Text: Luke 20:9-19
Theme: “For Want of Grapes”
5th Sunday in Lent
March 13, 2016
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
+In
the Name of Jesus+
9 He went on
to tell the people this parable: “A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some
farmers and went away for a long time. 10 At harvest
time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit
of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 11 He sent another servant, but that one
also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. 12 He sent still a third, and they wounded
him and threw him out.
13 “Then the
owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love;
perhaps they will respect him.’
14 “But when
the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. ‘This is the heir,’ they
said. ‘Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 15 So they threw him out of the vineyard
and killed him.
“What then will the owner of the
vineyard do to them? 16 He will come
and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.”
When the people heard this, they said,
“God forbid!”
17 Jesus looked
directly at them and asked, “Then what is the meaning of that which is written:
“‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone’[a]?
18 Everyone who
falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be
crushed.”
19 The teachers
of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately,
because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid
of the people.
There are actually two
Gospel readings on deck for this the 5th Sunday in the season of
Lent. You just heard the parable of the
tenants from Luke, chapter 20. The
reaction to that story only turned up the pressure on the storyteller, our
Lord. Luke reports: “The teachers of the law and the chief
priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they new he had
spoken this parable against them. But
they were afraid of the people.”
The question here – as in
so many other areas of life -- is what to do with Jesus. “We want to throw him in jail, but that might
cause a riot.” They didn’t know what to
do with Jesus. They knew what they WANTED to do, but, like certain kinds of
medications advertised on TV, that option had a list of negative side effects.
As I mentioned, there are
two Gospel readings. So, keeping a
finger at Luke 20, we flip ahead to John, chapter 12. Verses 1-11 give us the lovely account of
Mary – the sister of Martha and Lazarus – pouring expensive perfume on Jesus’
feet. This particular perfume, pure
nard, was not something you might today find on the bargain aisle at CVS or
Walgreens. If it were there, it would,
at the very least, be under lock and key.
One scholar has suggested that, factored for inflation and in today’s currency,
the pint of nard would cost roughly ten thousand dollars.
Nard was distilled and
derived from an herb called “Spikenard” which comes from the Valerian
family. It grew in the foothills of the
Himalaya mountain range. The scent of
nard has been described as “intense, warm, fragrant, and musky.” For hundreds of years, nard was thought to
evoke the smell of the lost Garden of Eden.
And eventually, it came to refer to any perfume “as long as it was
exquisite.”
Not so exquisite is the
reaction to this usage of nard on the dusty, dirty feet of Jesus. In ancient literature, Horace offered to send
Virgil an entire barrel of his very best wine in exchange for a tiny vial of
nard. Jesus’ feet got a whole pint of
it, and Mary wiped it with her hair.
Judas Iscariot, a disciple who would later betray Jesus, sees the goings
on and declares: “Why wasn’t this
perfume sold and the money given to the poor?”
It sounds reasonable to me. After
all, who of us hasn’t had a mother or someone else tell us, when we were kids,
not to “waste anything.” John reports
what was really going on. Judas “did not
say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief….”
In Luke 20’s parable of
the tenants, the pressure came from the “chief priests and teachers of the law”
– the religious establishment. In John
12, it came from a member of Jesus’s own inner circle.
You may remember that
Mary’s brother, Lazarus, was raised from his grave. Some think that Jesus was there in Bethany
celebrating with Mary, Martha, and the resuscitated Lazarus. John reports that a crowd had come not only
to see Jesus but Lazarus as well. Then,
finally, John ends of the account of the proceedings in that lowly, little
world which was the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus: “So the chief priests made plans to kill
Lazarus as well, for on account of him many of the Jews were going to Jesus and
putting their faith in him.”
When the pressure is on
for you, where to you put your faith?
Or, stated differently, who do you trust?
In a wonderful sermon on
John 12, the Rev. Prof. Blair Monie declares:
“Judas kept the bag, but Mary broke the box.” When the pressure is intense, do you “keep
the bag or break the box”?
In Luke 20, it was all
for want of grapes. That’s what the
vineyard owner wanted: grapes! Actually, that owner was entitled to them. He or she owned the vineyard; he or she
rented it out to farmers. Everyone was on the same page; each had his
role and responsibility. Therefore, it
was a given; it was understood and expected that, periodically, the owner would
want his/her grapes. That’s the way it
worked; that was the harmony; that assured the well-being -- if not the paychecks -- of everyone involved.
However, the vineyard
owner was not there. I wonder if Jesus
alluded to this at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus when he said: “The poor you will always have with you, but
you won’t always have me.”
The owner reaches out for
want of grapes. He sends a servant. That did not work out. The tenant farmers beat that servant and sent
him away empty-handed. Owner gets wind
of this, and – curiously! – sends another servant. This one gets the same nasty treatment and
even worse. A third servant is sent and
it’s the same outcome. The vineyard
owner, for want of grapes, appears to be insane; he keeps doing the same thing
over and over again expecting a different result.
Finally, the vineyard
owner – in the shocker of all time – sends his own Son for want of grapes. “I love my Son; surely they (the tenant
farmers) will respect Him.”
It didn’t work out that
way. The tenant farmers see the owner’s
son coming. “This is the heir,” they
say. “Let’s kill him, and the inheritance
will be ours.” They threw him out and
killed him.
It’s not difficult to
line up who is who in this story. The
vineyard owner is God. The servants he
sends that the tenant farmers reject are all the leaders and judges and prophets
that God sent to His people down through the years. More often than not, they were rejected. The Son of the vineyard owner is the Son of
God – even Jesus Christ. And the tenant
farmers are the religious establishment.
They think that the inheritance, the good gifts of God, belong to no one
else but them.
When the pressure was on
for them, the last thing they could do was look at things differently. They did what they always did; they held on
to what they thought belonged to them alone:
the inheritance. They held on to
the bag, but didn’t break the box. They
trusted only in themselves – in their morals, their good works, their ethics,
their devotion to God.
When the pressure is on,
when the powers that be want us to produce the grapes, we resent that; we think
we don’t deserve to be under such stress; we’re “entitled” to so much
more.
But Jesus – friend of
Mary, Martha, and Lazarus; son of the vineyard owner and Son of God – will have
his nard and will have his grapes. His
desire is not to hold on to His inheritance but to give it away. He is not motivated by resentment but rather
by love.
With him we can let go of
the bag and break the box. The aroma of
Christ, the pure nard of the Gospel – intense, warm, fragrant, an musky, will
dissipate, permeate, and overcome the pressure. With Him, as our crucified and risen Lord
and best friend, we can produce the grapes – grapes that produce a vintage that
gladdens the heart of God and all of God’s children.
Amen.
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