Lent 5
Luke 20:9-19
His name was Gerry Niebler. I got to know his name very well because I sent him a bunch of checks in the amount of $550. Gerry was a nice guy, I met him a few times, but I didn’t send him money just because he was pleasant and friendly person. And I didn’t give Gerry money because he was particularly needy either; in fact, I’m sure that he had more money than I had. So can you guess why I sent this guy $550 dollars every month? Because I had to. During our time in Milwaukee, Gerry was our landlord. He owned the apartment in which we lived.
Today, Jesus compares his Father to a landlord. And this morning as we study this parable of Jesus, we will look at, “Our Lord the Landlord.” We are going to see that the Lord is the perfectly patient Landlord, and the Lord is the thoroughly just Lordlord.
Part I
The tension was so thick that you could but it with a knife. It was Tuesday, a couple of days after Jesus’ triumphant ride into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. It was Tuesday, a couple of days before Jesus’ midnight arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. We know how the story ended up with Good Friday and Easter Sunday, but on Tuesday no one really was sure of how the week was going to turn out. It was almost like watching the closing minutes of a college basketball game that was going down to the wire. Jesus and his enemies were trading baskets, and it seemed like the last team to score would win the game. And on Tuesday, Jesus was ahead. He had taken a comfortable lead in the polls on Palm Sunday, as he garnered the public’s support and approval. And he was doing pretty well on Tuesday also. Jesus was answering and defeating all the attacks and traps that his enemies were setting for him. Jesus had the people on his side so strongly that over and over again the Gospels tell about how the chief priests and the elders were afraid of the people. Our text ends with these words, “they were afraid of the people.” The tension was so thick, the outcome still in doubt, that one wrong move and it could have been the chief priests who were the ones being put to death by an angry mob.
No one was really sure which side would win, well, except Jesus of course. And this parable that he tells in the hearing of his enemies lets everyone know exactly how this struggle was going to turn out. With that background, this becomes a very easy parable to interpret.
“A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time.” Jesus first mentions the Lord, his Heavenly Father, who is the owner. The vineyard is the Old Testament Church, and the farmers that were going to work in that vineyard were the Israelite church leaders, the priests, elders, and teachers of the Law. With that stage set, Jesus goes on with the story, “at harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard.” So far, so good. Everything is working according to the plan. The landlord expects to be paid by the tenants. The farmers don’t own the land, and so they owe this rent in the form of crops back to the landlord. But…“but the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed.” Houston, we have a problem. We’ve got some unruly farmers here, farmers who don’t even own the land they work. And yet they are acting as though the vineyard belongs to them and the landlord is the unfair one, daring to ask them for rent!
I don’t know what Gerry Niebler would have done had he knocked on our apartment door one day, to give us a friendly reminder that we were 3 months behind in our rent, and I, after hearing that news, hacked up a huge amount of phlegm and spit in his face, and yelled, “get out of here, Gerry!” I’m not quite sure how Mr. Niebler would have reacted, but I think I can guess. He probably would have started legal proceedings to get us evicted, not because I spit in his face (though that didn’t help), but because I didn’t give him what I owed him. And he definitely wouldn’t be knocking on my door a month later with another “friendly” reminder…he would have learned his lesson.
Look at the unbelievable patience of our Lord, the Landlord! After his first servant is roughed up: “He sent another servant, but that one they beat and treated shamefully and sent him away empty-handed. He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.” No way would this ever happen in real life, that an owner show that much tolerance to treacherous tenants. And that’s exactly the point that Jesus is trying to make in this parable. The Lord has an incredible amount of patience for sinners, far more than sinners deserve.
But with each successive servant sent, the tenants become more and more hardened in their hatred. That progressive malice is illustrated with the three servants. If I ask you, “what time is it?” and you tell me, and I say, “what?” and you tell me again, and I say, “what did you say?” that third answer of yours is going to have a bite to it. In the parable, the owner shows great patience in sending servant after servant, but this only confirmed the tenants in their wickedness. They got more and more annoyed, and progressively more violent as servant after servant was sent to them.
These servants represent the prophets who were sent to Israel over the centuries. And God’s people, for the most part, ignored them, battled with them, and killed them. You might recall how Moses’s authority was constantly being challenged as he led the Israelites for 40 years through the desert. It got so bad for another prophet named Elijah that he had to run away from the Land of Israel. Tradition has it that the prophet Isaiah was killed by being sawed in two. Jeremiah didn’t get treated much better. He was an old man in exile in Egypt when he is rumored to have been stoned to death. The writer to the Hebrews sums up how God’s prophets, these servants that the landlord sent to the tenants, were treated, “others were tortured…some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned, they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated – the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.”
How do you treat the Landlord when he comes looking to collect fruit from you? The basic sin of the tenants was that they refused to give God his fruits, and we do the same thing. God has a right to expect the best from us. Like the tenants, we don’t really own anything, not our jobs, not our houses, not even our bodies. We don’t even own our time. All these things God our Landlord rents out to us for one primary purpose: to use to HIS glory, HIS benefit. But like those self-seeking tenants, we oftentimes act as though this is our stuff, we own it, “and Lord, I’ll get you your share when I’m good and ready.” If you ever had a landlord here on earth, you know you couldn’t get away with paying him only a fraction of what you owe him. So why do we act as though we can skimp on our Lord and expect him to be fine with it? We cheat God when he asks us for our time, as we tell him we’re too busy right now, we don’t have time to pray, to read the Word, to serve other people. We cheat our Lord when we tell him that the talents that he’s given us aren’t the ones that really build up the church...that job is best left to others more skilled in that area. We cheat the Landlord when we bring meager portions of our income to him, and promptly go home after church to read the Sunday paper advertisements and find all the cool things we can spend our money on.
We are renters who have acted like the owners. But what a patient Lord we live under! He sends us servant after servant to tell us of our wrongs, servants like pastors, elders, and other concerned Christians. God sends servants to you because he wishes to lead you to repentance.
Part II
And the patience of the Lord seems to know no bounds. Let’s get back to the parable. “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son; presumably they will respect him.” The landlord bends over backwards for his tenants, giving them one last chance. He sends one more messenger, the son, his dearly loved son.
Again, the interpretation is easy for us to understand. Even after Israel mistreated all of God’s prophets, out of his sheer grace he was moved to send them his Son, Jesus. In the story, this is how the son was treated, “But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they said. ‘Let’s kill him and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.” Jesus was dead-on with his prophecy. But there is one difference between the parable and the real-life event. In the story, the owner assumes that the son would be treated with respect. In reality, God sent his Son into the world, not just knowing that he would be rejected and killed, but for the very purpose that he be rejected and killed.
Even in this parable where Jesus obviously singles out his enemies, he shows love for them, warning them of what will happen to them if they reject the son, “What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and kill those tenants and give the inheritance to others.” You can see Jesus saying, “don’t do it! It will hurt you more than me! You are going to lose everything!”
But of course, Jesus had to be killed. That’s why we call him Savior and Redeemer. Jesus was more than just a nice guy who had some wise teachings to tell. He was a lamb – a sacrifice.
Many people today want Jesus to be a lamb, but not a sacrificial lamb. They want a lovey-dovey Jesus who goes around and teaches people how to be nicer to each other, a lamb Jesus who talks about giving money to poor people and striving for world peace. One criticism that some Christians have made of "The Passion" movie is that it doesn’t talk enough about Jesus’ teachings, and focuses way too much on his suffering. What those who make this argument are really saying is they want Jesus to be a lamb, as long as we don’t have to focus too much on sins and other things that might make us feel bad. So a peace-lamb? Sure, we’ll take that kind of Jesus. A sacrificial-lamb? No thanks, that’s just a little too gory and gloomy. I’d much rather make Jesus something fluffier and happier; turn Jesus into something that no one will be turned off by.
Jesus had to be a sacrificial lamb, because our Lord is a just Landlord. He just isn’t going to ignore non-payment. He expects his fee. And since we don’t have it, here comes the sacrificial lamb, Jesus Christ. Here he comes marching to the cross, because our Landlord needs to be paid. And pay he does! Completely for your sins!
That’s why the cross is literally at the center of Christianity. The main point of this parable is the cross…did you see it in the story? “So they threw [the Son] out of the vineyard and killed him.” At first the succession doesn’t seem quite right: they threw him out and THEN they killed him? I guess I’d imagine these tenants seizing the son, killing him, and then throwing his lifeless body outside their walls. Jesus is again being prophetic with the sequence of events. In Hebrews, the writer describes how Jesus was thrown out of Jerusalem, and then killed, “and so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.”
The cross is literally at the center of Christianity. Just take a look at our building. The biggest object that you see as you enter the sanctuary is the massive cross in the center of our stained glass window. In fact, if we look at the footprint of our church building, it is in the shape of a cross, with the two transepts jutting out each side. Of all the dozens of Christian symbols, none is used more frequently and openly as the cross.
The cross prevents people from simply being neutral towards Jesus – but many still try to sit on the fence when it comes to Christ. They don’t want to entrust their soul to him, but they aren’t ready to declare war on Jesus either. So many Muslims, Jews, followers of other religions, even some atheists, say that they have respect for Jesus, his wise teachings and words, but start talking to them about the cross, and the neutrality quickly fades away. The cross causes the God of Christianity to be labeled as blood-thirsty and violent, and his followers as elitist and antisemitic. All this Jesus said would happen, when he called himself the Rock, “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone. Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.” The Landlord displays his terrifying justice to those who reject the Son.
I was a little worried yesterday that I would have to get up an hour earlier, thinking that today might be Daylight Savings Time. I was happy after I checked a calendar and discovered that it’s next week (so now I don’t have to announce that after the service today). Remember, this is the bad one: the one where we lose an hour and we’re all going to be a little more tired next Sunday morning. But let’s say that someone thought Daylight Savings was a stupid law…and so they refused to follow it. They kept their watch right where it was: how perplexed they would be! They’d be late for work, late to come home, the watch and their TV Guide would never match up. They can fight Daylight Savings Time all they want, but eventually they end up serving it.
It’s the same thing with the Rock, Jesus. So many refuse to acknowledge Christ as the Son of God, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is. And sooner or later all are going to have to admit that Jesus is their God. Pray that for many unbelievers that realization comes sooner rather than later!
Conclusion
God is the Landlord. He owns everything. He doesn’t just own your house, your car, or your job, he owns you. Think about that: God doesn’t just like you or is friendly to you, but he plainly owns you. We don’t simply HAVE to serve him, we WANT to serve the Landlord who has done so much for us his tenants, and has promised that we will never be without the protection loving hand. Amen.
sdg
