The events in today's Gospel happened on the Tuesday of Holy Week.  This was midway between that triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and the arrest in Gethsemane a couple of days later.  This was Jesus’ last public appearance in the temple.  The next time He came into the temple, it would be under guard in order to appear before the Sanhedrin before they sent Him to Pontius Pilate for crucifixion. It’s here that Jesus speaks a parable familiar to our ears, that about a vineyard.

Jesus tells of a man who plants a vineyard and let it out to tenants This setting would have been something that all the people would understand.  Renting out vineyards was a common practice just as renting out farm land is common today. Most of the people who listened to the story would quickly know that the vineyard represented God's people. This was a common picture throughout the history of God’s people.   The owner of the vineyard would be God the Father.  The tenants who cared for the vineyard represented the Jewish religious establishment including the scribes and the chief priests who were in the crowd listening.  The servants who came looking for the fruit of the vineyard were God's prophets.  The owner's son would be none other than Jesus Himself.

The meaning of this is fairly simple and we all have heard it before.  This parable is God’s salvation history.  God is the owner sending his servants over and over again, the prophets to his people Israel and they are killed by them.  Until finally God sends His Son, but the same fate comes to Him. As the wicked tenants threw the son outside the vineyard and then killed him in the efforts to gain the inheritance for themselves, so also the corrupt Jewish leaders sent Jesus out of town to die on a cross. 

But that doesn’t stop God.  What man had intended for evil, God used for the good of all.  Jesus quotes from Psalm 118, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”  Jesus, who was the rejected stone, conquered sin, death, and the power of the devil with His holy life, His suffering, His death on a cross, and His resurrection from the dead.  Unlike the son in the parable who stayed dead, Jesus Christ, the stone, who was rejected, didn't stay dead.  He is now the living cornerstone for me, for you and for all who believe.  This is the Gospel message which we pass on.  1 Corinthians 1:23-24 "²³We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, ²⁴but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."

Well, that vineyard can also stand for the church today.  We may not kill the prophets, but we all too easily allow them to gather dust as they lie about on coffee tables and bookshelves.  Today, the words of the prophets live in the pages of our Bibles and all we have to do to shut them up is place them back on the shelf.  The people who killed the prophets might have thought they hated the prophets, but in reality, they hated the Word of God that spilled out of their mouths.  They hated the constant reminder that they were sinners in need of God's grace.  The only way they could get rid of those words was to kill the body that they came in.  We may not kill the prophets, but we can do something far easier: ignore them.  All we need to do to reject the message from the owner is to stay home on Sunday morning and keep God’s Word on the bookshelf.

Invitation to re-grasp what we lose sight of easily.  It’s easy to forget a basic and underlying truth.  Why does our congregation exist?  To bear fruit, which belongs to the owner of the vineyard.  The pastor serves as the tenant farmer sent to work in the church and give God what is His.  This church isn’t my church.  The church doesn’t belong to the Ministry Council or to the Board of Elders.  This is God’s field. He has planted faith by the proclamation of the Word. He waters and nourishes by Baptism and Communion.  He expects the fruits of His labor to flourish, fruit of the Spirit, fruit of sharing the love of Christ, fruit of growing as God’s people and vineyard.

There is no hint that the vineyard not is being fruitful.  It’s that those in position of authority who should be sharing the fruit aren’t willing to give it.  You don’t have to look very far to see that corruption of the sinful nature still affects those in leadership positions in the church.  It seems like there’s a never-ending media frenzy of clergy cover-ups, abuse, and sin.  But’s it not just them. Everyone of us here struggles with the sinner inside of us who wishes nothing else than to steal what belongs to God, to hoard it for ourselves, to take the inheritance and make it ours by our own self-righteous efforts.

While we don’t always bear the fruit we should, and are tempted to hoard the fruits of faith we bear for our own glory, we have a Savior who suffered extreme rejection for us and is now alive and the true object of saving faith.  The rejected stone that becomes the cornerstone shows us that all is not lost.  Rejection has, and will, occur.  Zion Lutheran Church could crumble and fall apart.  Christianity could disappear from America.  Lutheranism could disappear from the world.  But even if it did, God’s Church will go on.  God’s mission will succeed, regardless of rejection.  Rejected by the religious leaders of the day, God exalts the Son, and builds His Church upon that Rock.  One may stumble over the rock or be crushed by it.  All who reject Christ will feel its sharpness and pain.  And yet upon this rock, God plants and builds His vineyard.  God’s vineyard will exist, even if He is the only worker.  God’s vineyard, the Church, will produce fruit.  Because the son of the owner, Jesus Himself, is the cornerstone that establishes God’s Church forever.