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The
Patience of God
August 28 , 2005
Sermon Series on the Gospel of Luke
Associate Pastor Steve Lympus
Luke
20: 9-19
Sometimes when I’m talking
with pastor friends about pulling together last-minute messages
and Bible studies, someone says,
“Oh, just use a parable – they’re
easy.”
Well, I’ve decided parables are hard,
and frankly I think that sometimes Jesus meant parables to
be that way: Parables are visual, story-telling ways to make
a point, but for Jesus parables weren’t always ways
to make something simpler – parables are more often
indirect ways of catching people off-guard, making them see
something from a new angle.
But parables often confused the people Jesus
told them to, and if people wanted to understand more, they
would have to lean in toward Jesus, follow him for awhile,
and ask more – and they would have to respond to what
they heard.
I think Jesus meant parables to be that way.
Some people would lean in toward him and ask what he meant;
others would get frustrated and walk off, and some (like
with today’s parable) would hear, and get frustrated
enough to try and have Jesus killed. So much for “easy
parables.”
At this point in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus
is in Jerusalem (we’ve been with him on his long journey
there), he’s had his “triumphal entry,” driven
money-changers from the Temple, and he’s been teaching
to the crowds gathered there for the Passover Feast festival.
The religious leaders are trying to trip him up, to catch
him in a mistake.
From now on, everything is set in the city
of Jerusalem, and all will hinge on whether people accept
or reject Jesus as God’s Son sent with a message of
salvation. Standing in the Temple now, Jesus tells this parable:
Gospel reading: Luke
20: 9-19
A land-owner rented his
vineyard to some tenants, share-croppers, like the villagers
at Agros Uno in Honduras, where we have a mission
team right now…farmers who cultivate someone else’s
land, and give a large “share of the produce of the
vineyard” to the land-owner as rent (what is left,
they eat and sell).
Some of Jesus’ followers might have
worked for an absentee-landowner like this vineyard-owner
(who were often corrupt foreigners who took advantage of
poor local farmers), and so some people honestly might have
related to the tenant-farmers in the story who finally band
together and seize power against their oppressor.
When harvest time comes around, the landowner
wants to gather his rent. To do this, he “sends” a
servant to collect…a servant with a message: the rent
is due.
In response, the tenants “send back” the
servant; they are sending a message too, a message back to
the vineyard owner: we will not honor you as the owner of
the vineyard, and we will not pay our rent – rebellion.
They send this message 3 times.
In desperation, the land-owner sends the son
who he loves (maybe his only son?) with the hope that they
will listen to him. It is the master’s hope that the
tenant-farmers will be shamed by the arrival of his son,
and that they will repent of their actions, and return to
their faithful commitment.
When the tenants see the owner’s son
approaching, they huddle up and devise a terrible plan: this
is the land-owner’s heir and if they kill him, perhaps
the inheritance will be theirs.
What was their hope in doing this? If there
was no heir to inherit the property, then when the land-owner
died, the land would be declared “ownerless” and
would belong to the tenants by default. This is the classic
case of “killing the messenger” to get at the
sender of the message, and to gain the upper hand.
This isn’t the first time
this parable was told.
The Prophet Isaiah told a similar parable
(Isaiah 5:1-7, part of our Old Testament passage today) about
God creating a vineyard that represented Israel, but the
vineyard did not produce good grapes. So God destroys his
vineyard.
Israel, and the religious leaders in particular,
were trying very hard in Jesus’ day to keep God’s
goodness and grace for themselves and not for anyone outside.
If this vineyard in the parable represents Israel, then the
tenants represent Israel’s religious leaders who have
attempted to take over Israel’s faith and worship,
to manage things themselves.
Again and again they have rejected the message
of God’s prophets to return to the covenant with God – a
humble understanding of their role as God’s “tenant-farmers” tending
his vineyard has long-since been left behind. And if they
need to, the religious leaders will destroy his son to maintain
their power.
So the tenants in the parable will kill
the son, outside the gates of the vineyard.
So those in power will have Jesus killed,
outside the gates of the city, Jerusalem.
This was the last parable that Jesus will
speak about his death before he dies.
Jesus asks the question:
“What then will the owner of the vineyard
do to them?”
The landowner will come himself, and destroy,
utterly “destroy those tenants and give the vineyard
to others.”
The crowd’s reaction:
“Heaven forbid – may it never
be!"
And yet the religious leaders
are about to put the parable into action as they plot to
have Jesus killed.
Jesus quotes Psalm 118:22 to the chief priests
and scribes and elders:
“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” that
single stone which the entire building depends on, is Jesus.
He was criticizing the Temple system, the
religious power-structure in Israel at the time, and yet
he was the cornerstone of the Temple; the whole thing will
be demolished if he is rejected by the religious leaders
(builders), for without him, none of it will hold together.
Anyone who falls on this stone, and anyone
whom the stone falls upon, they will be crushed (Isaiah 8:14).
Jesus is not just passive like a stone you trip over; he
is also like a stone which falls on you and crushes you (Luke
Timothy Johnson).
Simeon saw this coming when they dedicated
Jesus as an infant in the Temple years before,
“This child is destined for the falling
and the rising of many in Israel…” (Luke 2:34-35).
Now Jesus was back, teaching in the Temple,
and the message is hard to hear: Jesus is the measure, the
measure, by which all people and everything in creation will
be judged.
Nothing seems to make people madder at Christians these days than when we talk
about politics or judgment. And rightly so, to a point: Christianity in our
culture has too often been co-opted for political motives on all sides. And
judgment has too often been used as a tool of manipulation, to scare Christians
into hyper-active service or into purity, or to scare non-Christians into faith
commitments or to support religious hierarchies.
When I think about judgment,
I think of this Simpsons episode, and their evangelical Christian
neighbor Ned Flanders (a caricature of an evangelical Christian
American, who Christianity Today did a cover story
in 2001 suggesting that Ned is the most recognizable evangelical
in America). Ned’s wife tells Margie Simpson:
“I’m going off to a church retreat,
to learn how to be more judgmental.”
A caricature for sure, but sometimes, not
a totally unfair one. Judgmental attitudes have alienated
many from the Church.
Nobody I know likes to talk about judgment – I
sure don’t. But Jesus said a lot about judgment (Mt
12.36, 25.31f; Lk 11.29f; Jn 5.25f; Paul in Rom 2.5f, 14.10f;
1 Cor 4.5; 2 Cor 5.10)
He said that we will be judged based on our
words, and how we treat “the least of these,” and
we will be judged on our repentance…Jesus will call
forth judgment on these things, and he didn’t shy away
from the topic.
Maybe you’ve heard of Thomas Jefferson’s
Bible: Jefferson didn’t like the miracles or the judgment
of Jesus, so he took a razor blade and (literally) cut them
all out, pasted together his own version of the Gospel…a
Gospel with no miracles, no judgment, and nothing he didn’t
like. Well, unless we want do this with the Gospel message,
we can’t ignore what Jesus says about judgment.
I spent a lot of time wondering how I would
talk about the judgment in this parable today…there’s
a lot about judgment here – but where’s the grace?
Last week’s parable (about the master
who entrusted his wealth to his servants) at least had the
grace shown the first 2 servants who invested what their
master gave them…and the meaning of that parable focused
mainly on judgment on believers for how they lived their
lives.
This parable seems to
declare judgment on the non-believers, the ones who finally
reject the King’s son, Jesus.
I keep looking at this parable and thinking:
Where’s the grace here?
There is grace here, in the offers that the owner sends them…3 times,
then his own son. Any landowner in his right mind would have punished or killed
the tenants after they beat and send back the first servant. But this landowner
sent his offer, again and again, and one more time: this last time, the offer
was his own son.
So what’s this parable about? It’s
about God who has sent his message to his people time and
time again, and God’s people, who reject his message
time and time again. Until one day when he sent his own son,
and even he was rejected, and killed. And in the end, those
who reject Jesus will be rejected themselves.
But God is so patient – thankfully,
we have the rest of Scripture which shows us God’s
patience in the history of God and his people:
- When Adam and Eve break the commandment
in the Garden, there is judgment (they must leave) but
there is grace (there is a life for them, God is patient
and does not leave them alone).
- The histories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob…God
patiently keep working with this highly dysfunctional family
because God made a covenant with them.
- The Exodus…God is patient as the
people he saves from oppression keep wandering in the desert
and chasing after other gods.
- The time of the Judges and the Kings…God
patiently sticks with his people, who want to be like all
the other nations, and worship their gods.
- Even during the Exile…when God’s
people are judged for not following God, God patiently
sends his word of hope and healing through the Prophets.
- And finally comes Jesus, the last messenger
from God – many had come before him, but he was the
ultimate messenger, he was the King’s son. For those
who reject Jesus, there is judgment.
No one likes to hear the
message of judgment – I don’t, I bet you don’t,
and the scribes and the chief priests sure don’t. For
them, there is no confusion about this parable or its message:
they know who the tenants represent – them!
The parable becomes a “self-fulfilling
prophecy” (Luke Timothy Johnson) as the religious leaders
who hear it are so enraged they try to destroy Jesus, God’s
messenger. If not for the people watching, they would have
killed him then and there. They will find a way to kill this
one who claims to be the “Son of God.”
But I wonder if we Christians have lost sight
that judgment has to do with us, too.
I have four nieces and nephews, who compete
at many things, including who finishes their milk first.
Last week, Maggie, my 3-year-old niece, finished her milk
first and declared with pride:
“I’m the winner.”
Isabella, her 6-year-old sister, responded:
“Maggie, the Bible says the last shall
be first and the first shall be last.”
Maggie:
“Well I’m not in the Bible,
so I win.” (She’s 3)
Isabella knows her Bible pretty well, but
3-year-old Maggie knows something about human nature: none
of us like to find out that we’re the guilty ones.
When I read passages like this, my first reaction
is:
I’m not in this passage, this has
nothing to do with me. This passage is for those who reject
Christ.
Think again. I’m
not so sure this passage isn’t for us all.
After all, Jesus told this parable against the insiders – the
religious people – not the outsiders.
How often do we insiders, we who know God,
reject what God is offering us? …asking of us?
How often do we reject Jesus, who calls
us to lay our very life down, to lose it, so that we can
gain the better life he is offering us?
Christians are not immune from rejecting God’s
message.
Often we reject his message to live humbly
and simply, often we reject his message to care for the poor
and those on the margins, often we reject his message to
give and to love without expecting much in return.
Nobody likes to talk about judgment. But there
is judgment for those who reject Jesus and his message, including
Christians. But when we talk about judgment, we also need
to talk about grace. We need to remember that God is a patient
God, who has repeatedly sent us his message, his offer, over
and over again.
I don’t know the full limits of God’s
grace…he’s surprised us before at how wide his
mercy really is – my guess is, before the end, he will
surprise us all again. After all, God’s story with
us is full of surprising twists and unexpected grace…thank
God.
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