The Lenten Reality

Text: Luke 20:9-20

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

          The word reality is closely related to the concept of truth. If something is true, then it has its basis in reality. Truth and reality are not subjective in nature and therefore we don’t get to decide what’s true or real for ourselves. Especially as it relates to who God is and what He has to say to us. As much as we sometimes might not like what God says or how He desires for us to live, we don’t get to decide who He is and how He acts. And if we were able to dictate any of that, then we’d have a god we could control. And that’s really no God at all. In fact, it’s what we try to do all the time, which is to make ourselves God, instead of letting God be who He is. Today’s Gospel reading given to us through Luke, by way of the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, is God telling us who He is. Specifically, who He is and how He relates to us through the person of Jesus. He is “the stone that the builders rejected [which] has become the cornerstone.” And while “everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him,”

THIS CORNERSTONE IS ALSO THE FOUNDATION

UPON WHICH WE WHO HAVE FAITH ARE ABLE TO STAND.

          So, when Jesus talks about being the cornerstone, he is both warning the unfaithful about their fate, but also encouraging the faithful that we will always have a solid base on which to live our lives and build our eternal future. Think for a moment about a glass jar. It’s functional, but also fragile. There’s an ancient Hebrew proverb that says, “Should the stone fall on the jar, woe to the jar! Should the jar fall on the stone, woe to the jar! In either case, woe to the jar!” Following His parable in today’s Gospel reading Jesus quotes Psalm 118, when He says, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’? Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.”

The scribes and the chief priests know Psalm 118 well. Especially the part that says that “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” That’s the part Jesus quotes, but Psalm 118 continues saying, “This is the LORD’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” That which seems like such a dire warning is actually something to celebrate.

Because Christ Jesus is our cornerstone. He is, was, and ever shall be the cornerstone of all people. The question at hand is whether the scribes and the chief priests will reject that stone or whether they will stand on its firm foundation and rejoice and be glad in it. The fact that Jesus is the cornerstone is truth and reality. How those that Jesus was speaking to perceive Him can’t change that reality. When they look upon the Son of God will He be marvellous in their eyes? Will they see that His arrival at their door, is the LORD’s doing or will they mistake Him for something He’s not? What will they do? And today, what if Jesus comes speaking to you something you don’t like, what will you do?

In the Book of Revelation we hear these words, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and eat with him, and he with Me.” Jesus told John to write these words down and to send to the Church in Laodicea. They were for Christians whose works had shown them to be lukewarm, “neither cold nor hot.” Jesus laments about them saying, “Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.”

It’s strange that those words, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and eat with him, and he with Me,” are sometimes thought to be words about conversion. Many evangelicals will say that those words are about making a decision for Jesus, about opening the door of your heart and believing in Jesus. Yet Jesus tells John to write those very words to people who are already Christians. You’d think that they would have known better. Why have they closed the door of their heart to Jesus? These lukewarm Christians in Laodicea. Do they not know who Jesus is? Do they not know the one who stands at the door and knocks?

It’s like they don’t really know the Jesus who next week we celebrate on Palm Sunday as he rides into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. The One whose mighty works are proclaimed as people shout, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” In the midst of that triumphal entry Jesus looks upon Jerusalem and weeps. He weeps because many of those who are celebrating Him on that day will be denying Him and abandoning Him in less than a week . Jesus came to the door of Jerusalem and knocked and He’ll be rejected by the scribes and the chief priests and He’ll be nailed to the cross. Treated shamefully. Crucified.

And it’s during this Holy Week that Jesus stood in Jerusalem telling today’s parable about the wicked tenants of the vineyard. And it’s safe to say that the tenants of the vineyard are not lukewarm. In the parable Jesus clearly paints them as violent and covetous, greedy men. These tenants also are not ignorant of the man who planted the vineyard. They know him. When that man sends his servants to knock at the door, his servants are not welcomed into his vineyard by the tenants. The servants and the tenants do not sit down together and break bread. There’s no feast. Instead, the wicked tenants beat and treat the man’s servants shamefully, wounding them and sending them away empty handed.

It’s at this point that Jesus’ parable comes to its climax. In the parable the man who planted the vineyard is the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel. He sent His prophets and as they came to the gates of Jerusalem, as they came to the doors of the Temple, the wicked tenants, the scribes and the chief priests and the selfish and evil untrusting kings of the past killed these servants of the God of Israel. Servants like the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah, and Amos. Again, these tenants, the scribes and the chief priests along with their wicked kings, were men who should have known better. The gates of Jerusalem, the doors of the Temple should have been flung wide open and the servants of the Lord, these servants – these prophets should have been greeted and a feast should have been made ready, and a great celebration should have ensued. But it didn’t happen. These prophets came to collect the fruits of repentance but they were greeted by men who instead treating the gift of the vineyard, and all the gifts they’d been given, as if it was theirs and theirs alone. These tenants were not acting as stewards. They acted as if the vineyard belonged to them and not to the one who gave it. In treating the servants of the owner of the vineyard shamefully they had likewise treated the owner shamefully.

When we hear what happens next in Jesus’ parable we know what Jesus is alluding to when he says, “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.’” As Jesus tells this parable standing in the Temple you can imagine the crowd crying out “Don’t do it! Don’t send your son! They won’t respect him! They had no respect for your servants!”

Of course, when we hear this part of the parable we know that it’s Jesus who’s been sent. The very Son of God the Father who became the servant of all and who has gone up to Jerusalem looking for the fruits of repentance from the wicked tenants. We know that the scribes and the chief priests perceived correctly that the parable was about them. And we know what they’re about to do to the Son of the Owner of the vineyard. Earlier in Luke’s Gospel Jesus had looked out towards Jerusalem and laments, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” The scribes and the chief priests were among the ones who were not willing to be gathered in under Christ Jesus. And they’ll do just what Jesus describes in the parable. By the end of Holy Week they’ll have killed Him. We know all this because we know the end of the story as we hear Jesus tell the parable.

The end of this parable is a little odd as the tenants say “to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours.’” Have you ever wondered why they  might think that? Why would they think that if “they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him,” that they would end up having the vineyard to themselves? In context, these tenants would have thought that the owner of the vineyard had died and that the son was coming to collect his inheritance. They would have thought if the son died then they could, as long time tenants, claim squatters rights and perhaps have the vineyard for themselves. The irony for the scribes and the chief priests is that Jesus in His death and resurrection was coming to give His inheritance to all who believed in Him.

When Jesus stands at the door and knocks, when He comes to the gate of those who already know Him and they reject His coming what then will happen? For you today, for me, when Jesus comes – when He comes telling us His parables, when we hear His word, we are not to reject His Word but embrace it even when His word, as found in Scripture, is hard compared to what the World preaches. Sin, Death, the Devil, the World, fell on this blessed Cornerstone at the cross and when they fell on Him like a jar of glass they were broken. At the cross you fall upon Jesus and every bit of you is broken there: including your pride, your anger, your lust, your greed, your lies, your disobedience, and all of mine too – but Jesus will not leave you broken. “Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!” David said it in Psalms, and we can say it now. If not today, if not tomorrow, without a doubt on that Last Day, on the day of your resurrection, He will put you together perfectly. Sin, Death, the Devil, and this World as we know it will be left broken into little pieces, it will all be swept away, but you will not be swept away, you will be whole and without blemish presented to God the Father in perfection along with the whole church. The resurrected and ascended Lord Jesus said to the disciple John from His heavenly throne, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He also said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ … It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be His God and He will be My son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death.”

Every single day until that Last Day comes, Jesus gives us a place to stand. And it’s not on ourselves, not on our own wisdom apart from God’s Word, not on the World but on Him. He is our firm foundation. He is our cornerstone, let us rejoice and be glad in Him. His foundation is solid because it’s the only one based in truth and reality. Any reality we attempt to create apart from Him – any truth that’s contradictory to His Word cannot be right. The chief priests and the scribes didn’t get to decide what was right, and true, and real for them any more than we can. And what’s true is that we have a God who will not stand for those who oppose Him, but is also so loving that He would send His only Son, even for them. Even though He knew what they would do to Him. Our God knew that it had to be this way and sent Jesus anyway. And thanks be to God for that reality. For the very ones who caused His death, ourselves included, are the ones whose sins have been forgiven because of it. We are the ones whose salvation was secured on that cross. God has said it. He has accomplished it. Let that truth and reality be your comfort and joy now and forevermore.

The peace of God which surpasses all understanding huard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.