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Sermon for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost – October 4, 2020

Matthew 21:33-46

Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

My wife and I have some dear friends in northern California – a semi-retired Lutheran pastor and his wife. We got to know them through Lutheran Marriage Encounter as we attended one of their weekends in California for training and as they workshopped our talks as we were preparing to become a presenting couple ourselves. They have been kind of a mentor couple to us.

Together they own and operate a vineyard. It is obvious how much they love this vineyard. They talk about it all the time! Their own marriage encounter talks are full of metaphors of their work in the vineyard, tending to it with love and care in order to bring forth the good fruit. The newsletter they produce is called “Living in the Vine.” In the masthead they specifically reference John 15, where Jesus says “I am the true vine and you are the branches, apart from me you can do nothing,” but it always includes a little anecdote about what is going on in their actual vineyard. They have four daughters, and so they named their vineyard “Four Angels.” Naming their vineyard after what is most precious to them, their own children, is just another example of how much it means to them. (It reminds me of a certain farm here on Whidbey Island!)

I’ve been thinking about these dear friends of ours recently with all the fires in California. You see, grapes are extremely susceptible to “smoke taint.” Even slight exposure to smoke can quickly make the grapes go bad. Any wine made with smoke-tainted grapes ends up tasting like you’re licking a wet ash tray. This wouldn’t just hurt their side business. After all the loving care they put into that vineyard, it would break their hearts.

The Bible is rich with vineyard imagery. We’re in our third week in a row where Jesus uses such imagery. Throughout the Bible the vineyard is a symbol of God’s people. It is a symbol of God’s precious children. In Psalm 80 we hear how God took his vine from Egypt and planted it in a new land, tending to it as it grew and grew. This is a metaphor for God’s deliverance of his people out of slavery in Egypt and bringing them into the promised land. In Isaiah chapter 5 we hear a love song that God sings for his people, calling them his beloved vineyard. “For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting.” Likewise, the fruits of the vine are symbolic. They represent joy and hope and abundant life. They represent love and peace and patience and righteousness.

But there was trouble in the vineyard. The fruit was going bad. The grapes were tainted.

This is the story of Israel, as we read throughout the Old Testament, but this reaches a crisis point in our gospel reading for this morning. We pick up right where we left off last week, with Jesus at the Temple, being confronted by the chief priests and the elders. They were challenging Jesus’ authority. They were rejecting him as the Son of God. Jesus told one parable last week which described them as people who gave lip service to God, but then said no to working in God’s vineyard. Therefore, Jesus concluded, “the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the Kingdom of God ahead of you!” It was a doozy of a parable, but Jesus was just getting warmed up!

Jesus lays another parable on them, the one we hear today. This parable offers a symbolic summary of the history of God’s people. A landowner plants a vineyard. He puts up a fence – he protects it. He puts in a wine press in anticipation of fruit. He builds a watchtower to watch over it. The landowner then sends servants to help bring in the harvest, but the tenets in the vineyard kept seizing them, beating them, killing them, and stoning them!

So far, Jesus has been telling the story of the Old Testament: God gave his people Israel a land. He tended to them so they would bear fruit. He watched over them. He sent the prophets to help them. He sent Isaiah and Jeremiah, but they were rejected. God sent more prophets – he sent Amos and Joel and Malachi and plenty more, and they were all rejected.

And then Jesus’ parable turns from history to current events and then to prophecy. Jesus goes on to paint a picture of hat was unfolding right then and there. Now God was doing something new! God was sending his own Son to the tenets of the vineyard! And now even his Son was being rejected! Just as the landowner’s son in the parable was taken outside the vineyard and murdered, God’s Son would soon be taken outside of Jerusalem and crucified. That’s what was coming next.

But this rejection – the rejection of the Son – would ultimately lead to salvation. Jesus briefly turns from vineyard imagery to construction imagery, pointing to Psalm 118, which says that “the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone – and it is amazing in our eyes.” This Son will be either a stumbling block, as he clearly is for these chief priests and elders, or it will be the cornerstone by which a new vineyard will be built, producing the good fruit God desires.

Jesus is referring here now to the church. We are that new vineyard! We have been called to faith in God’s Son. We have received him by the power of the Holy Spirit. Through Holy Baptism, we have been made his precious people, his beloved children, his vineyard. The kingdom has been given to you who have received his Son. And this Son then goes to work cultivating good fruit in us. I see this fruit day after day in your devotion to Christ, in the ways you all care for each other, in the ways you serve this church, in the ways you serve the world through your vocations and your kindness and your generosity towards those less fortunate than yourselves.

But the truth is, we’re all a little bit smoke-tainted too! The world we live in today has been described quite frequently lately as a dumpster fire, and we’re all part of that. Not only have we had real smoke hanging in the air recently, but there is also all that metaphorical smoke billowing out from the dumpster fire that is our culture, our society, our political climate. As Christians we are called to be light to the world, but instead we are helping light these dumpster fires in the ways we all talk past each other, the ways we insult each other, the ways we disrespect people we don’t agree with. Even if it isn’t done face-to-face, it is often done online. I see it just about every time I pull up social media. And even if it isn’t done there, it is done in conversations among like-minded friends, and in the back of our minds as we label and judge our ideological opposites, interpreting their words in the worst possible light.

Yes, we’re all a little smoke-tainted, lacking in love, joy, peace, and patience. The only hope for us as God’s vineyard today is found in what we do with his Son. God has sent his Son to us to save his beloved vineyard. Will he be a stumbling block to us, or will he be the cornerstone? Will he be our foundation? Will he be what we build our lives and our congregation upon? Will we be centered on this stone, or will we instead be crushed, broken to pieces, as Jesus warns?

God loves his vineyard. He loves his people, his precious children. He loves you! And so he has sent us his Son into his vineyard once again today as Christ Jesus comes to us in Word and Sacrament. Hear the Good News that the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. It really is amazing in our eyes! The crucifixion has become the very means of our salvation! Taste those grapes on your lips this morning and receive this Son and his forgiveness anew.

Apart from him we can do nothing. So let’s let him do his work in us so that we would bear the fruit that God desires and this world so desperately needs. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer

Oak Harbor Lutheran Church