What More Could He Have Done?

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

October 8. 2017

Matthew 21:33–46

What More Could He Have Done?

In the name of the Father and of the ☩ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

³³“Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. ³⁴When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.

MATTHEW 21:33–34 NIV 1984

Everything so far was routine. A typical business arrangement that should have worked for both sides. Then things quickly got out of hand. As you listen, ask yourself, “What could the landowner have been thinking?”

³⁴When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit. ³⁵The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. ³⁶Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way.

MATTHEW 21:34–36 NIV 1984

The tenants, who had already agreed to return some of the fruit as their rent, attacked the servants. Without any moral grievance or legal right, they broke their agreement with landowner and became his enemies. They became violent and worse, it was premeditated. As far as the story goes, we can assume time. Time for news of the violence to reach the landowner. Time for him to decide what to do. Time for the next servant to go and approach the vineyard. In all that time, the tenants never repented of their violence and lawlessness. Instead of asking for mercy, they escalated their planned violence: beating, killing, stoning.

This story is about the Jews. Jesus was speaking to His own Jewish people about their own history of violence. Looking back on the time before Jesus Christ was born—the Old Testament—the author of the letter to the Hebrews wrote:

[Some of the prophets] were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. ³⁶Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. ³⁷They 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—³⁸the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.

HEBREWS 11:35A–38 NIV 1984

The reason for this violence, which went on for a long time, was that these prophets told the truth. They told the truth about sinners and their sins. Evil queen Jezebel chased after the prophet Elijah to murder him for exposing her useless gods (1 Kings 19). King Joash stoned the faithful prophet Zechariah after Zechariah exposed Joash’s betrayal of the true faith (2 Chronicles 24).

Perhaps the worst example comes from about 600 years before Jesus was born. The kingdom of Judah—the southern part of the Holy Land—has a king who was a psychopath named Manasseh. He murdered innocent people. He indulged in the pagan rituals, including burning his own son to death. Worst of all, he set up idols to false gods in the sacred Temple of Solomon. So the Lord sent prophets to tell the truth, among them Isaiah.

¹⁰The Lord said through His servants the prophets: ¹¹“Manasseh king of Judah has committed these detestable sins. He has done more evil than the Amorites who preceded him and has led Judah into sin with his idols. ¹²Therefore this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I am going to bring such disaster on Jerusalem and Judah that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. ¹³I will stretch out over Jerusalem the measuring line used against Samaria and the plumb line used against the house of Ahab. I will wipe out Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. ¹⁴I will forsake the remnant of My inheritance and hand them over to their enemies. They will be looted and plundered by all their foes, ¹⁵because they have done evil in My eyes and have provoked Me to anger from the day their forefathers came out of Egypt until this day.”

2 KINGS 21:10–15 NIV 1984

The Lord allowed Manasseh to die in his bed after being king for 55 years(!), but not before Manasseh is said to have sawed the prophet Isaiah into two halves. And soon after this evil king’s peaceful death, his whole nation was destroyed.

So we see how Jesus’ story played out. His own people forsook the true faith, that trusts in the true God who places us into a good vineyard, a good place and good situation. And instead they produced bad fruit. Most were not monsters like Manasseh, but they accomplished just as much evil with their indifference and indecision. They said nothing while babies were being murdered. They refused to teach their children the story of salvation and the comfort of the coming Savior. Instead they taught themselves that many gods and many lies can all be true. They lived like money would make them happy. Then they lived their lives like they would just go on forever, and when that didn't work out, they became bitter. And worst of all, whenever a true prophet or preacher came along, sometimes they would angry at him, but mostly they just ignored him.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

So what could the landowner have been thinking? He kept sending servants. In the story the servants who keep getting clobbered were God’s prophets to Israel. Now, what’s the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again with the same results. The landowner keeps doing the same thing. Here's the thing: the only insane people in the story were the tenants—they thought murdering the owner's slaves would make them the owners of the vineyard. But since he dealt mercifully with these insane tenants, the owner ran the risk of looking crazy himself.

And even more strangely the landowner, like the tenants, decided to escalate. No more servants; now his son.

³⁷Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said. ³⁸But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ ³⁹So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

MATTHEW 21:37–39 NIV 1984

What more could he have done? The landowner who represents the Lord God Himself, sent His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, on a mission that certainly would end in His death. And it did. God’s enemies killed His Son in His day and now lie about who Jesus is. On the other hand, God’s friends—you—are killed with Him in His death and raised to life in Holy Baptism and now speak the truth about the Son. He gives you His vineyard, a good place and a good situation, to produce good fruit, not to save yourself, but because you already are saved.

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve,

and to give His life as a ransom for many.

Mark 10:45