Hi everyone,
Here is the re-record of the sermon that was preached on October 4, 2026, for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost.
Gospel: Matthew 21:33-46
The holy gospel according to Matthew.
Glory to you, O Lord.
[Jesus said:] 33 “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went away. 34 When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. 35 But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. 36 Again he sent other slaves, more than the first, and they treated them in the same way. 37 Then he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ 39 So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40 Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” 41 They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”
42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures:
‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes’?
43 “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits. 44 The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”
45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. 46 They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.
The gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, O Christ.
Sermon
God of all wisdom, may your Word be apparent in our lives, that by your Spirit we might see and know Christ living among us. Amen.
“What did I do to deserve this?”
Ever ask yourself that question? Unfortunately, I have. I’ve found myself, more than once in fact, in situations that seem helpless, hapless, and even hopeless. And as I reflect on those situations and the events that led to them, I can’t help but either hang my head in shame or throw it back in frustration and ask, “what did I do to deserve this?”
And I’m pretty sure you probably know what I mean. If not from actual experience, then at least in concept. That annoyance of things not going as planned, that anger of the injustice and unfairness that seems to come at the most inopportune times, that fear of not being in control. And of course, that surprise that whatever is happening is actually happening that causes us to wonder what we did to ever deserve it.
I mean, we’re often told that, aren’t we? Like we are accountable for our own actions, we are the products of our own bad decisions, we are the authors of our own demise. We are responsible for what we do even when we aren’t responsible in them, and thus we have to face the consequences. So because of that, the question of what you did to deserve whatever it is you’re going through technically should have an actual answer.
While that might be true at times, I can hardly believe that it is or even can be a universal answer to all the bad we go through. We can’t be blamed for anything and everything that doesn’t go our way. Some things, yes, but not everything. But the fact of the matter is, as much as we’d like life to be fair, cut and dry, black and white, life just isn’t like that. We are sometimes thrown a bad hand. We sometimes run into bad luck. Happenstance actually happens, it’s like literally in the name. So I’m not entirely convinced that anything bad that happens to us can be put on us, can be attributed to us, has to have been somehow caused by us, inadvertently or not. Sometimes, yes for sure. But not every time.
But that doesn’t stop us from condemning others to what we think they deserve, does it? We can be so quick to point our fingers at who we assume are the instigators of bad situations. It’s like we’re jazzed up to do the mental gymnastics to figure out just who we can judge, blame, and oust. Just look in the comment sections of any story or article about something tragic and you’ll see people asking what the victim was wearing, where were the parents, even who did they vote for. On any kind of disagreement or divisive topic you’ll see a plethora of threats, warnings, and “I-told-you-so’s”. On practically anything political these days, you’ll see people viscerally hating on each other for having a different opinion and practically rejoicing at any news of their misfortune. Even the saying, “have the day you deserve” became a thing.
So we can see that this mentality isn’t at all uncommon. And unfortunately, it isn’t at all new, either. I’ll admit that there were many times in my own life when I wished harm on those who harmed others. I wished what went around would actually come around. I wished people who, in my mind, deserved bad would actually get bad. And I know for the fact that I’m not the only one.
Look at today’s gospel lesson for example. The people’s knee-jerk reaction to the parable of these tenants doing unspeakable acts against their boss and landlord was telling. “Put those wretches to a miserable death” they said. And while we might not agree with the death pentalty, I’m not sure we’d totally disagree with this punishment after hearing about what they did.
Like, those wretched tenants totally overstepped their bounds. They claimed rights that weren’t ever theirs. They tried to force their boss and landlord out and take what never belonged to them. All with brutal and malicious force.
I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be any repercussions to these heinous acts. But what should it be? Figuring out an appropriate response to such evil and selfishness might seem easy on the surface, but it really isn’t. Deciding what one really deserves is difficult. Discerning punishments for the purpose of reform versus revenge is hard. Determining who gets to live or who needs to die really isn’t and shouldn’t be up to us.
So maybe we look to the bible for some wisdom. Maybe we can get some good direction in our decision making. What does Jesus say about this parable and how his original listeners jumped on execution as their top and final answer?
And, that’s the thing. He doesn’t. He almost changes the subject from capital punishment to structural engineering. If I were honest, I don’t really understand what he was getting at, and I study this kind of thing. The Pharisees, however, somehow knew what he was talking about. They knew Jesus was talking about them. They knew that Jesus was calling them out. They knew that Jesus was comparing them to those evil tenants.
So what does that drive them to want to do? Get rid of him. Remove him from the equation. End him before he gets the chance to end them.
Isn’t that ironic?
I mean, isn’t this the exact thing that they’re angry at? Isn’t this the exact thing that they figured Jesus was exposing in them? Isn’t this the exact thing that they say is deserving of a horrible death?
But yet, Jesus didn’t exclude them from the kingdom, both in the parable or in real life.
See, I think Jesus isn’t clear about the ending of the parable because the landowner wasn’t about to punish those wretched tenants, but rather forgive them. He isn’t making excuses for them, but he is offering grace. He isn’t saying what they did was ok, but he will extend mercy anyway. Even though there is no way that he is all that happy with how things played out, but he continues to see those wretched tenants and all people as deserving of love.
He gave them a whole vineyard to care for after all. He trusted these untrustworthy folk enough to invest probably thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of property. Even after the likely vetting process before handing over the keys, the landowner decided to hire this band of unsavory workers anyway.
And so maybe it isn’t about what the appropriate response should be after the fact, but more about how they were treated prior to the wrongdoing. Maybe this parable isn’t about the consequences of bad decisions, but about how they are regarded by their boss regardless. Maybe the question isn’t about what they deserve, but about what they already got to begin with. Before the evil. Before the separation. Before they threw away everything that they had.
Clearly the tenants didn’t get it. They didn’t see the grace that was given to them from the very start. They didn’t see the unending and steadfast love that was so freely offered to them, and so they discarded it thinking that would benefit them the most.
So I wonder about us. While we might not mistreat messengers and kill our boss’s son, don’t we sometimes not recognise the grace that was shown to us? Don’t we sometimes not see how much we are given and then complain about things anyway? Don’t we sometimes think we own more than we do, are responsible for more than has been entrusted to us, or have more rights and privileges than we should, and then throw things out of our lives, cut things off, and decide they’re not good for us when they are actually gifts meant to give us joy, peace, and structural stability?
Maybe. Maybe we haven’t. But even if we did, I don’t know if that means we deserve to die. Or maybe you disagree with me and you think it does. Whatever the case, I do know that death isn’t what we get. We might have consequences but I’m not sure we can label them as punishments. We probably should be disqualified from a lot of stuff but we are continually forgiven, welcomed, and loved.
My friends, this is the Christian promise. We are given the sure and certain hope of community, salvation, and the life that truly is life. But we often don’t recognise it. We sometimes squander it. We might even throw it away. But it doesn’t cease to be offered to us. It doesn’t cease to be ours. It doesn’t cease to be what we undeservedly get.
So in this season after Pentecost, may we see the gift of life from God in the Spirit, that by the grace of Christ we be able to live fully in community, relationship, and love. Thanks be to God. Amen.
