Sermon by the rev'd. John Bauerschmidt

The Fifth Sunday in Lent

The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year C
April 1, 2001
Christ Church, Covington

"Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son…" (Lk. 20:13)

It’s at this point each Lent that our focus begins to shift, as the season which has centered on our journey to Jerusalem with Jesus begins to change. We have taken a journey of renewal, the same one which we take each Lent; we have focused on our repentance and on our growth in grace. But now the journey takes a new twist, as the action takes place increasingly in the shadow of the cross. Palm Sunday lies ahead, and with it the story of the Lord’s crucifixion and death.

It is with this in mind that we hear today’s Gospel, the Parable of the Wicked Tenants. Jesus tells a story which is aimed shrewdly at the religious authorities, the scribes and chief priests of the Temple. Jesus told the story after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when the relationship between the religious authorities and himself had reached the crisis point. The scribes and Temple clergy have questioned his authority in cleansing the Temple of the moneychangers, and so Jesus tells this story which in turn questions and undermines their own authority. Jesus is no "light-weight" when it comes to an argument.

The tenants in the story are the religious leaders, who have the care of God’s vineyard, his People Israel. The responsibility they have is for a time, and when the owner of the vineyard sends slaves to claim his property, the tenants abuse the slaves and fail to render what is due. The slaves are the prophets, sent by God to claim the obedience that is owed by the People. Finally, the son and heir to the property is sent to claim the produce, and the tenants kill him. Jesus’ point is clear: he is the one with the rightful and authoritative claim to Israel, and the scribes and chief priests are busy hatching a plot against him. The religious leaders are mere usurpers, and Jesus is the true heir. Our Gospel leaves us with no uncertainty as to the effect of such a pointed and telling story: deep alarm and hostility on the part of those whose authority Jesus has claimed for himself.

The story takes on additional meaning for those of us who hear it in light of Jesus’ death on the cross. In fact, Luke’s telling of the parable includes the detail that the son of the landowner is thrown out of the vineyard and then killed. It is easy to see that Luke has the details of Jesus’ death in mind as he recounts the story. Tried in Jerusalem, crucified outside the city, the son of the story is approximated to the crucified Messiah of history.

Lent, especially as we move closer to Palm Sunday and Good Friday, focuses us increasingly on Jesus’ cross, on his crucifixion and death. Not for the sake of mere morbidity, as if the crucifixion were some nasty bit that we need to go through in order to get to the triumph of the resurrection. Not for this sake, but rather because in the sacrificial death of Christ, we discover something of the character of God. We discern there his loving purpose, in his willingness to suffer for us in the person of his Son. God could have met the human need for redemption in any way, but in no more characteristic way than in the giving of himself.

As Lent advances, we look for this character of self-offering to be formed in us. As Paul the Apostle writes in our second reading, "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead" (Phil.3:10-11). We look for this cruciform pattern in our own lives, because it is through sharing in his sufferings that resurrection life is revealed in us. "Knowing Christ" is the first step in becoming like Christ in his death, so that we may share the new life which comes through him.

The way we do this, of course, begins with God’s grace, his free gift to us. Here Paul’s own teaching about the sacraments speaks powerfully of how they connect us to that grace. First, from the Letter to the Romans, "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life" (Rom. 6:3-4). In other words, identification with Jesus’ death and resurrection through the sacrament that we share. Second, Paul in the First Letter to the Corinthians, "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?" (1 Cor. 10:16). Jesus body and blood, broken and shed and shared by the Christian people, becoming the means by which we share in the work of God in Jesus Christ.

God brings us, each Lent, into the shadow of the cross. God shows us, each Lent, that this cross reveals to us his loving character. God shares with us, not only in Lent but Sunday by Sunday, the sacraments of the cross which unite us to Christ and which give us new life in him.

The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church in Covington.

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