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What I Was Meant to Be Text:
Matthew 21:33-43 According to the Word of God, the Bible, we believe that each and every person is created by God. Oh, sure we know the biological processes of human conception and birth, but God says he is behind it all. Each person is not an accident or a “choice” as they say, but is created by God. And why has God created you and him and her and them and me? What is the purpose? What has God created you to be? And here we might think about vocation, our talents and abilities, our station in life whether that be as a child or a parent, a mother or father, a worker, a public servant, a physician, a truck driver, a musician…whatever. But regardless of our vocation or station or situation, the ultimate purpose of each and every person is to glorify God, to fear, love and trust in God above all things. In today's parable the word is r-e-s-p-e-c-t, respect. To “respect” God is to fear, love, trust, glorify and praise him, to be in a relationship with Him.
Because of sin, death and the devil that original relationship and design of respect, fear, love and trust has been broken. Sin separates us from God, from each other, from health and life itself. But the design, love and will of God is still there. So helplessly are we enslaved to sin that God took it completely upon Himself to save and restore us by sending His Son to break the chains of sin and death, to reconcile us to God, to restore proper fear, love and trust in God by the forgiveness of our sins and making us, literally, a new creation by faith in Him. As our very existence is due to God's creative activity, so is our rescue and restoration due to God's gracious and loving work through Christ our Lord.
Still, in this life we continue to struggle against sin, death and the devil. Today's Old Testament reading is a scathing judgment against Israel, God's people pictured as the vineyard of his own planting but who did not produce the fruits of fear, love, and trust in God. There the Lord threatens that he will destroy his rotten vineyard. The Gospel from Matthew is also concerning the vineyard, God's people. And there are words of judgment. But here the words are not against the vineyard but against the leadership, the “tenant farmers,” those who were called and “ordained” to care for God's vineyard, God's people.
It's still Monday of Holy Week in Jerusalem, just four days before Jesus was to die by crucifixion. As last Sunday, he is still speaking to the chief priests and elders in the Temple, those charged with the pastoral leadership of the people. With the parable of the man with two sons he has just showed them that by their rejecting him they were in mortal danger of being left out of God's kingdom. Today he continues, saying, “Listen to another parable.” This parable warns that they're not only in danger of being left out, but of being thrown out of the vineyard and a new leadership installed to take their place. This parable gives us an opportunity to speak briefly about what a pastor is for and to Whom you really belong.
The parable is clear enough. In fact, in the verse immediately following this parable Matthew writes, “when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them” [Mt. 21:45]. They are the “tenants” of the vineyard expected to present the owner, God, with the fruits of his vineyard – a people who belong to God and produce the fruits of faith, the fear, love and trust of God above all things. Yet, as in the parable, throughout the history of Israel the leaders rebelled against God, rejecting the prophets, beating one, killing another, and stoning another.
In Matthew 23 we have recorded Jesus' final, scalding indictment of Israel's leadership: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord'" [Matthew 23:29-39 (ESV)].
The key to the parable is when the master sent his son, saying, “They will respect my son.” This is what the leaders, the chief priests and all pastors today are supposed to do: to help the people of God respect the Father, that is, to believe in him, to fear, love and trust in God above all things. Instead, they had the Son arrested, thrown outside the city of Jerusalem and killed him on a hill called Golgotha.
The power of this parable, as with the last one, is that Jesus draws the judgment of his enemies out of their own mouths. “What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants?” They answered, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.” Right on! They hit the nail on the head! So Jesus says, “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.” The old leadership of chief priests and elders would be replaced by the Apostles, the pastors and teachers, the priesthood of all believers.
As a pastor, as your pastor, then, I ask you to pray for me that I would faithfully lead you to know the Son that you may bear the fruit of faith, the fear, love and trust in God above all things. For everything else that is expected of a pastor, of what a pastor is for, this is the bottom line, the goal, that you may know the only true God and Jesus Christ Whom He has sent (John 6:29), that you may respect the Father through the Son, that you may be the vineyard of God's planting and bear fruit, that you may be what you were meant to be, the people of God. This is what you are meant to be: God's dear vineyard, “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” [1 Peter 2:9 (ESV)]. We pray to Christ the Vine, “Vine, keep what I was meant to be: Your branch, with your rich life in me. [LW 273:5] ___________________
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