Mark 11:27-12:12 (Mt 21:31-46): Tenant Farmers.

Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army 08 March 2015, 25 July 2010; Nipawin 21 June 2009; and Warehouse Mission 614 in Toronto, 20 May, 2018; by Captain Michael Ramsay

To read the 2009 sermon on Matthew 21:31-46, click here: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2009/06/matthew-2133-46-john-31617-tenant.html

To read the 2018 sermon, click here: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2018/05/mark-1127-1212-mt-2131-46-resentful.html

When Sarah-Grace was about Heather’s age now (4), she played soccer in a league up in Nipawin and Tisdale where we lived and I was one of her coaches. We actually won the whole tournament one year. It was good. I think of my role, when I am coaching, as more of an encourager than a coach per sae. I like to try to rally the troops and cheer the team on - celebrate their successes with them. I find myself often calling out from the sidelines ‘Go so-and-so go!’ ‘Go score a goal!’ or ‘pass to so-and-so, she’s open’ or more commonly, ‘Goalie wake up!’ ‘Goalie, don’t lie on the ground!’ or ‘Goalie, stop talking to your friend and untangle yourself from the net – the ball is coming’… encouragements like that.

I remember this one game. Sarah-Grace made an excellent header. The ball came right to her and she headed it to her teammate – that was really quite something, particularly at this age, so at the break I complimented her on her head ball and she, in front all the parents, told me her secret. She said, ‘Dad, you know how I did the head ball? …I saw the ball coming to me but I forgot to move out of the way’. I like being a dad. It is a lot of fun. And being a coach of your kids’ teams can be fun and it can be a bit of work too.

Here in Mark (cf. Mt 21:31b-46, Lk 20:1-19) we read about an employer who, as Jesus tells us, has a bit of a challenging team working for him. This businessman is in the grape business. He is farmer of sorts and it is recorded in Mark 12:1 that he put a bit of work into his farm. (He must love it!) It says that he plants his vineyard, he puts a wall around it, he builds a pit for a wine press, and he even builds a watchtower (cf. Isa 5:1-7 and Ps 80:6-16). It sounds like it is a pretty good setup that he has here. It says here that he could even afford to go on vacation or a family trip or a business trip of some sort; it says that he had enough time and money that he could leave the vineyard. This is pretty good especially remembering that all this is happening in first century Palestine. It says that he could afford to go away and hire the fields out to some tenant farmers not unlike a number of people who do that in this area today.

Now the absentee landlord’s fields, his vines, are doing pretty well. He is still away doing whatever he is doing – sitting in his big corporate office or on the beach in Florida, Texas or in Arizona or wherever it is that the rich farmers spend their time when they aren’t at home. The landlord is away and it is time to collect his rent. The harvest is in and he wants his cut. He wants his share so he sends some of his employees up from the big city – briefcases, laptops, and calculators in hand (okay their were neither briefcases and laptops nor calculators then) – to collect the rent and it says in Verses 3-5 that the tenant farmers, the fruit pickers, the contractors working the land, want to renegotiate their contract or something like that…it says in Verse 4-5 that they seize his employees, they grab his servants and they beat some slaves severely, wound others and they even kill some. These farmers aren’t very nice to the landlord’s employees at all.

Now when the landlord hears about all this, what does he do? Well, what would you do? What would you do if you rented out your land for a season so that you could head down south and you send some property management company to go get the rent and they are beaten and killed? What are you going to do? Call the RCMP, right? Get the authorities. You’re going to want to do something!

What does the landlord do? This landlord just keeps sending more servants (12:5). Now I don’t know how keen I would be to head out to collect the rent after hearing what had happened to the others. Nonetheless the employees are good and the employees. The Landlord sends more and more of them to get the rent from these tenant farmers and just like their predecessors, they are l met with resistance, beatings, and death.

I don’t know about you but if I were the employer I would be getting quite upset right now. I have been a landlord before. I know what it is like when your tenants try to pull the ‘midnight move’. I know what it is like when they don’t want to pay their rent. I also used to be a magazine publisher and I know what it is like when your clients give your employees a really bad time and don’t want to pay them – It isn’t good. After all, good help isn’t all that easy to come by – and in our story today the tenant farmers are even killing them off. So what does the landlord do? Does he call the residential tenancy board? Does he call the American ATF or an ERT (SWAT) team to storm the compound? Does he act like a US President and order a drone attack on the vineyard or an air strike on their families? This landlord is a powerful landlord. He can do the ancient equivalent to all that. He can literally have their heads but what does he do?

Remember that Jesus, God’s son, is telling the story. We read that this landlord is a loving father who has absolute faith in the ability of his son. Verse 6: he says, ‘they will respect my son.’ They don’t. The tenant farmers don’t respect his son. Verse 7: “But the tenants said to one another ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.” Verse 8, “So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.”

Jesus stops the story here and he asks those listening to the story, Verse 9, “‘what then will the owner of the vineyard do?’ He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others” He will kill the tenants and give the land to others who will pay the rent and will give him what is due.

Jesus is telling this parable to the Jewish leaders who are in the crowd he is addressing, Mark 11:27: The chief priest, the teachers of the law and the elders of the people - and Matthew 21:41: the Pharisees - have all asked Jesus upon what authority he is doing his ministry.[1] This parable is part of his answer and he tells the elders and he tells the chief priests and he tells the Pharisees who are present  – The Matthew version of this story is quite specific – he tells them plainly 21:43 “…the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who would produce its fruit.” Mark 12:12, “Then the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd; so they left him and went away.”[2]

They knew what he was talking about. Do we know what he is talking about? God, the landlord, sends his prophets, the servants, to check up on the tenants and how they are doing at looking after his vineyard and -as we know- the Israelites and their leaders stoned and even killed many of the prophets of God (cf. 1 Ki 18:4, 13; Jer 26:20-23; 2 Chr 24:21-22; and Matt 23:37; Heb 11:37). God, the landlord, then sends his own son to the people chosen to tend his vineyard and the Israelites and their leaders kill him and because they kill him, those who reject the landlord and his son, those who reject Jesus die outside of the vineyard and the vineyard is given to others.[3]

You and I here today, how are we doing with what God is entrusting us?[4]  Do we heed his servants when they are sent with messages or to collect our rent? What do we do when Jesus shows up to tell us what we need to do? Do we obey him? Do we pay our rent?

This is an important question. Jesus is the ultimate authority. He is God’s only begotten son who was killed (and raised from the dead) and if we reject him like many leaders and other Judeans in the first century, we will not have the blessing of remaining in the eternal vineyard; we will die. As this is the case, let us make sure that we submit to our master, that we serve him faithfully now and forever.

There is even more to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We know that God knows that Jesus is going to die before he ever sends him into the world (Cf. Jn 3,15). We know that Jesus’ death is necessary so that anyone can live and have eternal life. We know that He chooses to send His son to die so that we can live. Still some will hear even this story and instead of concentrating on the authority of Jesus and the sacrifice of God they will fixate on the fact that God punishes these farmers and ask how come there is so much death? How come God punishes some people? In our world today we often hear the question, how can a supposedly loving God arbitrarily punish people and even condemn some to Hell?”

He doesn’t. Listen carefully to what I am saying here… Jesus doesn’t condemn people to Hell (Jn 3:17). Hell is real but Jesus does not send people there. Those who are going there, like the tenant farmers in our story today who lose their lives and our removed from the vineyard, they make that decision all on their own. Those who stand condemned, condemn themselves by denying (like the Apostle Paul makes clear in Romans 1 and 2) what is plainly obvious to everyone.[5] I truly believe that God gives us all we need to know in this life from our experiences and even creation itself (cf. Ro 1:18-24) just like he sent more and more servants to give the tenants more and more opportunities to repent and submit to His authority and indeed there will actually still be a time when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Ro 14:11, Phil 2:10) and then some, some who believe in the Lord and obey His commandments will spend eternity with Him in His vineyard and some, some who deny Christ (Mt 10:33) and do not obey His commandments (Jn 14:15), some who simply refuse His love will go off to the hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth (Mt 25:31ff). This is sad.

This is particularly sad because we know that God loves us. John 3:16 says that He loves the entire ‘Kosmos’. He loves us so much that He laid down His life for us (Jn 15). God loves us so much that He sent His only begotten, his only natural, his only sired Son to die so that we may live.

I can’t imagine how much this must hurt God that some of us do actually perish. I am a father. Many of us are parents here. Can you imagine if you send your son and he dies to save others but still they decide to perish anyway?

God sent His Son and His Son died so that we may live but yet some still refuse His love and some still reject His Salvation. God sent Jesus not to condemn us (Jn 3:17) but to save us but some of us refuse to obey Him. Some of us simply refuse to be saved. John 3:18: “Those who believe in Him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already…” of their own accord because, John 3:19, “people loved darkness rather than light.”

So today we are in the vineyard of that parable that Jesus told 2000 years ago. We are in the privileged position of knowing the truth that the religious leaders of Jesus day were. We have access to the light. We have knowledge of our salvation; so, I ask us in our own lives, when Jesus comes back, when God returns to the vineyard will we experience the same fate as the tenant farmers, those religious leaders in Jesus’ day? Will we experience the same fate of those who chose to perish by serving themselves instead of God or will we accept salvation that Jesus provided and live our life tending to in his perfect vineyard. He is even now standing at the gate. It is time for us to decide. What will we do? Will we attack, deny, or ignore Him and die; or will we meet him with open arms and live? It is time to decide.

Let us pray.

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[1] M. Eugene Boring, Matthew (NIB 8: Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1995), 409: “by adding two additional parables [he incorporates] the woes into the full-blown speech (23:1-25:46).”  This parable is not meant to stand in isolation.

[2] Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 14-28. (WBC 33B: Dallas, Texas: Word Books, 1995), 612. The purpose of this series of parables then is “the depiction of the unfaithfulness of the Jewish leaders. It is for this reason Jesus asks the Jewish leaders for their opinion concerning which of these two sons was the faithful one.” The religious leaders’ response in the affirmative to Jesus question is then, through typically parabolic procedure, a self-indictment.

[3] Cf. NT Wright, “The Law in Romans 2,” Paul and the Mosaic Law, ed. James D. G. Dunn (WUNT 89; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1996), republished with English translations of German essays (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001): 136. The equality of the Gentile to the Jew before God, as expressed by Paul in Romans in no way negates the primacy of the Jews (cf. Romans 11:7, 11). Cf. Romans 11:12-13, where it is recorded that it was only “through their stumbling [that] salvation has come to the Gentiles…Now if their stumbling means riches for the world, and if their defeat means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean!.”

[4] It is important to note as Douglas J. Moo does that, “contrary to popular Jewish belief, the sins of the Jews will not be treated by God significantly different from those of the Gentiles.” Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT 6: Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996), 126. Cf. also NT Wright, The Letter to the Romans (NIB 10: Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1995), 440

[5] Cf. Michael Ramsay. “Paul and the Human Condition as Reflected in Romans 1:18-32 and 2:1-16”. Available on-line at: http://www.sheepspeak.com/NT_Michael_Ramsay.htm#Paul%20and%20the%20Human%20Condition