Fifth Sunday in Lent Luke 20:9-20 April 6, 2025
“If we kill the son, then his dad, the owner, will let us keep the vineyard.” This is but one of the very baffling, astonishing, even foolish ideas put forth in the Lord’s parable today. The other appears just as baffling, just as foolish, and it’s that the owner of the vineyard keeps sending people even though they come back beaten and some don’t come back at all.
But let’s parse the parable. Who’s who and what’s what? Because ultimately our Lord taught using this parable so that, not only does His direct audience have an opportunity to think and reflect on things, but we who look back at His parable are also given the opportunity to think and reflect.
Let’s define the players. The owner is, of course, God. The tenants are the Jewish religious leaders, scribes, pharisees and even going back to the pre-Babylonian era it was the priests and the kings. The servants are the prophets and others sent to the Jews to preach what the Lord instructed, and the vineyard, as is typical fashion in Scripture, is the people of God, believers, the faithful.
God established the vineyard; He established Israel long ago and He placed among the people of Israel the priesthood, those people who were supposed to stand in the place of God, forgive sins through the atoning sacrifices, pray for the people and teach the people God’s Word and will. By their teaching and tending to the Lord’s people, good and abundant fruit would grow which may include things like good works, serving the neighbor, faithfulness in worship, faithfulness in prayer and the like. But the greatest fruit that would grow would be faith in the Lord’s salvation, trusting that He would save them from their sins by sending the promised Messiah.
Well, what happened? We can brush up on that ancient history by reading through 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, and also the major prophets. We discover that the tenants, those priests and kings, they were not faithful. They trampled on the vineyard, they put their own desires for fame and fortune ahead of the needs of the people, and many of them even abandoned the faith altogether and brought in false idols and false worship.
The Lord sent prophets to speak against their wickedness and call them to repent, but those wicked priests and politicians throw out the prophets and beat them and even killed some of them. This rebellious spirit and pure lack of humility and repentance led to the judgment of Israel, the Babylonian Empire coming in and destroying both the northern and southern kingdom, raising the Jewish temple, and sending the people into exile for generations.
Now, we don’t get a complete understanding of the history of the pharisees and the building of synagogues unless we spend a bit of time reading some of the apocryphal texts such as the books of Maccabees. But the pharisees were a group of religious teachers who worked primarily out of the synagogues. Synagogues were offshoots of house worship where, because of the absence of the temple and because of the exile and the Jews living dispersed throughout Asia Minor, they would worship in their homes and gather into small groups. When the Babylonians lost power and the Jews were finally able to return to Israel and Jerusalem, the use of synagogues continued because, again, there was no temple at least for a time.
Now the pharisees and teachers of the law believed that to prevent another travesty like the Babylonian captivity, the people had to be very pious; they had to be kosher and follow the law. And they were so zealous for law keeping that they even created all sorts of new laws and rules so that the people couldn’t break God’s Law because they were “fenced” from doing it. How many steps can you take on the sabbath or how can you kill another person without it being murder type stuff. It was man-made laws and traditions and had nothing to do with God’s Law.
And it is into this context that Jesus is born of Mary and preaches and teaches in parables. And the parable today was directed not only to ancient Israel and the ancient priests and kings who were unfaithful and murdered God’s prophets, but also to the pharisees and religious leaders of His time who sought to murder the Son of God.
They were not tending to the vineyard as God instructed. They invented their own religion, Rabbinical Judaism, which had so little to do with God’s Word. And they were so zealous for that religion that, once again, they were dismissing God’s servants and ready to put Jesus to death.
In the parable, Jesus talks about judgment, that those unfaithful tenants will be “destroyed,” in other words condemned and the vineyard will be given to others. And as with the tenants of old, the ancient kings and priests, the pharisees were not happy that Jesus spoke against them. They were ready to kill him right then and there, but they were also concerned about their reputation with the people, so they waited. It was all very political.
Jesus quoted Psalm 118, “The stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone,” referring to Himself and then calling those religious leaders to repent when He says the words, “Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.”
So, this parable, in the eyes of the pharisees and religious leaders, has a very clear message. They got it. They hated it and they hated Jesus, but they got the message.
But the question is, what does this parable mean for us? Do we get this parable? Do we have ears to hear our Lord’s teaching about the vineyard?
The past few weeks we’ve been walking through the wilderness, following our Lord as He makes His way to the cross. Lent is a microcosm of the Christian faith, 40-days where we get to focus on the life and suffering and death of our Lord and have His life and suffering and death applied to ourselves.
And at the end of this 40-day journey is judgement. We look at ancient Israel and judgment came by the Babylonians, after the Lord patiently waited for His people to repent, after He sent prophet after prophet after prophet to preach repentance and faith. Their 40-days started when they were led from Egypt, set free from Pharaoh, and it ended when their nation and temple was destroyed and they were cast out to live their lives apart from Zion, their ancient home.
Our 40-days began in our baptisms where we were set free from sin’s slavery and from death and today, we are in this 40-day journey.
In Jesus’ parable, you the faithful people of God, the “church goers” are the vineyard. The tenants are the pastors and church workers and district presidents and priests and others whom God has called to tend to the field and assure there is good fruit.
And we know that in this vineyard called the Christian church there are both good and evil tenants. There are wolves in sheep’s clothing, devils performing as decent folk, servants of Satan serving as God’s little helpers yet not in anyway helpful. And when the Lord does return to judge the living and the dead, He will most certainly judge those false prophets in the most harshest way. We might like to say, “There will be a special place in hell for false prophets,” for those wicked tenants who deceive people by their slick words and lead God’s sheep away from Christ, make their fruit rotten and evil, but it doesn’t matter. Hell is hell; damnation is not a condition anyone should aspire to reach.
But what about you? What about the vineyard? What about the branches?
You know, one of the most famous passages in the Book of Revelation, perhaps even in the whole Bible, is Revelation, 3:20. And it’s made famous, not because of what it actually says, but because of a false understanding of the passage.
John is instructed to write his apocalypse to seven churches in Asia Minor, and one of the churches that receives his letter is the church in Laodicea. And just for a bit of background, Laodice was the mother of Seleucus, the first great ruler of the Seleucid empire, the empire that existed about 60 to 300 years before Christ, the empire that ruled modern day Turkey and Syria, and yes, even Israel, and was eventually taken over by the Romans. And the word “laodecia” is a Greek word meaning, “Justice by the people” or “common sense.”
Well, John wrote his apocalypse, his “Revelation,” to this church, and he himself wrote what He heard Jesus say, “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and he with Me.”
Jesus also charged this Laodicean church with lukewarmness. They were not “on fire” for Jesus as the Pentecostals like to say but they were sort of “meh, whatever,” like grumpy teenagers who would rather be doing anything else but what they are told to do.
Now, this passage is often very abused by the evangelical world because they apply to this text something the text does not say and does not intend to say. “Make your decision for Jesus, commit your life to Jesus and let Him into your heart.”
The trouble is that Jesus is speaking these words through John to believers, to the Laodicean church and the Christians therein. Jesus isn’t speaking to unbelievers. We have to be careful not to inject our own ideas or beliefs into the text. Let the text speak for itself.
Jesus is speaking to Christians who are “lukewarm,” and telling them that He is about to vomit them out of His mouth because of their lukewarmness, and to open once again their hearts and yes, even their church, to His Word and be filled with His Spirit.
And this call to “open the door,” is the same call He makes in the parable today. He calls out to those pharisees and rabbinic Jews and says, “repent and open your hearts to me.” But they don’t. They outright reject Him and they crucify Him on cross.
Jesus went out to all the towns and villages of Judea preaching repentance and forgiveness of sins, and He was looking for good fruit and found none. He cried out to those whose hearts burned with wickedness and murderous thoughts to return to the Lord, repent of their sins, and come back to their heavenly Father in humility and faith. They denied the Son of God, spat in His face, used politics and corrupt means to get Him arrested and tried and sentenced to death, they hated him so much because their father was not God but the devil.
In this way, Jesus stood at the door and knocked, standing before a people who knew Him because their entire religion was created by God, but when they heard Him they rejected Him and threw Him off the porch because they changed the religion to suit their own desires.
And the same call goes out to us today as well. He speaks to us in parables; He speaks to us plainly; He shows Himself as the Son of God by the signs, and He fulfills every prophecy in Scripture even to His own death and resurrection. God’s Word goes out; the call of the Gospel goes out to all, calling sinners to repent and turn from their sinful ways, and abide in their Savior. The Word brings the sinners, the lukewarm, the weak and the sick, draws them to the door and respond to the invitation.
Do not reject His Word. Embrace it. Do not reject His Word when it is difficult to understand, when the world preaches against it, when leaders trample upon it, when false prophets reinterpret it or run it through the human lens. Hear the call, repent of your sins, and take solace in He who comes to save you.
Look to your baptism. It was there where you fell headlong atop the cross and your pride, your anger, your lust, your greed, your covetousness was broken to pieces, where you died with Jesus, and where He raised you up to new life covered in Him.
As He knocks at your heart or as He knocks at our church’s front door, do not turn Him away or harden your heart as ancient Israel or as those pharisees and teachers of the Law. Instead, open wide the doors as He enters in and, as with the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus, permit your Lord to set a table before you and fill your cup with the choicest wine, His own blood shed. Humbly sit at His feet as Mary, eager to hear His teaching and learn His ways, and then, as Stephen or the other saints, rise up and confess the faith boldly and without fear, for judgment is near.
The world, the deprived, the seekers of lust and profit, the sexually immoral, the idolaters and liars, their portion will be the lake of eternal fire that burns with fire and sulfur. They rejected the Son of Man and killed the prophets and those the Lord sent. They will pay for every last sin and every last wicked deed they did in this life, forever.
But you, oh child of God, need not fear the judgment, because the Judge has already judged His only Son in your place. Jesus has paid the price and you who believe, who trust His name, you have an eternal home waiting for you, when this 40-day, life-long journey will finally come to an end. Amen.
