Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

It’s unfair! The rich, the powerful, the privileged. They use their advantage to get ahead of the second-class, the unfortunate, the victims. College administrators bribed. Businesses in their lust for profits cut corners that cost lives. By now you have probably heard plenty about this ongoing story in many forms, including the outsiders versus the establishment. It’s a constant drama that feeds on lots of energy, outrage, roaring crowds and tricky questions from journalists. It’s the height of unfairness, as anyone can plainly see, when the elite few take control by means of force and deceit away from the will of the many. The power-brokers meet secretly in smoke-filled rooms, while the mobs mobilize on behalf of the “little guy” who never receives the square deal. Well, now that’s going to change! Those know-it-alls, elites and big-wigs are going to be turned out on their ears when justice knocks on their door! Fairness will be restored!

The whole politics of the in-crowd looking down in scorn and disgust upon those ignorant masses can be seen in many playgrounds, families and corporate offices. It’s downright shameful when it happens in a church. It happens nonetheless, and every time it does, it retells the story of the greatest act of unfairness of the world’s history, and that was the rejection of God’s Son the Savior. He was rejected by the very religious teachers and leaders who were commanded to proclaim Him. Instead, this religious elite establishment preferred to solidify their miserable power cabal and remove the threat from His adoring, cheering crowds before He ruined their political future.

All the images that Jesus used in His version of the story had a connection to the one and only Divine plan of salvation. The vineyard is the church, the spiritual and unseen kingdom of God that truly exists in the form of faith—that is, all those who trust and believe in Christ the Savior of sinners are members of the universal, whole, catholic church. All who repent of their sins and receive the nourishment of our Lord’s gifts then bear fruit for Him, like vines produce grapes in a vineyard. As Jesus continues, this vineyard is leased out to tenants, who stand for the Old Testament kings and religious leaders, who with only a handful of exceptions, were responsible for a nation that rebelled against the Lord, who was their true owner and ruler. The three servants sent to the vineyard to gather in the harvest fruits of repentance were not three specific prophets, but they stand for all the prophets and preachers who had urged the people over centuries of history to stop their idolatrous ways, get rid of the false gods and beliefs of the other nations, and stay faithful and ready for the advent of the Messiah to arrive. Those prophets were despised, humiliated, persecuted, and several were martyred at the hands of the religious establishment. Time to call for some term limits, right?

Instead, the owner in the story, who stands for God the Father, acts totally contrary to the accepted conventional wisdom. Who would in their right mind send his beloved son into a situation which can only end in certain death for him? But forgoing every right He had to punish and destroy His wicked servants, God sent His Son anyway, as John 3:17 says: God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. “Perhaps they will respect him.” You know, that sounds so naïve to us hearing it. We almost try to reach out our hands and shout out at Jesus—no, don’t do it! Just like the crowds themselves, who were so wrapped up in the story, we’re exclaiming with them “Surely not!” But you can’t shake the unbroken, determined gaze of Jesus looking right at you. He affirms this trip to the cross absolutely must happen, rejection, pain, suffering and all, for it has been God’s plan from the very beginning. It’s exactly how the psalm’s words will come true: The Stone that the builders rejected has become the Cornerstone. Jesus is the only Way: either He will welcome you, broken and then restored, into the everlasting kingdom of the Father, or He will send you away crushed into pieces, saying, “I never knew you.” But first, before any of that could have happened for you, He must be rejected.

A week from now, we will unfold here once again the Great Story of which this parable of Jesus was a foreshadow. Judas will cross the aisle into the opposing party and betray the Lord, not with a tweet, a wild Facebook rant, or an annoying political commercial, but with a kiss outside the garden. The powerful few will get their way over against the many, under the cover of night, and evil will seem to triumph. A murderer they save, the Prince of Life they slay. This religious establishment knows the Scriptures very well; what they cannot stomach is that their way of trust in self, their way of unrepentance is doomed. Their fathers rejected the prophets, as Jesus said before, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You who kill the prophets and stone those sent to it. They are going to reject Jesus, so in this way, Jesus is like the prophets, but in another way, He is unlike them. His rejection will lead to something different than their rejection did.

The wall of the Old Testament side of the building is going to meet up with the New Testament side, which is the wall that you and I are part of in God’s church. At this critical meeting point of the two walls, there is Jesus Christ the chief Cornerstone. He is the author and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that was set before Him for all time and history, He endured the cross, willingly took up the punishment you and I deserved, and drank the cup of God’s grapes of wrath. He poured out His lifeblood like wine on the ground, so that His very rejection and defeat on the cross would be ultimate victory for the entire church. For all believers before Him and for you now living after this momentous occasion, Christ the Cornerstone is exalted above all as our One Savior who fully completed His salvation mission. This coming Holy Week, we will hear the details yet again of that victory, it is marvelous in our eyes. We need to hear it, as often as we can, because this is not just the story of Jesus showing up those nasty enemies of His who plotted His death. It’s not going to be about darlings of the media getting away with outright crimes or a corrupt politician getting caught. This is the story of your very rescue from everything that holds you down, from Satan who attacks you with temptations, from your own human nature that loves to follow your own path. The truth that you hear from Palm Sunday to Easter, that is the very truth that sets you free. This is the only truth that matters for your life now and forevermore.

Jesus’ question remains, and it’s meant for you, for your family, for this congregation at Good Shepherd, too: “What shall the owner do about His vineyard?” How will your heart respond to this grand story that is about to be retold at Holy Week? Will you ignore your Savior’s pleas to renew your heart and plant a good vine that produces good fruit of faith in your life? Or will you prefer to make your faith into an excuse to get your way and impose your version of judgment against others whom you should have forgiven? Jesus told this parable toward the end of His ministry because the time was getting close and soon the opportunity window to repent and believe in Jesus would shut. Will you allow instead for Christ the Cornerstone to break your sinful will and shatter your sinful, self-centered urges? Will you resist the temptation to shy away from your Lord simply because you see that there will be nothing else but rejection, persecution, and humiliation ahead of you as you hold to the true Christian faith? Everyone around you is scorning God’s design of marriage. The scientific establishment says a Creator couldn’t have spoken this world into existence. Misguided Christians say your pastor is too legalistic because certain songs aren’t sung in worship or visitors who aren’t currently under the care of a true Lutheran pastor need to wait before they’re allowed to participate in Communion at this altar.

What will your vineyard owner do about you? Will He see your fruits of faith and love extend out to benefit your neighbor? Without Christ your Cornerstone, that will be impossible. On your own, you will seek to serve only yourself, and Jesus warns in that case, you will be crushed. His judgment in the case of the faithless will be decisive, and devastating. But with Him, with His Holy Spirit cleansing your heart, pruning your vines to be faithful to Him, and mobilizing you to be energetically fruitful in good works, you will prevail even through those times of suffering you will endure. Count those temporary, fleeting earthly things as rubbish and as loss, because with what you have to gain in Christ, beginning with forgiveness and ending with your own resurrection from the dead, you have every reason instead to strain forward as you run the Christian race. Break that tape away in triumph and claim the prize that Jesus won for you. He stood up to the evil establishment, and though they killed Him for the inheritance, He became the Cornerstone anyway. Don’t be distracted when establishments of evil play their tricks on you. Press on to that upward call of God that was given you when you were baptized. Jesus has reserved His inheritance for you, not to lease, but to own, and sealed it in His Body and Blood given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. May His life, death and resurrection be and forever continue as the Cornerstone and foundation of your life until the Day He calls you forth from the grave to enjoy with utter glory the blessed vineyard of your God.

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Is. 43:16–21 I am the LORD, and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret
Psalm 126 When the LORD brought back the captivity of Zion, We were like those who dream
Phil. 3:4b–14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call
Luke 20:9–20 A certain man planted a vineyard … leased … and went into a far country