Mark 12 1-12

Mark 12 1-12 Old Testament reading 5^th chapter of Isaiah (image a capstone)

I am glad you are here today. I’m very excited about this sermon. This is one of the texts Dr. Bailey really brought to life for me about a year and a half ago when I went to the West Coast Pastor’s Conference. His insights are just wonderful, and I will try to help you see what he sees in the text. This is an amazing parable that Jesus tells and so often as Westerners in the 21^st century can miss many of the themes and meanings Jesus is conveying to His listeners but not to us.

This parable is about the rejection of God, it is also about the shame that the religious leaders should feel for how they have conducted themselves. We seem to have lost a sense of shame in our culture; we create cultural monuments for people who are without shame…Rosie O Donnell and Donald Trump, Paris Hilton and Michael Jackson. Collectively we have lost a sense of shame, that being shamed is a bad thing. Not much makes us ashamed these days; not getting caught stealing, not getting caught cheating on our spouses, not getting stopped for speeding by the police. But there should be a sense of shame when we don’t live up to the honor of being God’s children. There should be a sense of shame when we fall short of God’s desires for our lives because of our selfishness, because of our active disobedience of the God who died to love us out of death. As we think about that, and think about Isaiah 5, let’s stand for the reading of God’s Word.

He then began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully. He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed.

He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’

But the tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. Haven’t you read this scripture:

“’The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?

Then they 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.

Let’s pray.

Ok, so we’re finally to chapter 12. We’ve gone slowly and carefully through 11 chapters in Mark, the first completed and shortest of the 4 gospels. It is thought by most scholars that Peter was somehow involved in the writing of Mark; perhaps looking over Mark’s shoulder as he wrote, perhaps relating the stories directly, perhaps even in the careful crafting of the composition of the stories in Mark. There is a carefulness and a depth to Mark that I never noticed before I heard Dr. Bailey speaking on Mark, and since then I have been blessed by Dr. Bailey’s notes and thoughts on Mark. We have traveled with Jesus, most likely through Peter’s experiences, with Jesus from His baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist through to the final week of Jesus life in Jerusalem, which is where we are now. We traveled with Jesus to many different towns, even going beyond the boundaries of Israel to minister to people. And now, having done the healings, the teachings, the arguing with religious leaders, Jesus is now in Jerusalem for the celebration of Passover, the remembrance of the event in which God won their freedom from the Egyptians. He is also, of course, in Jerusalem for the event of His death on our behalf, but we are not there yet in the story.

He has come into Jerusalem with much fanfare and cheering on a donkey; He has gone to the Temple and overturned the money changing tables and the table selling sacrificial animals for the pilgrims coming to the Temple to make sacrifices. His authority was challenged by the chief priests who were embarrassed by His actions, and then Jesus told today’s parable about a vineyard and the tenant farmers. You might have noticed the Old Testament reading today was alluded to by Jesus. Listen again to the beginning of Isaiah 5… “I will sing for the one I love, a song about his vineyard. My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.” Now listen to the beginning of today’s parable…

You should immediately see how these texts are related. Jesus deliberately uses words like “watchtower” to trigger their memories. Immediately the chief priests know what Jesus is going to say. They are the bad fruits; they have been producing bad fruits. They aren’t going to like what Jesus has to say to them. They haven’t liked it already, and now it is going to get worse. They have misused the gift that God is. They have tried to manipulate and control God. They have led the people to believe that God can be controlled and manipulated. But God will not be used, manipulated or controlled. I was talking to someone within the last year who told me exactly what sort of a God he believed in. God was powerful and loving. So far so good. But his God did not demand anything from him; no sacrifices of time, energy or money. His God was completely non-judgmental, everything was cool. He had a god of his own making, which sort of lines up a little with the real God, but not totally. He has imagined a god he can control, a god he can manipulate; when in reality he has nothing. He has a figment of his own imagination. Which is what the chief priests were leading the people of the covenant in worshipping.

Do we really want a god we can control? Would you really want a god who isn’t really God, but your own imagination? I don’t think I would want that kind of God. I desire to worship the real God, and when He says things that are unsettling to my ear, that is my cue to listen harder, rather than dismiss what I don’t like. Because my friend’s god isn’t the real God. I want, and I hope we want, to follow the real God. We don’t make god over in our image of Him, but because God is God, and we are not, we have to let God be God and simply worship Him, follow Him, listen to Him, and heed His voice. We can certainly bring our cares and concerns to God. He wants to know them because He loves us and wants to know us better. But we cannot command that God heal this or intervene in that situation. God built a good situation, turned it over to people, who promptly remade His worship in their image and that was the big problem. It still is the big problem. We desire to worship God, not ourselves. When we say what God can do and cannot do, then we begin to worship our own imaginations. God cannot do evil, because He defines in Himself goodness and righteousness. Any other restraints on God are our problems, not His. Sorry about that tangent, let’s get back to the text.

But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully. He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed.

One of the underlying themes that I overlooked every time I read this passage was the theme of shame. Shame has largely been dropped from our vocabulary and radar, but in the Middle East shame is still very important. When you have lost honor, you have acted shamefully and have brought shame on your whole family. We have guilt, which is similar, but more private. These tenant farmers were acting shamefully. They were taking the gift of the land, the ability to make a living and produce money for their families and they shamefully got greedy, and decided they wanted to be in charge, rather than the owner. All the messengers, obviously the prophets of the Old Testament, were treated shamefully by the tenants. The tenants brought shame on themselves for their actions. They not only ignored the messengers, the prophets, but also beat and sometimes killed them. The tenants had been warned. And they decided to ignore the warning, they decided that they knew what was best for themselves. How many warnings will we get before we finally listen to the news that God loves us and knows what is best for us…Himself.

That is really at the heart of sin, that we know what is best for us. We know more than God about what is the best life, the best way to live, we know how to live the best. Just like the chief priests and Temple attendants, who knew what was best for them and for the people, even though it wasn’t the best, really, we think we know what is best for us. We know that having the most money is the best. We know that it is fine for us to do…whatever it is we want to do. We think we know the essence of freedom is doing whatever we want to do, not service to God. When we hear the call to come back to God, and live for Him, we can act out of anger and hurt the messenger like the Jewish leadership, we can ignore the call like so many generations that have come and gone since Moses lead people out of Egypt, or we can repent, turn toward God and let Him renew us in His power. The choice, amazingly, is ours.

He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’

But the tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.

The owner gives one last chance to the tenants to redeem themselves, to repent and act honorably and respectfully toward the owner. The owner sends His only Son to the tenants to reason with them. But instead of respect, the shame of the tenants rises to a whole new level as they kill the Son. In fact, a better translation of “they will respect my son” is “They will feel ashamed before my son!” These tenants were without shame. They were willing to do anything. Jesus is again predicting His death within the next few days. But there is something deeper here; there usually is in Mark.

Part of what we miss in all this is that if a person is a squatter on a piece of property in the Middle East for 3 years, then they have some legal rights concerning the property. If they don’t pay any rent for 3 years, then on some level they have some rights with regard to the property. That doesn’t mean they automatically own the land, but that they might have to be compensated when the land is sold or built upon. But if they can kill the heir, then the land will become totally theirs. This is a little background that we miss because we aren’t a part of that culture. These tenants are not satisfied with the possibility of being part owners, part heirs. They want to own everything. They wanted control, they wanted God to do their bidding. Their shame was so great that they were willing to kill the Son. What would have been their inheritance? Land? No. Nothing less than the spiritual inheritance of Israel. They wanted the power over the people. They wanted God to do what they said, to forgive the sins of the people who paid properly for it, and to curse their enemies.

What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. Haven’t you read this scripture:

“’The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?

Then they 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.

The chief priests and Pharisees backed away from Jesus. They knew He had spoken the parable against them; they knew that they were being condemned. The crowd loved Jesus, agreed with what He was saying, but the priests were so angry. They were shamed by Jesus, publicly. The shaming of people with power is rarely without repercussions. They were going to have Him arrested, but the time wasn’t right yet. The crowd was listening to Him, loving what He said; they would have protected Him. The time wasn’t right. But it soon would be.

So what does the vineyard owner do? When we killed Jesus, what did God do? He resurrected Jesus, He forgives us, He sends us His Holy Spirit. The land owner gives second chances, God takes the worst and makes good out of it. Out of Christ’s death we have life everlasting for the asking. The stone the builders rejected, Christ Himself having been rejected by the Pharisees and chief priests, is going to become the capstone, that stone in the very middle of an arch that all the other stones depend on. If you remove the capstone from an arch, it cannot stand up. It immediately collapses in on itself. The capstone that was deemed no good, problematic, a rebellious teacher from Nazareth, has become the very thing everyone depends on. How odd that the very person rejected by so many people back then and now is the most important part; the part that keeps the archway to God open for all of us.

This is one of the great themes within this passage; the love of God and the cross. The love of God gave the tenants a shot at obeying Him; and when they failed, with the death of His Son, the heir, God made another way for the farmers to be obedient; that is to call upon the resurrected Son as their Lord and Savior. The owner of the vineyard could have responded with violence, and done what was just, but instead He responds with love. It is that great love, that deep love that knows almost no boundaries that covers up the depth of our sin. We all look, even the people back then hearing this parable, at the tenant farmers and say, “what jerks! Who do they think they are?” And the answer back then and now is the same; they are us. We have rebelled against God, it is us who are in need of salvation from ourselves. Just as the people of the OT ignored the prophets and did as they saw fit, so we do too in our time. We ignore the writings of God, the callings of modern prophets, and go on our merry way, mostly without shame. We should respond to God’s calling with shame; we have behaved shamefully. But there is love over and beyond the shame, there is love in Christ that restores and redeems, that saves sinners like us from an eternal rejection from God.

The question facing those who heard Jesus words was going to be, in the following weeks, if they were going to make Jesus the capstone of their lives… the rejected Son nailed to the cross, bled and died for them and their sins, so that He might become the most important part of their lives, that He might offer in His blood, an eternity in God’s presence. Would they believe in Jesus, the Son of God, resurrected, and living again having beaten death? And will we? When we believe, who will be believe in; will it be the risen Son of God? Will it be Him on whom we cast our worries and sins, and lay our lives at His feet in obedience? Or do we still think that we control the vineyard, that the inheritance is ours no matter what we do? Come now, lay your life down before the King who died for You.

Let’s pray.