✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠
The Word of the Lord Endures Forever
Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum
Isaiah 5,1-7 1418
Reminiszere 025
Victorin and his companions, Martyrs 284
Walter E. Keller, ✠ 2011
25. Februar 2018
1. О Christ Jesus, Thou Precious Son sent to Thy Father’s vineyard, help us contemplate how much our redemption had cost You, so that we give thanks for Your service and sacrifice to free us from all our sins. Amen. (Starck 76)
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. And 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 the Lord of hosts 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 was uses the image of a vineyard for Israel. In the parable, the Lord planted a vineyard, cared for it and expected it to yield grapes. This parable describes Israel: the Lord had chosen Abraham, promised him descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and said the land where Abraham dwelt as a sojourner would be given to his offspring in perpetuity. The Lord fulfilled this promise through Moses by leading Israel out from Egypt and into the promised land of Canaan under Joshua.
4. Moses told Israel just before they were to enter Canaan: »See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in His ways, and by keeping His commandments and His statutes and His rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, so that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice and holding fast to Him, for He is your life and length of days, so that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, to give them« (Deuteronomy 30,15-20).
5. A millennia later, Isaiah had the difficult task of telling Israel: you have forsaken the Lord, broken His covenant and He is now enacting the clause with the curse. Israel had produced the fruit of their beliefs, but they were wild grapes because Israel was content to worship other gods alongside the Lord. »For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts 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!«
6. The Lord’s curse was short-lived, and after 70 years of exile in Babylon, the Lord through Cyrus II of Persia [1] (Cyrus the Great) returned Israel to the land. They rebuilt and by Jesus’ day were in the final phase of a massive building project that would make the temple in Jerusalem an impressive structure throughout the Roman province of Palestine.
7. But all was not well. Jesus told His generation a parable similar to the one Isaiah had 700 years prior. The tenants of this vineyard refused to give the owner some of the fruit of the harvest. They beat or killed those sent from the owner to collect the tithe. Finally, they killed the owner’s son and attempted to usurp ownership of the vineyard. The wicked tenants were the chief priests, scribes and elders who often opposed Jesus’ teachings. These men were the spiritual leaders of Israel and they sought to silence Jesus. In response, Jesus promised to run out these wicked tenants and give the vineyard to others (Mark 12,1-9).
8. Many of the average Jewish people received Jesus’ teaching with joy, but the chief priests, scribes and elders rejected their Messiah. They also knew Jesus had spoken this parable against them. They were angry that Jesus would threaten to punish the Jews but bless the Gentiles. The chief priests were more concerned with keeping the Romans appeased so the temple remained under their control rather than receive the Lamb of God who would fulfill the temple sacrifices. The scribes an elders were more concerned with their traditions rather than the one in their midst who had given them the covenant at Sinai.
9. Jesus brought in new tenets, the Gentiles, us, and they have received Him as the Light of salvation. But Gentile tenants are as fickle as the former Jewish tenets. Christians are also tempted to tell God how He should do His business; we are tempted to imagine that God is merely here to supply what we want and claim what we deserve (Nagel 90). God wants sons, not slaves; He wants daughters, not drudges. God wants Christians to freely rejoice in the confidence of His testament and His gospel manifested in the flesh by His Son, Jesus the Christ (Nagel 90).
10. The Prophet Isaiah describes how the Lord 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 Him 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 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. Jesus is your sacrifice. Receive His gifts, His forgiveness and His inheritance. Amen.
11. Let us pray. O Heavenly Father, You show Your 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.
To God alone be the Glory
Soli Deo Gloria
✠
All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27th Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.
All quotations from the Book of Concord are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 12. Edition © 1998 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Nagel, Norman. Selected Sermons of Norman Nagel: From Valparaiso to St. Louis. Frederick W. Baue, Ed. Copyright © 2004 Concordia Publishing House.
Starck, Johann Friedrich. Starck’s Prayer Book. Copyright © 2009 Concordia Publishing House.
[1] Isaiah calls Cyrus II messiah and christ (Isaiah 45,1).
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