Wednesday after Oculi + Luke 20:1-19 + March 7, 2018


In the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Jesus tells this parable to the chief priests and the scribes in the temple on Tuesday of Holy Week. They have tried to entrap Him by inquiring as to His authority. Christ shows them their hypocrisy by turning the question of authority back on them. “The baptism of Joh – was it from heaven or from men?” The chief priests and scribes won’t answer because their answer would put them in a difficult position. They are not, after all, concerned with truth. Their concern is for their own righteousness. When they come out of their huddle and confess that they don’t know where John’s authority was from, Jesus tells them the parable of the wicked vinedressers. The parable is a brief synopsis of the entire history of Israel. The kingdom of God is the vineyard. The Jews are the vinedressers to whom the landowner leased the vineyard. The landowner wants to taste the vintage so he sends his servants, the prophets, to preach to the Jews that they are to bear the fruit of repentance: faith and good works. But the Jews beat the prophets, treated them shamefully, and even wounded a few of the prophets (though tradition tells us that several of the prophets were murdered). Finally, the landowner reasons within himself that he’ll get somewhere with these wicked tenants if he sends his beloved son. So it was that God the Father sent His only-begotten Son to Israel to bring forth the fruits of repentance and faith. Jesus has always claimed God was His Father. The evangelists record two events where the Father calls Jesus by this very name. As Jesus’ baptism, the Father says, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17), and at His transfiguration the Father says, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” (Matthew 17:5). Such is the love God the Father has for His people that He sends prophet after prophet and finally His only-begotten, beloved Son.

But the Jews reject Jesus and they reject Him to the extreme by putting Him to death. Up to this point the parable has rehearsed the Jew’s history with God’s prophets. But once the beloved son is introduced Jesus foretells His own suffering and death to happen a few days later. The wicked vinedressers conspire against the son, and thereby against the landowner, imagining that if they murder the son, the vineyard will pass to them. What will the landowner do to these wicked tenants? Destroy them and give the vineyard to those who will produce its fruits joyfully. To this the chief priests and scribes respond, “Certainly not!” They refuse to believe the landowner will come and destroy these wicked, hypocritical tenants. Surely it wouldn’t come to that! That’s quite extreme. But then Jesus drives His point straight into their hearts: “What then is this that is written: ‘The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone?” It’s as if He were saying, “You have already rejected me, but now you will do so to the utmost by murdering me, for I am the beloved Son of God the Father. And though you reject me, my Father has established me as the chief cornerstone of salvation.”

His suffering and death at the hands of the chief priests and scribes is precisely why Jesus the chief cornerstone of our salvation. His death is a solid foundation upon which our justification is built because His suffering and death is all-sufficient to atone for our sin. Not just out sin, either, but the sin of the entire world. His sufferings and death are sufficient to cover our sins because it is not the suffering and death of a mere man, but a man who is fully God. “Christ suffered for us in the flesh” (1 Peter 4:1) to atone for the sins of all mankind. Christ suffered for all men because God the Father “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). Christ dies for all mankind so that all mankind might know that God is “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). The righteousness and merit Christ earns is universal and so is the promise that is attached to it, meaning His death was for all mankind and is to be preached to all mankind as the foundation of faith, that which creates faith in our hearts and comforts us. In Christ’s suffering and death we know that God wants to forgive our sins and bring us to everlasting life. This is why Christ is the chief cornerstone.

There are two things that happen with this cornerstone, Jesus says. “Whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him into powder.” Many fall on this stone so that it breaks them. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s a very good thing to trip over this stone and be broken! Broken things can be fixed and are fixed by Christ. The preaching of Christ breaks us so that confess our sins, lament what they’ve done to us and those around us, so that look to Christ for mercy. David sings in Psalm 51:17, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart -- These, O God, You will not despise.” It’s not a bad thing at all to trip over this cornerstone so that it breaks you. Christ heals the heart that confesses its brokenness. Christ mends the contrite heart by applying the soothing word of the gospel to it, that God desires to forgive sinners when they repent and that He wants to give them Christ’s righteousness out of sheer grace and fatherly mercy. Thus Christ breaks us often so that He might remove our sins from us, teaching us to hate them, and simultaneously sets us up on the stone, so that our faith is founded upon the gospel that Christ dies for all men and wants all men to be saved through faith in Him.

But on whomever it falls, it will grind him into powder,” Jesus says of the chief priests and scribes and all those who reject repentance and true faith in Him. It is a glorious thing to fall on this stone. It is a terrible fate to reject God’s chosen chief cornerstone and have it fall on you. It doesn’t break those it falls on. It crushes them, grinding them into power. This is the judgment upon all who reject Christ and try to build their salvation on the foundation of themselves and their own good works. This is why the chief priests and scribes are filled with such rage and hatred for Jesus, for “that very hour they sought to lay hands on him. . . for they knew He had spoken this parable against them.” They did not want to repent of their sins. They did not even want to admit they had sins. This should serve as a warning to us, who have tripped over this chief cornerstone and been broken and healed by the gospel, lest we begin to trust that we are righteous of ourselves and need no repentance.

The chief priests thought to kill Christ, but it was through His death that He became what St. Peter calls “a living stone, rejected indeed by men but chosen by God and precious” (1 Peter 2:4), for though He died, He rose from the dead on the Third Day, never to die again. So Christ gives life to all who believe the gospel, spiritual life which is faith, and the promise of bodily resurrection on the Last Day, even as He rose from the dead. Peter goes on: “you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Though you may be broken by this cornerstone, rejoice, for He heals the brokenhearted and promises you the full remission of all your sins, making you living stones in the holy house of his church. Offer spiritual sacrifices, the praise of your lips and a holy life lived according to His holy Word, for you are not those ground to power, but broken andhealed.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

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