Pentecost 18A

18th Sunday of Pentecost

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Rejection. I’ll bet that most of the adults in the room have experienced rejection more times than we care to admit. Professional rejection, sure, but also romantic rejection. Rejection at work is tough. But rejection in love is something that cuts deep.

In particular, there is that rejection that we call “unrequited love”. That’s a one-sided love, love that is not reciprocated. You love someone, but they don’t feel the same way. Quite frankly, that’s a considerable portion of that period of time that we call “high school”.

If you’ve ever experienced this, you know the pain I’m talking about. It hurts. It’s hard to believe that someone you love doesn’t feel the same way that you do. It just doesn’t make sense. And when reality finally sets in and you accept the situation for what it is, well, each of us handles this differently, don’t we? Some people try to ignore the person they were in love with. Others will turn love into something negative - anger or even hate. It’s a difficult thing to deal with, and the hurt can last a long time.

How does God deal with it? That’s exactly what today’s Gospel lesson tells us about. This is the third time now that Jesus has used a parable involving a vineyard and its workers to describe God’s kingdom. But in this parable, it’s clear that the “master” who plants the vineyard and cares for it, does not receive anything resembling love or even respect from his tenants. In this parable, Jesus describes the great detail that the master put into establishing this vineyard; he took great care to not only plant it, but to make sure it was well-protected with both a fence and a watchtower. He also took care to dig a winepress in it so that at harvest time the fruit could be pressed into juice so that wine production could be as efficient as possible. Such was the care the master put into making sure this vineyard could produce wine and do it well.

We know that the “master” is our Heavenly Father. The vineyard is the people of God (the Hebrew people) and the tenants are the leaders of Israel - the chief priests and Pharisees. And when the time came to gather the harvest, the tenants rejected the servants who were sent by the master. The first two sets of servants are meant to represent the prophets who had previously been sent by God. So many times in the history of God’s people, the prophets were treated like this. If they weren’t merely ignored, they were either beaten or killed.

Why did the people treat the prophets this way? Let’s recall what the prophets were sent to do. They were not sent with a message from God saying “I’m so proud of you all - you’re doing everything the way I want you to.” Not one prophet had that message. Every time, the prophet was given a message to the people to warn them that they were heading down a dark path. One scholar describes them this way: “the prophets...were divinely-appointed teachers of religious truth, sent to admonish and rebuke, to reveal the divine will, and to confirm the faith of the people.” (Charles F. Schaeffer, Annotations on the Gospel according to St. Matthew, ed. Henry Eyster Jacobs, vol. 2, The Lutheran Commentary (New York: The Christian Literature Co., 1895), 151.)

The prophets didn’t have good things to say to the people; they were sent to scold the Hebrews…so it’s no surprise that the people didn’t respond kindly to them.

Now, if you put yourself in the shoes of the “master” - the person who established the vineyard, and think about how you would react. I’m sending some trusted workers to go there and collect my take of the harvest, and the tenants there beat and kill my workers? How am I going to react? Personally, after the first group is sent and treated like that, I’m calling the sheriff. I’m going to get law enforcement to go with me and arrest every single one of them. I’m going to have them all thrown in jail. As far as I’m concerned, they’re all guilty - either of committing the crimes or they’re an accomplice. They should all go to jail. Ironically, the Pharisees come to the same conclusion…but we’re not there yet.

No, this very patient Master decides He’s going to send a few more servants and let them try again. But the tenants are no more receptive to this second group of servants than they were to the first group. “…they did the same to them.” Again, I’d have been calling the cops and having them all thrown in jail. For assault and murder, I’d say it’s time for some law and order to be imposed on these criminals.

Again, the Master is more patient than I am. No surprise there, honestly. So now the Master decides to send His Son. At this point, if we’re thinking practically here, how do we think this is going to play out? They’ve already killed several of the servants. How is the Son going to be received? My suspicion, given this scenario, would be that they’re obviously going to kill the Son. Why would the Master do that?

It’s clear that the Master is giving these tenants every possible chance He can for them to do the right thing. He’s giving them EVERY opportunity to meet their obligation, to give to the Master’s representative His portion of the crop. He’s even sent His own flesh & blood, thinking they would respect Him and treat Him well.

Now WE can see that the tenants are wicked people. They are selfish, and they have no respect for the Master. They have their own ambition, their own agendas. They have been left unsupervised (or so they think), so they have created their own rules, operated on their own authority. Certainly, as it pertains to the chief priests and Pharisees, they think they are operating under God’s Law. But when the Master comes to call them out, it’s clear that it’s not God’s Law that they respect and teach, but their own. They act not in humble servitude to their Master; no, they act in arrogant self-importance.

Let’s not forget that the chief priests and Pharisees were experts on God’s Law. The average Jewish citizen would look to the Pharisees and Scribes for explanation and understanding. Anything that required judgment would be taken to these “experts” for interpretation. Such a position in society would be quite tempting to develop a sense of pride and self-importance. Over time, those who would hold such a position in society might even come to expect to be treated as higher-than-average in status. It would be easy to let that go to your head.

At this point, I think it’s important that we look at this passage with some caution. While some parables have broad application and can easily be applied to modern issues and lessons, that may not always be the case. This parable is one of Jesus’ more pointed and direct lessons. He is singling out the very people who are going to kill him, just as the wicked tenants do in the parable he is sharing. And these leaders of God’s people know it, too. They can tell exactly what Jesus is saying to them and about them in front of this crowd of people that’s growing around this charismatic carpenter from Galilee, who has no authority to teach what he’s teaching (remember last week’s gospel?). So this lesson is not subtle at all as it refers to these priests and Pharisees who seem to have disregarded their Master, and they have every intention of acting the same way the tenants do in the parable.

What they don’t recognize is that Jesus is telling them this not to make them look bad, but to give them that one more chance, just like the Master in the parable. God - the Master - recognizes that His love isn’t being reciprocated. These tenants have rejected Him. And instead of calling in law enforcement, He decides to offer them yet another chance to do the right thing. But, like most of us when we’re caught with our hand in the cookie jar, instead of accepting our guilt and apologizing, we get defensive. We get angry. We get nasty. And that’s what the chief priests and Pharisees do here.

This is where we *can* draw some modern lessons from this passage. God’s Law does this to us: it points out when we have rejected God. It tells us when we have done wrong to the Master. It lets us know that it’s time for us to give Him the harvest that He’s expecting. What’s that harvest?

“When the season for fruit drew near...” - one commentary explains it this way: “when the grapes had matured, and should furnish a suitable return to the owner; such a result of the divine action is indicated as might reasonably be expected in men’s hearts and lives. That time for exhibiting the influence of faith on the heart and life has already come in the case of every individual.” (Charles F. Schaeffer, Annotations on the Gospel according to St. Matthew, ed. Henry Eyster Jacobs, vol. 2, The Lutheran Commentary (New York: The Christian Literature Co., 1895), 150–151.)

Hear that again: “that time for exhibiting the influence of faith on the heart and life has already come in the case of every individual.” Are we bearing the fruit our Master expects us to bear? Is it harvest time? And let me just say: as the one who has been entrusted with the vineyard, am I tending to the vineyard appropriately? This one hits me square in the chest.

There’s a lot in this parable for us to think about. But the most important point of this parable is again, that the Master is giving the tenants plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. God is patient beyond what we can possibly imagine. God is forgiving beyond what any of us could possibly expect…and certainly beyond what any of us could emulate.

We have been offered the love and forgiveness of our Creator when we didn’t deserve it. We have been absolved of our sinful and selfish ways simply because our Master loves us that much. We have been forgiven of everything we have done wrong just because we asked. Not because we deserve to be forgiven. Not because we have earned forgiveness. We have been forgiven because He loves us. That’s it. That’s the only reason.

When we come to His Table shortly, and partake of His Holy Supper, we’ll do exactly what He told us to do - we’ll eat His Body and drink His Precious Blood, brought to us in the form of bread and wine. These elements are what He uses to bring Himself to us, in a mysterious way that we don’t really understand. But we believe that He does come to us in the bread and wine. He is truly present in these elements. He is present with us. We do NOT reject Him. We accept Him and we take Him into ourselves. This is one way that we remember the great promise that He has made to us - that He paid the price to earn the forgiveness we so desperately need.

The Master knew that when He sent His Son, those wicked tenants would kill Him. He knew that would happen, and He sent His Son anyway. Does that mean the Master is foolish? No, of course not. What it means is that the Master knew what must happen. He knew that sin comes at a cost, and that the cost had to be paid. The only way for that to happen was for His Son to give up His life for the whole world. That is how much the Master loves us. That is how much His Son loves us.

Brothers and sisters, our God does not handle rejection like we do. Every time we sin, we reject God. And we all sin. That means we all reject God. When we do that, we are not reciprocating the love that God shows us. Isn’t it just amazing and wonderful that God continues to love us even when we reject Him? Isn’t it wonderful that He will always take us back when we ask Him? I, for one, am very thankful that His patience is so much more powerful than my failure to please Him.

This is what it means when we hear about God’s “steadfast love”. He does not give up on us. In the midst of all the craziness and rage happening in our country right now, that is very, very refreshing. I can’t help but wonder if this message was shared with people who don’t know it, would it calm the storm? I believe it would. Let us all look for ways to share this Good News in the days and weeks ahead, and see if it doesn’t help calm things down.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.