Lent 5C, 2025

Text: Luke 20:9-20

Title: A Place in the Parable

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If you had been the father in last week’s parable, how would you have reacted when the younger son came slinking home after wasting all your money in the far-off country?

Would you have run to meet him?  Would you have showered him with gifts?  Would you have thrown a party for him?

Or would you have waited to see if he had truly changed and was sincere?  Would you have taken him up on his offer to work for you? 

And what about the older son?

Would you have gone out of the party and pleaded with him to come in and join you?

Or would you have just let him stay outside. “If he wants to miss out on the celebration, it’s his loss,” right?

The mercy and forgiveness of the Father, His love towards both of His sons is unbelievable.  It’s far beyond what we would normally do ourselves.

What about today’s parable?  Would you have been as patient as the landlord was with those tenants?  The ones who beat up and mistreated three of his servants?

Would you have kept sending more and more of them, even your own Son?

Or would you have called the cops after they stiffed the first one?  Would you have evicted them after they refused to pay their rent the first time?

What we see in both of these parables, and many others besides, is the unbelievable, the incredible love and patience that God has for his people, especially when they don’t deserve it.

That’s how it played out in the history of Israel of course.

After Adam and Eve sinned, God didn’t have to promise a Savior.  He didn’t have to provide a solution to their problem.  He could have just left them to suffer in the mess that they had made.

Over and over again throughout the history of Israel, God continued to be patient.  He continued to offer second chances.

Just think of the Exodus and how many times the people grumbled and rebelled against Moses.

Just think of the time of the Judges and how many the people just did what was right in their own eyes.
Just think of kings Saul and David and Solomon and the many ways that they messed up.

It got so bad that the people were eventually exiled into Babylon.

And even then, the Lord had mercy on His people and brought them back.

Over and over again God was patient.  He sent prophet after prophet after prophet to His people to call them to repent and to trust in Him once more.

He was not being unreasonable.

He was not asking them for something that they could not do.

He had given them everything- a land in which to live, victory over their enemies, blessings spiritual and temporal.

But over and over again they simply refused to give back to the Lord what belonged to Him in the form of worship and obedience.

How has it been with you?

How do you respond when the Lord requests that you give Him what belongs to Him?  How do you react when the Lord asks you for a portion of your time, for a share of your income, for the love and honor and devotion that belongs to Him alone?

Do you gladly and freely give what He asks? Or do you blame and abuse His messengers?  Do you try to pretend as though everything is yours and you don’t owe Him anything?

The Lord is patient.  The Lord is forgiving.  But there will eventually be a day of reckoning. 

The landlord in the parable would eventually come and take the vineyard away from those tenants.

Those who rejected Jesus would eventually see their temple destroyed and their city laid to ruin.  If they rejected the Son, then the Lord would come and give the vineyard to others.

Jesus knows what will happen.

Jesus knows that the leadership in Jerusalem is just days away from arresting Him, mistreating Him, casting Him out of the vineyard and killing Him.

How would you react if you knew that was the plan? 

I would imagine that you’d follow the example of Peter and try to stop Jesus from going to Jerusalem in the first place. 

But, thankfully, Jesus continues to come, knowing all that will happen to Him, knowing all that He will suffer.

How it goes with you will ultimately depend on what you do with Jesus.

Jesus is like a huge stone.

That stone can be a bad thing, a dangerous thing.

If you reject it, if you trip over it and fall, or if it falls on you, it will be the end of you, just like the Jewish people of old.

However, if you see that stone for what it is, the perfect stone to build your life on, life will be different.

Jesus is the cornerstone.

He must come first.

You can’t fit a cornerstone in after you’ve started building.  You can’t just cram it in somewhere in the middle. 

The cornerstone has to come first.  You have to start with it, and then build the rest of the building around it.

If you have the right stone, it will give strength to the building, so that it will stand no matter what storms or trials come.

If you have the right stone, it will be straight and true, and the rest of the building will have walls that are plumb and level and right.

It is the same way with Jesus.

If you try to fit Jesus into your life anywhere other than first, it doesn’t work.

You can’t just fit Jesus in when you happen to have some spare time, a Sunday off when you’ve got nothing better to do.

You can’t just listen to Jesus when you’ve already made a decision, and He happens to agree with you.

For Jesus to be your cornerstone He must be the starting point, and you must build your entire life around Him.

As an example, consider Paul.  Before His conversion, Paul had a great life.  He was born into the right family, he was good and obedient in keeping the law, he was smart, he studied hard and was respected by the people.

But Paul couldn’t fit Jesus into that.  He could just add Jesus as another part of his life.

For Paul to accept Jesus, it meant acknowledging that everything else was worthless, trash, garbage.

For a long time Paul resisted.  He rejected Jesus and he persecuted the church. Until finally Jesus appeared to Paul, and he came to his senses.

After that experience, Paul’s life was different. To the outsider it was much worse. Paul was now a homeless nomad.  He was constantly being beaten up and thrown in jail.  He was an outcast.

But Paul was good with that, because now his life was built on Christ.  Now he was no longer trusting in his own righteousness, but in Jesus’ righteousness. Now, with Jesus as the cornerstone, the rest of his life fell into place, and no amount of persecution or hardship could knock it down.  He could be confident even in the face of death itself, because Paul knew that he would rise on the last day.

And when you build your life on Christ, you will find that your love, your forgiveness flows from Him and from His strength.

You’ll find that you actually have some patience and some mercy for the folks in your life who mistreat you and reject you.

You’ll find that you do have some forgiveness for those who come crawling back to you after making a mess of their life.

You’ll find that you do want to make peace and bring folks together rather than letting them stew in their jealousy and self-righteousness.

But that only comes from Jesus, from receiving Him as the Son of God, from recognizing that you are merely a tenant, and that everything that you have comes from the Lord and should be given back to Him.

Return to the Lord Your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

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