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.