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“Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit” (Matthew 21:33-34).
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!
Are you familiar with the term “reprise” when it is applied to a song? A reprise returns to an earlier song, often with a change in style or music that lets us hear it in a new way—like “Let It Go” in Disney’s Frozen or “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” on the Beatles album of the same name.
You might call our Gospel text a “reprise.” Jesus takes up the vineyard song God sang through Isaiah seven centuries earlier and gives it a new setting and a sharper ending. You just heard the original song in our Old Testament reading.
The vineyard Isaiah sang about was Judah and Jerusalem, God’s chosen people. God had loved them, giving them a rich, fertile land, protection from enemies, His continuous presence in the temple, and best of all, the promise of the coming Messiah. But this love song turned tragic. God’s vineyard brought forth wild grapes—idolatry, injustice, bloodshed—anything but rightly bearing the torch of a coming Savior to the world. They failed to bear good fruit.
At this point in the original song, God asked two important questions: “What more could I do…?” and “Why…?” But no one answered because they knew that God was accusing them. They had failed to produce good fruit. Despite all that God had done for them, they had turned from Him and pursued pleasure and evil. God expected the fruit of faith—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control—but the people had yielded a crop of perversion, gluttony, arrogance, greed, and mockery.
So, what would the Lord do to His vineyard? He would lay it waste (Isaiah 5:5-6). This vineyard could not be helped by pruning, hoeing, or fertilizing. It was past saving. The time for God’s judgment had arrived: the vineyard would become a dry, barren wasteland where only thorns and briars would grow.
Seven centuries later, Jesus reprises the old love song of the vineyard. Isaiah’s vineyard failed to produce good grapes; in Jesus’ parable, the vineyard bears fruit, but the tenants refuse to give the owner what belongs to him. The focus also narrows. Isaiah preached to Judah and Jerusalem generally, while Jesus directs His warning to the leaders of the people.
The landowner in Jesus’ parable is clearly God the Father, who planted His people, Israel, in the fertile land of Canaan. The wall recalls the ceremonial law, through which God kept Israel distinct from its idolatrous neighbors by regulating their diet and worship. The watchtower recalls the prophets whom God sent to watch over Israel and warn His people of danger.
The servants sent to collect the landowner’s share of the crop represent the Old Testament prophets. Jesus says that the tenants “beat one, killed another, and stoned another.” Stephen later brought the same charge against the leaders of the Jews: “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered” (Acts 7:51-53).
At this point, Jesus’ story takes an astonishing turn. What landowner, after his servants had been mistreated and killed, would send his beloved son to the same tenants? Yet this seemingly unthinkable act reveals the extraordinary patience and mercy of God. After seeing how His people treated the prophets, God still sent His Son into the world.
The tenants’ reasoning is equally astonishing. They murder the son and expect to seize his inheritance even though his father, the owner of the vineyard, is still alive. Yet selfish ambition, greed, and self-righteousness can distort judgment. The tenants forget that they are stewards and begin to act as though they were owners.
Unmistakably, Jesus’ reprise of Isaiah’s tragic love song is directed particularly to the Jewish leaders of His day. They were heirs of the promise and stewards among the nation through which the Messiah would come. They remained blessed with God’s presence and warned by God’s prophets, and God expected them to bear fruit: to welcome the Messiah and show Him to the nations. Would they heed Jesus’ reprise of the old love song, or would they repeat the tragic ending of Old Testament Israel?
The master’s final messenger, His Son, was now among them, yet they were plotting to kill Him. They would not repent, and the vineyard would be entrusted to other tenants. Within one generation, Gentiles outnumbered Jews in the Christian Church.
This turn of events had been prophesied already a thousand years earlier: “The stone that the builder rejected has become the cornerstone, this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes” (Psalm 118:22-23). In the process of constructing a building, the stone mason would select one stone and reject another. Not only did the Lord determine to make use of the stone the builders had rejected, but He also made Him the cornerstone, the most important stone in the whole building because it is the one upon which all the rest of the building is aligned.
Jesus warns the chief priests and the Pharisees, “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him” (Matthew 21:43-46). As they plot and scheme to put Jesus to death, He warns them that they will destroy themselves.
Whether a large stone falls on a man or a man falls on a large stone, the stone will not be the one harmed. God’s judgment upon these leaders would be swift, terrible, final, and inescapable. Even though “they perceived that [Jesus] was speaking about them,” they sought to arrest Him and continued plotting His death. Their refusal to repent shows how fiercely unbelief resists even the clearest warning of God’s Word.
What about you? When Jesus retells this old love song today, will it end differently among us? Two thousand years later, His words address not only the chief priests and Pharisees but also every hearer who has received the gifts of God’s vineyard.
Like God’s people of old, you, too, have been placed in God’s vineyard by His grace. Here God lavishly supplies everything that nurtures the fruit of faith: His means of grace. In Holy Baptism, God makes you His dear child and gives you His Holy Spirit, faith, salvation, forgiveness, and eternal life. As He once sent His prophets, the Lord now sends His servants—pastors—who call you to repentance and faith through His Word of Law and Gospel.
Above all, God sent you His Son, Jesus Christ. He fulfilled the Law in your place through His perfect obedience. He gave Himself into death on the cross and rose again on the third day to redeem you from your sins and set you free from your greatest enemies—the devil and death. The fruit of His cross is salvation and eternal life. Jesus still comes to you in His Supper, feeding you His very body and blood for the forgiveness of your sins and the strengthening of your faith.
We sing this old love song among us today so that we may receive the One whom the Father sends and bear the fruit He desires. The failures of the tenants warn us not to presume upon the kingdom entrusted to us. The fruit of God’s vineyard is repentance, faith, and the love for God and neighbor that flows from faith—all that Christ, God’s Son, comes to nurture in us. So how is that fruit appearing in your life?
We repeat the tragic ending of the old love song when we act as unfaithful tenants—refusing the Son who comes to us through Word and Sacrament and failing to bear the fruit of faith in love toward God and neighbor.
Too often we fail to bear this fruit of love for God and neighbor in the vocations in which He has placed us. We do not fear, love, and trust in God above all things. We despise preaching and God’s Word rather than holding it sacred and gladly hearing and learning it. We do not speak for the voiceless and defenseless, including unborn babies whom society has deemed inconvenient, too costly, less important than our “reproductive rights,” or even “inhuman” or “non-persons.” We do not look for ways to help and support our neighbor personally in every physical need, but trust that government programs will solve the problem without our direct involvement. We do not protect our neighbor’s reputation, speak well of him, or explain everything in the kindest way; instead, we gossip and believe the worst. We do not trust God and thank Him for what He has given us, but look with envy upon the material blessings others have received.
Because of such sin, we deserve to lose our place in the kingdom and to suffer eternal death. Yet God did not abandon His vineyard or its tenants. He sent His Son, Jesus, to save them. Jesus faithfully completed His mission to seek and save the lost. Though He was rejected and killed, God raised Him from the dead and made Him the cornerstone of His Church. All who believe in Him have eternal life.
So repent. Repent and believe! Today you are blessed once again, for God’s Son comes to you. He comes not to condemn you, but to sing the song of your salvation—the eternal reprise of the love song of the vineyard—and to bring you grace and mercy, forgiveness and peace, salvation and eternal life. Go forth and serve the Lord with gladness. You are forgiven for all of your sins.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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