Sermon 16th Sunday after Pentecost

Sermon

Text: Matthew 18:21-35

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who gives to us life, when we see destruction.

This is a dangerous text. It does not start as if it would be, Jesus is just recasting our story from Isaiah. Isaiah is telling a story to the people of Israel warning them of their impending exile. He tells of a beloved creating a vineyard. Digging it out, clearing the stones, planting choice vines, building a watchtower in the middle, and hewing out a wine vat.

All of this hard work that was done, and instead of the good grapes, it yields wild grapes, grapes that are useless and worthless. It's rather dismal for the vineyard, labeled as Judah in the text. “I will make it a waste, it shall not be pruned or hoed, and it shall be overgrown with briers and thorns; I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it.” oof, not happy things.

In Jesus' telling of the story a landowner plants a vineyard, puts a fence around it, digs a wine-press in it, and builds a watchtower. This time instead of wild grapes, we instead see that there are tenants who have cared for the land, and it seems to have grown well, and so the landlord sends for the produce.

And though the landlord did all the work, the tenants assume that they are the rightful owners of the crop. So they beat one slave, kill another, and stone the last. The landlord then sends more slaves, and they again kill them.

Now, in a normal story you would think, well the landlord will send an army to deal with them. Instead what develops is both the landlord and the tenants make rather crazy decisions. The landlord, goes, well they will certainly listen to my son (why would he think this?) and the tenants then decide that if they kill his son somehow that means they will get the inheritance. (This is even more off the wall.) But, the son is sent, and as expected the tenants kill the son.

Then there is the dangerous question. “What will the landlord do to these tenants?”

“He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”

That is dangerous. Because it is so easy to put who we want in the place of the tenants. Whoever we think does not give produce to God, and truly horrific, whoever we label as killing the son. This text was used as reason to punish the Jews in the middle ages, used as reason to try to conquer Jerusalem during the Crusades, and finally to again to kill countless millions during World War Two. It is a dangerous text.

Russel Rathbun, pastor of House of Mercy in St. Paul says,

The parable is easily misread as thinly dressed accusation that God sent his son, Jesus to the keepers of his covenant, the chief priests, and they killed him. As a result God will come and take the covenant away from them, put them to a miserable death and give the covenant to others. It is clear that Matthew thinks the religious leaders and their system are being over thrown, I can preach that.

What I can’t preach is the violent Judgment. God does not answer the murder of his son with miserable death for the perpetrators, but uses that murder as a means for the reconciliation of all of God’s people.

Throughout history people want to answer Christ's question with death and destruction. We want to say those responsible, whoever that may be identified as deserve destruction. But, those words of destruction issue not from Jesus' voice, but from the mouth of the pharisees.

And so to answer the question, David Lose, professor at Luther Seminary, has this to say.

… It invites us to consider a different question: not what will that land owner do, but what did that land owner do. And to that question we have Jesus' own answer: the landowner sent his son, Jesus, to treat with all of us who have hoarded God's blessings for ourselves and not given God God's own due. And when we killed him, God raised him the dead, and sent him back to us yet one more time, still bearing the message of God's desperate, crazy love.

In this text a dangerous thing is that we have to put ourselves as the tenants. We spend our days breaking the first commandment. We put ourselves above God. We claim God's creation as our own. We declare that we truly own the things in this world. That's mine, that's mine. That's my car, that's my tv, that's my money. It's all mine to do with as I want to. But, God says that's not ours, it's God's. We are merely tenants, we are stewards.

Being a steward means that we care for things that are not ours. God has given us this world and all in it during creation. All God asks us to do is work it as God wants us to. But, we don't. We claim it as our own, and when confronted by this we think we deserve death. Just as the pharisee's sentenced themselves, we sentence ourselves.

But, God does not say that.

God says, yes, you don't behave as a tenant should, but I still will send my Son to you, and even when he is killed, I will raise him for your sake. You think I am a God of death, but I am a God of life. My hope for you is not for you to die, but through my Son for you to live.

This is a dangerous text, because we can look at it and only see the death and destruction, and miss that in the giving of the Son is life.

Let us pray,

God of life, creation, and goodness, gives to us the blessings we do not deserve. Help us to steward your creation, help us be good tenants. Help us to see that what we have is not ours but yours. And that it is you that we need, not our things, our stuff, but your love. For you are indeed a God of love. A God of life.