God’s Terrible, Remarkable, Wonderful Exchange - Sermon for the 5th Sunday in Lent

Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 6^th, Year of Our + Lord 2025
Our Redeemer and Our Savior’s Lutheran Churches, Custer and Hill City, SD
God’s Terrible, Remarkable, Wonderful Exchange

Audio: https://beyondthesanctuary.podbean.com/e/god-s-terrible-remarkable-wonderful-exchange-sermon-for-the-5th-sunday-in-lent/

   Listen up.  Jesus wants you to pay attention.  Previously when our Lord has spoken to us in parables, they could be hard to follow; they seem made for pondering.  But today Jesus is being pretty obvious.  It’s time, you see, time for all that God has been teaching and doing to come to a climax.  It’s time that everyone understands exactly what is going on.  It’s time for an old thing, and a new thing, and Jesus doesn’t want you to miss it.  Jesus in Luke’s Gospel is just a few days from the Cross.  We are less than two weeks from Good Friday, almost to the end of our annual reconsideration, in sometimes excruciating detail, of the central events of salvation.  So it’s a good time for us to have Jesus lay things out in a very clear way, just as it was good for the crowds and Scribes and Priests in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. 

     Some parables are tricky, often the 12 disciples had to ask Jesus privately what they meant.  Not today.  We have a man who owns a vineyard, and some tenants who have been put in charge of the vineyard, and we have the man’s servants, sent to gather the owner’s share of the fruit, and we have his son.  Not too many characters.  You can follow the story.  So listen up. 

   The man planted a vineyard, but he had to go away, for a long time.  God is the man, and the vineyard is God’s people in this world.  God created the heavens and the earth in order to dwell with us.  But He had to go away, for our own good.  God had to leave, He had to withdraw His visible presence from the earth, because of our sin.  The man in the parable isn’t negligent, going to another country.  God had to leave, or we sinners would have been to be destroyed.  God’s visible absence from the world is an act of mercy, a postponement of judgment, allowing mankind to continue living, and making time for God to work out His plan. 

    The tenants are left in charge of the vineyard.  God’s special people, the children of Abraham, the Israelites, always had leaders.  Moses, Joshua, Elijah, David.  And in Jesus’ day, the Pharisees, the Scribes, the Chief Priests, and the Elders, the religious and social elite.  These are the tenants, put in charge of God’s vineyard, for the benefit of all Israel, and all the world.  Israel was set apart, they were special.  But they were also to be a light to the nations, the hope of all the world.  After mankind’s fall into sin, access to the LORD, the true God, was primarily through Israel, especially in their Tabernacle and Temple, God’s dwelling place, Israel’s place of worship.  Access to and the Knowledge of God that was to be administered graciously by the prophets and teachers and priests. 

    In return, what did the man expect of his tenants?  A little fruit.  That is, God wants more faithful children, from within Israel and from the world.  All the leaders needed to do was tell the truth about the LORD and administer His gifts His way, and they would have harvested bountiful fruit for the LORD. 

    But the tenants were wicked.  The man sent servants to his tenants, to collect the man’s share of the fruit.  God sent messengers to Israel, faithful prophets, faithful kings, faithful priests, faithful leaders to plead with the many faithless kings and priests and people: return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and merciful.  Follow His way; do not lead yourselves and others down the path of destruction. 

    The tenants treated the servants of the man shamefully.  They were scorned, rejected, ignored, beaten, and cast out.  In the parable, just three suffering servants.  In the history of Israel, dozens.  Elijah, Elisha, Samuel, Nathan, Jeremiah, Obadiah, Amos and Malachi, and many more.  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, cried out Jesus, 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! Luke 13:34 

    And yet, the man, the owner of the vineyard, is patient, patient beyond human understanding.  His desire to turn the hearts of the tenants borders on scandal.  “They have rejected my servants,” he asks himself, “what more can I do?  I know, I’ll send my son!  I will send my beloved son; maybe they will respect him.”  But the tenants are truly wicked. 

    The Pharisees, Scribes and Priests know the Hebrew Scripture.  They know who Jesus has to be.  They know from His teaching and His miracles that He has to be the promised Savior, the Messiah sent from God, God’s Son, come down from heaven.  But, they do not respect Him.  They hate Him, they oppose Him, because He comes to free the people, indeed the whole world, from their clutches. 

    Let’s kill him, conspire the wicked tenants, let’s kill the son, and the vineyard will be ours!  We must not lose our place, we must not lose our power.  Let’s kill the son and be free from the owner of the vineyard, forever. 

    Fools.  God had removed Himself from visible presence in the creation for our good, for our protection, so that His Holiness would not destroy us in our sinfulness.  But He can return.  And He will. 

    The wicked tenants kill the beloved son.  In their greedy arrogance, they think they can become their own masters.  Jesus asks the crowd: What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants?  No answer.  The crowd can’t say it, even though it is obvious.  So Jesus concludes the parable in the only way that we can imagine it would end: the man comes back and destroys those wicked tenants, and gives the vineyard to another.  The crowd can’t take this word.  Will God slay the leaders of Israel, and give the Kingdom to someone else?  May it never be!  God forbid!  No! 

    But this is the way, the old way, the way it has always been, ever since God’s favorite people betrayed Him.  This is the way, and this is why the Psalm declares: 'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone' (Psalm 118:22)  Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.

    It is as Jesus predicted.  The Son of Man would be betrayed into the hands of the chief priests, scribes and Pharisees, and they, the leaders of Israel, the tenants of God’s vineyard, would, with the help of the rulers of the world, murder the Son of God.  Oh, the wicked tenants.  May it never be!

    But it is.  And we ought not imagine we would have acted differently.  Why do you think the crowds were so upset by this parable, a parable so clearly not directed at them, but at the scribes and priests?   Was it respect for their leaders that led them to cry out against Jesus’ story?  Was it revulsion at the wickedness portrayed?  Or was it more personal?  Did God’s Word that day cut too close to the crowd, sharply separating the joint and marrow of their own self-righteous bones?  Did Jesus reveal the dark secrets of their hearts, too? 

    I don’t know, but it is true that given the chance, given the authority and power of the scribes and Pharisees, it is likely that anyone from the crowd of listeners would have ended up in the same place.  Even the Apostle Peter did, rebuking Jesus when He prophesied His cross.  We are all corrupt, and God’s plan offends our nature.  We are all naturally corrupt, and so we will all use power corruptly.  This is the way of the world, the old way of selfishness that prevents us from doing the things that God requires. 

    When our corruption is revealed, we realize that we live in dark and troubled days.  You may be more or less upset about the current economic turmoil we see.  But our real problems run much deeper than the threat of recession or a trade war, and their effects on our 401k’s.  Human reality is a dark and troubled reality.  God forbid, by the end of the parable it appears we are all headed to hell, we cannot seem to get ourselves off the road to destruction.  There does not seem to be any way out for us.  If the most religious people in all of Israel end up killing God’s Son, and if we are all came from the same sinful stock, if the secret thoughts of our hearts condemn us, how can we avoid the wrath of the vineyard owner? Is there any way to avoid falling into the same old way? 

    Thus says the LORD, who made a seemingly impossible dry path in the Red Sea for Israel to pass through and escape destruction.  The same rescuing LORD declares to you:  "Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. for Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

          I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

          for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert,

to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself

that they might declare my praise.

    It seems impossible, but God’s new way comes through the outworking of the world’s old way.  The same old thing, the same old sinful failures of you and me and all people are used for good, by God, through Jesus.  The Son of God would be murdered, put to death for crimes He did not commit, killed simply because He claimed to be who He is, God’s beloved Son, made to be a man, for our salvation.  And yet, the way out of our destruction is found in that death. 

   You see, God the Father gives the vineyard to His beloved Son.  There is no one else to give it to, only the Son remains faithful, only Jesus bears fruit.  Jesus was faithful in life, and death.  God the Father declared His approval as He raised Jesus from the dead, and declares the whole vineyard, indeed the whole universe, to be His. 

    And then, risen from the dead, Jesus does the unthinkable.  He draws us sinners, us rebels, back into the vineyard, by revealing that His death has washed away our sins.  He even invites the wicked tenants, the ringleaders of the rebellion, to rejoin Him in His vineyard.  Amazing grace, indeed.

  In the One Man Jesus Christ the Way of God is revealed.  The eternal Son, fully God, now also fully man, is the firstborn from the dead.  One man, unique, unlike any other.  One death, profound, a death of infinite love, a death of infinite redeeming value, the death that gives life to all who trust in Jesus. 

   This is the new thing, that God in Christ was reconciling the world to Himself, not willing that sinners should die in their sins.  God would instead have us die, and rise, with Jesus.  In making this new thing, God made use of the evil actions of the scribes and priests, the Pharisees and the Romans, in order to win forgiveness for them, and for all people.  This is what Luther called the Wonderful Exchange.  Jesus’ righteousness for your sinfulness.  Jesus’ perfect life for your broken life.  Jesus’ death in your place.  Your new life, in Jesus. 

   This is it.  This is the whole enchilada.  Every false religion is false because it rejects this new thing that God has done.  Every sinner’s only hope is to hear and believe this promise, to be taught and washed and fed by the Crucified One.  Every true good work flows from the life of Christ, that creates new hearts in believers, hearts that thrill to serve and to love, as they have been served and loved by God.  The new thing is what Jesus did on His Cross, exposing and atoning for all human sinfulness, and then sharing divine goodness and life.  This is the center. 

   The facts of the story aren’t hard to follow.  The reality is painful to hear.  But listen. Do not close your ears.  Do not believe the devil’s liars who say it didn’t happen.  Listen closely, for after the pain of the knowledge of sin comes the pure joy of God’s grace and mercy.  Everything in the whole history of the world leads to or flows from that moment, those few days in Jerusalem, when God did a new thing.  Every Law of God was fulfilled in the obedience of Christ.  Every sin is covered by His forgiving blood.  Every fruit that God desires grows from the True Vine, Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior of the World.  And so with Paul, we seek to be conformed to His image, knowing that the closer we come to Jesus, even perhaps suffering with Him, the more He will restore and fill our lives. 

   Churches will be a little fuller in the coming weeks.  Sometimes the regular attenders might grumble about that, since experience teaches us that it won’t last.  But listen: every time that sinners come to hear the story of Christ and His suffering death and resurrection, it is another opportunity for the Spirit to separate joint and marrow, and reveal the thoughts of the heart.  It is another chance for God to cut sinners away from their love of sin, which leads only to death, and implant them into the life-giving vine that is Jesus Christ. 

    So rejoice, as a few more come  to celebrate Holy Week and Easter.  Rejoice, and pray that God will work mightily, rebuking sinners, including you and me.  May God turn every sinner from our selfishness, and recreate us with His love, poured out in Jesus blood. 

  Rejoice and know that Christ has done this new thing, for you, to have you for His very own, forgiven and restored, forever and ever, Amen.