devoted pastor who loves God’s people entrusted to his care but finds his love and leadership rejected by some. Many of us do know about rejected love, and God understands such rejection. More than that, God promises to be with us in our pain with even more love, now and forever (Fickenscher, Looking Forward, 233).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +
