Isaiah 5,1-7. Reminiscere Sunday

In the Name of Jesus

Isaiah 5,1-7                                                                                                       1812

Reminiscere (2. Sonntag der Passionszeit)  025 „Remember“

Lucius, Bishop of Rome, Martyr 253 

4. March 2012

1.  O Heavenly Father, You gave us Your Holy Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, Your only and beloved Son, who paid for our sins on the cross. Your Church is tempted to usurp the vineyard from You and plant her own doctrine and practice that is centered on man rather than the Triune God. Send forth pastors to be prophets in Your Church who will call to repentance the Church and all Christians who have strayed from Your word and will. Bring them again with penitent hearts to be steadfast in the faith and to embrace the unchangeable truth of Jesus Christ, Your Son.  Amen. 

2. Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning His vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; He built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and He looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. Now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between Me and My vineyard. What more was there to do for My vineyard, that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild grapes? And now I will tell you what I will do to My vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it will be devoured; I will break down its wall, and it will be trampled down. I will make it a waste; it will not be pruned or hoed, and briers and thorns shall grow up; I will also command the clouds so that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of Yahweh Sabaoth  is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are His pleasant planting; and He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry!  

3. The Prophet Isaiah compared Israel to Yahweh’s vineyard. Yahweh had made Israel the choicest of His vineyards, and after all His meticulous care for the nation, Israel nevertheless yielded wild grapes instead of the expected grapes, meaning that Israel time and again rebelled against Yahweh and His prophets. Israel opted more often than not to worship the idols held in high esteem by the nations around them. The result was devastating: instead of justice, bloodshed flowed; instead of righteousness, the outcry of widows, orphans and the outcasts who suffered under the contempt of their neighbors. 

4. Yahweh was not pleased with His precious vineyard Israel, for they were violating the covenant and harming their neighbors. So Yahweh sent Israel prophets and righteous kings to lead the nation back to His covenant. The people rejected His prophets and reveled in their idolatry, so Yahweh removed His protective hand from His chosen people. First, the ten tribes in the north, Israel, fell into Assyrian Captivity in 721 B.C.; then the two tribes in the south, Judah, fell into Babylonian Captivity in 587 B.C. Seventy years later, Yahweh replanted His vineyard in Judah. 

5. Six centuries later, Judah’s intractable stance toward Yahweh and His prophets had again degenerated. O to be sure, the rites of the temple and the covenant were carried out, but when Yahweh sent new prophets, the Pharisees, rabbis and priests were apathetic towards John the Baptizer and Jesus. 

6. Faith is created by the gospel of Christ crucified for the sin of the world. When this gospel is watered down, then faith suffers and works become wild and sour. We find this to be the sad state of reality in various areas of Christendom. In many places Yahweh’s precious vineyard, the Church, is just as corrupt as 6. century Israel. The builders have again rejected Christ the Cornerstone (Psalm 118,22). 

7. The Church is constantly rent with heresies. Yahweh’s people keep telling Him how He should do His business, and His people are tempted to imagine that God is here to supply what they want and claim they deserve (Nagel 90). But Yahweh will not be such a God for us (Nagel 90). That would be the end of Him and the end of His people (Nagel 90). He did not bring us out of the slavery to sin, death and the devil so He could be a new slaveowner and have us as His slaves (Nagel 90). Yahweh would have you as His holy people, free and rejoicing in the confidence of His testament and His gospel (Nagel 90). 

8. But we, the sinners we are, often re-enslave ourselves from that which our gracious Christ has set us free. When our eyes are diverted from the crucified Christ, all sorts of problems arise. Good morals may not be legislated by the U.S. Congress, and morality is not pounded into peoples’ hearts by a preacher thundering from the pulpit. The law will only keep us in line for a short time before our sinful nature reverts back to immoral behavior and ideals. For example, a police officer might pull over a driver speeding through a school zone and warn him or her to slow down. The driver will keep his or her speed in check for a few days or so, but a week later that same driver will be observed once again speeding through the school zone without a care for the children, parents and crossing guards whose safety his or her dangerous driving threatens. If people cannot follow simple speed limit laws, why should we expect far weightier matters such as the life of unborn children to be  effectively legislated. 

9. Good morality properly flows from the gospel. When the gospel is rightly preached, the gospel that proclaims the free forgiveness of sins only on account of the crucified Christ, then peoples’ lives are changed. The American institution of slavery was not abolished by Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in his 1863 executive order, but slavery began to unravel as Christian men and women who heard the pure gospel of Christ crucified realized that if Christ died to set all men and women free from sin, then how can men of good conscience allow such freed men to be enslaved by Southern plantation owners. Men and women who had the gospel of Christ crucified burning in their hearts petitioned their civil representatives and voted at their polling places for the institution of slavery to finally be brought to an end. 

10. The gospel proclaims liberty to those held captive by sin; the gospel changes the lives of people and effects the course of society. This is the gospel: »For while you were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For God shows His love for you in that while you were still sinners, Christ died for you. Since, therefore, you have now been justified by His blood, much more shall you be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while you were enemies you were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that you are reconciled, shall you be saved by His life« (Romans 5,6-10). 

11. The Prophet Isaiah describes how Yahweh gave His people every rich blessing, but Judah stubbornly did their own thing to God’s consternation. What Jesus speaks about in today’s Gospel parable is the refusal of God’s gifts, taking them over as if they were ours by right or by our measures and not as gifts (Nagel 91). Gifts cease to be gifts when we think in terms of „the inheritance will then be ours“ (Nagel 91). Lent reminds us that it is not about demanding our inheritance right now like the prodigal son. Lent reminds us that it is not about fasting or other pious activities done in order to please God. Lent is about looking to Jesus and following Him. Jesus teaches in the Gospels that His way is the way that ends at the cross with Jesus hanging lifeless on a Friday afternoon. This crucified Christ is God the Father’s most precious gift to us. The Prophet Isaiah calls Jesus the Suffering Servant and the one who bears all your sins. Many rejected this gracious gift in Jesus’ day, and many still reject this gift today. Jesus, however, is not deterred. He is the heir of His Father’s vineyard, and He will not give up His vineyard (Nagel 91). Jesus will not give up on you. Jesus says: I am yours, and you are Mine. His vineyard, and more than vineyard, deeper than into death for a friend, deeper than bread and wine (Nagel 92). Jesus is your sacrifice. It is His body and blood that He gives into you (Nagel 92). Come and receive His gifts, His forgiveness, His inheritance, in the sacramental feast of His Supper that has been prepared for you this day.  Amen. 

12. Let us pray. O Heavenly Father, You show His love for us in that Jesus Christ died for us while we were still sinners, may we never stumble over this proclamation nor reject this great gift of grace so that we may remain in the Christian faith unto eternal life.  Amen.

One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you!

All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4^th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27^th Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart. 

ELKB. Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. www.bayern-evangelisch.de/www/index.php. Copyright © Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern. 

Nagel, Norman. Selected Sermons of Norman Nagel: From Valparaiso to St. Louis. Frederick W. Baue, Ed. Copyright © 2004 Concordia Publishing House.