Text: Luke 20:9-20

“Uh-huh, Jesus!” Luke 20:9-20

There is a temptation to read this parable as Jew versus Gentile; to see it as Jesus predicting the end of the Old Testament people of Judah as the chosen, and the gifting of the Kingdom to the Gentile Christiani. Read this way, the parable is a comforting little tale, making modern Christendom feel good about ourselves as the chosen, churched of Christ.

Read this way, Christianity becomes a religious system which we create and extend by our own study, works, and deeds, by which we make a rigorous separation between the “saved” and the “lost” and the more sharply we draw the line, the more our theologies, institutions, and practices divide us outwardly from the “lost” the better we feel about ourselves. The more certainly we can identify “losers” like the Old Testament Jews, the more secure we feel in our identity as the “winners” of the world.

Among the many problems with this reading, perhaps the chief among them is that it fails to account for the fact that Jesus spoke this parable originally to an entirely Jewish audience. There weren’t any Gentiles around to hear the story! The first verse says “He began to tell the people this parable…” and “the people” is Luke’s word for Israel, the Jews, the chosen as distinct from the Gentile eavesdroppers who find their way into the story finally, only, by becoming “people” themselves.

The last verse also confirms the story was for a Jewish audience because Luke tells us plainly “the chief priests and the scribes sought to lay hands on Him—for they knew He had spoken this parable against them.” But Jesus told the story to the people—the whole company of Israel, not just priests and scribes, but the ordinary faithful of Israel too. Only the chief priests and scribes, a minority of the Jews wanted to kill Him. The rest seem to have received the parable gladly, hearing it as a promised inheritance for themselves—which is to say both those who reject the Master’s Son and those who receive Him are found among the Jewish people.

So any division in this story is one that affects the church primarily. Whether it is the Old Testament church of Judah or the New Testament Church of Christians, the parable applies to those who see themselves in some sense as God’s children, to those who live in His kingdom, by His arrangements. But some within the church reject the Master’s Son and will lose their place in the kingdom, while others (who are on the fringes) will find themselves at the center as places open up.

So how do we read this parable?

Well, first off, I think we must see the division in this story is not one between churched and unchurched (since no one went to church more than the chief priests and scribes and they clearly understand the parable is spoken against them as the wicked vinedressers who kill the Master’s Son and lose their place in His vineyard!). The division in this story is one that happens within the church—Old Testament or New Testament church, it matters not. If we read this story as a way of helping us look down on the Jews or the “unchurched”, while our identity as card carrying Christians and pillar members of the institution of Christendom makes us securely the good guys of the story, then we are not hearing it as Jesus first spoke it!

So how should we hear it? Well, maybe the first and best question would be to ask: what is it that left the wicked tenants in the story out of the vineyard? And the answer is painfully simple. In one word? Unfaith.

Now, maybe we need to be clear how we define “faith” here. I understand faith here to be receiving Jesus. Not receiving a theology about Jesus. Not creating belief statements about Jesus. Not joining an institution that has Jesus’ Name in it somewhere in the corporate charter. Not practicing certain works that are like Jesus. Not sharing our ideas about Jesus with others. I mean simply receiving Jesus as He has given Himself to us. A simple “uh-huh, Jesus” is all that faith seems to be in the Scripture. Receiving Him as He gives Himself to us, by the ways and means He has chosen, is all that Jesus seems to mean by faith.

Look at the story He tells: A certain man planted a vineyard, leased it to vinedressers, and went into a far country for a long time. [The man must be God, the vineyard His kingdom, and the vinedressers the people God has chosen to live in His kingdom.] Now, at vintage-time, the man sent a servant to the vinedressers, that they might give him some of the fruit of the vineyard—drink some of the wine together.

But the vinedressers beat the servant and sent him away empty-handed. Other servants are sent by the Master. They are beaten also, treated shamefully, and sent away empty-handed. Finally the owner says “What shall I do? I will send my beloved son. Probably they will respect him!” But they don’t. The vinedressers see the son, recognize him as the Master’s son and heir and instead of receiving him and eating and drinking with him, they kill him—thinking his inheritance will be theirs.

This is a pretty crazy plan. How in the world could killing the master’s son make him give them the inheritance!? Even wicked tenants like these couldn’t imagine the Father would give them the Son’s inheritance by force like this. They must be relying on what we’re told early on—that the Master had gone into a far country for a long time. They figure they will usurp the son’s inheritance till the Master returns—that the day of reckoning is far off.

But Jesus says the Master will come and destroy those vinedressers and give the vineyard to others. When the people heard it, they said “Certainly not!” And Jesus says “Well, what then is this that is written [Ps. 118:22] “the stone the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone?” And they see that they, the ones who are rejecting Jesus, the Son of God, are bringing down God’s judgment on themselves like a ton of bricks. And still they don’t change their minds.

What makes the vinedressers wicked in Jesus’ story is their rejection of the son—again, not rejecting ideas or theologies or institutions dedicated to Jesus, but rejecting Jesus Himself.

And this unfaith is something that happens first and foremost in the church, in the institutions dedicated to Christ. How does this happen? Well, when we insist the kingdom is ours, something we built, Jesus is rejected. When the servants He sends forgiving in His name are sent packing, Jesus Himself is rejected. When we refuse to eat and drink the Supper He gives in the manner He gives, Jesus is rejected in unfaith. And this happens all the time in the modern church. Just look around at our talk of “building the kingdom” by our works; just look at the new “feasts” we have devised and called “worship”; just look at the words we’ve crafted to displace His Word!

There’s a paradox here: the ones who are sure they’d never reject Jesus probably are doing it right now, and the ones who are afraid they are unworthy and wicked actually love Him—because He forgives them, forgives all, all the time, the worst first!

Just so, Jesus comes to us now, the lost, the sinful, the rejectors, with His unconditional forgiveness—and faith is simply receiving Jesus as He’s given Himself to us sinners, time out of mind, by His Word, and Sacrament, nothing less, nothing more, which is always crushing our old life of works, giving us a new life of faith, which we receive by eating and drinking with Him His Supper that erases all the old lines we’ve drawn, makes us friends, receivers of Jesus, and in Him makes us all One. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

 Pastor Kevin W. Martin