Matthew
21: 33-46 Oct. 4, 2020 Peter Hofstra
Today’s passage is the history of
Israel in a parable. God the Creator, is
the Owner who set up the vineyard. The
Vineyard is the Promised Land, the land of Israel. The first tenants, those who have beaten,
killed, and driven off the servants of the Owner, they are the leadership, past
and present, and have done these things to God’s prophets. Finally, the Owner’s Son is sent and the
tenants kill him, thinking that with his death, they will inherit the
Vineyard. But instead, the Owner of the
Vineyard will come down and kill off the current tenants, and bring in new ones
who will do as the Owner wants. The
leadership is going to kill Jesus, but then God will deal with them.
This parable leads into Jesus’ death
and resurrection. It speaks to what will
happen to those who are caretakers of the faith of the nation in God the
Creator, but abusing that authority for themselves. As he tells it, I picture Jesus looking the
leaders in the eye and jumping from parable to reality. The Kingdom of God, of which the chief
priests and the Pharisees (teachers of the law) were God’s stewards, but who
have used their authority for their own benefit, the Kingdom will be taken away
from you and given to a people who will produce the fruit of the Kingdom.
And
Jesus does mix his metaphors a little bit.
He brings his presence into the narrative. Jesus is “The stone that the people rejected shall
become the cornerstone.” And then it
goes to the punishment of the leaders, “And those who fall on it will be broken
to pieces, and it will crush anyone it falls on.”
The
Pharisee and the chief priests, listening to this parable, they realize where
Jesus is going with this. They
understand that they themselves are the tenants who tried to highjack the
vineyard of God. They understand that
they themselves are the ones that Jesus is referring to as the ones who will be
crushed and broken to pieces under the stone that, though rejected, becomes the
cornerstone.
And,
understandably enough, they want to arrest him.
But, as we saw last week, the power of the crowds hold them back. Last week, the fear they have of the people
was because the people believed John to be a prophet. Remember, Jesus used John as his example,
when really speaking of his own ministry.
In our passage today, the leaders fear the people because they believe
that Jesus is a prophet.
This
is week three of talking about the Kingdom of Heaven. But today, Jesus uses the synonym, the
Kingdom of God. I believe he is using
this expression for the benefit of the Pharisees and the chief priests who are
listening to Him. For decades, Israel
has not had its own king, they had Herod, but he was imposed upon them from
outside. But God has always been their
true ruler. And in the absence of a
human king chosen by God, they understand themselves to be living in God’s
Kingdom.
In
this parable, Jesus walks the leadership right up to the moment of his own
death, played out from a heavenly perspective.
Historically, God sent prophets to speak God’s Word and the repeated
behavior of Israel was that they did not listen. Finally, God sent God’s only begotten
Son. And they are going to kill him as
well. Remember, this passage occurs in Holy
Week. There is a conspiracy to kill
Jesus. And Jesus has just confirmed for
them, prophetically, that they will succeed.
What
is the cliché? The more things change,
the more they stay the same? We can
point to leaders in the church today acting just like the chief priests and the
Pharisees. They are the stewards of
God’s message to the people but they have sought to hijack that message for
their own ends, most often to line their own pockets. And they too will get their reward. It is the crowds that surround the leader, the
repentant sinners who will instead be the new tenants that the Lord will bring
into the vineyard, and, unlike the hoarding leadership, they will produce the
fruit of the Kingdom.
The
implication of the parable is that the Kingdom of God has existed back through
the history of Israel. But Jesus brings
in the new Kingdom of Heaven, perhaps better called the renewed Kingdom. It is already here but not yet complete. But what is this Kingdom that we are
building? How does Scripture describe what
has Jesus taken from the hands of the leaders and passed to us?
In
the New Testament, what Jesus here calls the ‘fruit of the Kingdom’ dovetails
with what Paul outlines as the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. It is a good start, giving us the emotional
flow, the personal attitudes that are cultivated in the Kingdom, but the Bible
has a rich depth of description of this new Kingdom.
The
Kingdom of God as the leaders would have understood it goes back to the
founding of Israel as a nation, when God called God’s people out of slavery in
Egypt. The Kingdom of God was the
Promised Land, a land described as flowing with milk and honey, a land where
the people could settle peacefully and the Lord would be their God and they
would be God’s people for eternity. It
is a land that is forever on the edge of feast or famine. It is a desert climate, but when the rains
are good, it blooms-and when God and the people are cool, the Lord sends the
rains. As an agricultural society, the
image of the vineyard is one the crowd understood. Besides, who doesn’t like a nice glass of
wine?
This
idealized image of the Kingdom of God, the Promised Land, is a cherished dream
for a people who have been conquered in turn by Babylonians, Persians, Greeks,
and now Romans. The dream of God’s
kingdom is a land free of the Romans. Washington,
stepping down as our first President, called upon a Biblical image, “Everyone
shall sit under their own vine and fig tree and no one shall make them
afraid.” Imagine watching the late news,
getting a full accounting of all the events happening in the world today,
finishing off a cup of warm milk, and going to bed relaxed because there was no
one news item to make us afraid or even apprehensive? Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.
There is so much the Bible tells us
about this Kingdom. From Psalm 23, “The
Lord is my shepherd…he makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside
still waters, he restores my soul…” John
14, Jesus tells us, “In my Father’s house are many mansions…” Ever driven through a historic or upscale
neighborhood where every house is something grand? We can look to Isaiah 40, “Those who hope in
the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar on wings like eagles, they
will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not grow faint.” Or from my mom’s favorite passage, Revelation
21, “And God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be nor more death
or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order has passed away…” There is a reason why so many of these
passages most often find expression in times of mourning and pastoral
care. It is coming into God’s care, into
the Kingdom of Heaven as a place of comfort and support.
Their power is that they look
forward in the Kingdom of Heaven to the End of Time, when God is fully in
control. But this is what we are
building toward. The Kingdom of Heaven is
already here but it is not yet fulfilled.
One of the most powerful chapters in consideration of how we work to
fulfill the Kingdom of Heaven is 1 Corinthians 13, the ‘love’ chapter. To read
it, verse by verse, is to see how love builds and binds the Kingdom and how
life without love is, to use the language of the writer of Ecclesiastes, vanity. At the end of the passage, Paul paints a word
picture of the ‘already/not yet’ quality of the Kingdom.
In verse 12, Paul says, “For now we
see as though looking into a darkened mirror, then we shall see face to
face. Now I know in part, then I shall
know fully, even as I am fully known.” We
look into the Kingdom of Heaven now, but it is faint impression of what it will
be. But, to live in 1 Corinthians 13,
Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy it does not boast…it is not easily
angered…love does not delight in evil…”, in these actions, the darkness of the
mirror is lightened, the dimness (as some translate it) comes into focus. The Kingdom of Heaven is coming to us. And we know that the greatest is yet to come
because Love Never Fails.
To build the Kingdom of Heaven, God
has provided us with three of the magnificent promises in all creation, faith,
hope, and love. And what is the
greatest? I invite you to say it with
me. Love.
The Kingdom is what the leadership
in Jerusalem is trying to hijack, it is a cultural level sin. The Kingdom is what Jesus provides in his
death and resurrection. That is why I am
so passionate in my anger when I perceive my fellow Christians trying to hijack
the Kingdom.
For fear of sounding like a
commercial, if you want to know more, read Revelations 19, 20, 21, and 22. These chapters lay out the apocalyptic
founding of and the beautiful imagery of what the Kingdom of Heaven is going to
be, centering on the renewed Jerusalem.
For us, the functions of the church
are tied together in the building the Kingdom of Heaven. Sunday worship is a moment to transcend
ourselves, to come in adoration to the throne of grace, to touch the divine of
the fulfilled Kingdom of Heaven. Our
times of fellowship, as when the PW gathers, times where friends gather in our
common love of Christ Jesus, this is Kingdom time where we can build one
another up as children of the Living God.
Mission work, outreach, helping others, these are the hallmarks of the
church’s activity and they serve two functions.
One is to reach out with a hand of love and justice in Christ Jesus to a
world of sin and need. The second is the
turning of the heart of the Christian who reaches out their hand to more deeply
comprehend what it means that the Kingdom is already here, already changing the
world for the better.
That’s the vision for us to be a neighborhood
in the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, to build upon what is already
here. And Jesus sent us help. John 14, he talks about an advocate, another
who will come after Him. We saw that
Spirit come down at Pentecost. Peter
gives a rousing sermon about how the Spirit will give us the strength to build
the Kingdom-and that is a whole other season.
Jesus
referenced the cornerstone in today’s passage.
He is also the Rock upon which we build our faith. Remember the parable of the house built upon
the rock and the house built upon the sand?
The Kingdom of Heaven is built upon the rock, the foundation, of Jesus
Christ. It is the safe place against the
storms of life and the power of sin that will crash up against it.
I hope we understand what Jesus is
doing in our passage from Matthew. For
him, it was a season of confrontation, it was a season of accountability, the laying
the groundwork for his own death to accomplish the absolute, radical nature of
God’s plan. And while he is condemning
the leadership that is getting in the way, he is still giving them every
opportunity to repent and return to the Kingdom.
So, for this church, for
Christianity, the Kingdom of Heaven is the Love of God built around us. I like the way Paul puts that in Romans
8. It is the promise that neither death
nor life, angels nor demons, neither our fears nor our worries about
tomorrow-not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below-indeed
nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God
that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
This is the Kingdom of Heaven.
This is where the life of the church gains it strength. It is from this Kingdom that the church
reaches out to a world in need, where we have friends and family and loved ones
and neighbors we have not even met yet, who need the faith, the hope, and the
love that we have found in Jesus, in His Kingdom, that we joyfully build
together. Amen.
