The Cost of Rejecting Jesus

Mark 12:1-12

Pastor Craig Brian Larson tells this story:

The first summer that my wife and I were dating, she worked as a temp at a bank. In the first two weeks that she had the job, she quickly noticed some extremely unprofessional behavior among the team of four people that she worked with and their supervisor. The supervisor, who was a generation older, was very friendly with the younger staff, taking long coffee breaks with them. College-aged staff would sit on her desk to chat and gossip.

The supervisor and her team were so friendly that the group’s behavior toward one other new member of the team was a stark contrast. This person, a woman in her 30s who had come on staff just a week before my wife, was shunned. If she walked up and tried to join the conversation during a coffee break, the conversation ended. The group, including the supervisor, made jokes about her behind her back and laughed at the way she dressed. They rolled their eyes and winked at each other when she was present. It was obvious that this middle management worker was perceived as an unnecessary intrusion.

Two weeks into the temp job, my wife walked into the office on Monday morning and was surprised to find a much different scenario. No gossiping, no kidding around, no long coffee breaks. All the workers had their eyes riveted on their work. The previous supervisor had been replaced. The cliquish team addressed the new supervisor with formal, businesslike respect. My wife thought she even saw fear in their eyes.

The new supervisor was not a stranger. It was the 30-something woman who had been shunned and mocked. It turned out the bank had hired her to be the new supervisor from the first day she came on the job three weeks before, but the bank had concealed her true identity so she could observe the work style of the team. Of course, they wanted to apologize. In fact, they did. But it was too late. She had seen their true colors.

In some ways, this situation resembles the coming of Christ to earth. In his first coming, Jesus revealed his true identity and glory to his followers, but to those who did not believe, his glory was largely hidden by his humanity. Following his resurrection, he ascended to the right hand of God, where he rules all things. And he has promised that he will come again  to establish his glorious kingdom over everything. At that time there will be no mistaking who Jesus is. But for many, it will be too late.

Today we’re continuing our journey through Mark’s gospel. Jesus has made the journey to Jerusalem for the last time. It is the week before the Jewish celebration of the Passover, and Jesus is there to die an excruciating death on a Roman cross – the once-and-for-all, final, perfect Passover lamb. He would die not to atone for the sins of the people of Israel for a year, but for all people, in every place, in every time, once and for all.

In Jerusalem, he is now in close proximity to the Jewish religious leaders who have been trying to discredit, silence, even kill Jesus if necessary. And he is not doing anything to keep a low profile. In fact, it almost seems like he is picking a fight. After a tense confrontation with these religious leaders in the temple, he tells a story about a landowner and the tenant farmers who work his land. In this story, we encounter God’s great patience, our selfish foolishness, and grace’s unexpected end. Turn with me to Mark 12:1-12.

Great landed estates were fairly common in Israel in Jesus’ day, especially in the upper Jordan river valley and the Galilean uplands, regions where Jesus had spent quite a bit of time over the three years of his public ministry. Those estates were typically owned either by foreigners or wealthy, powerful Israelites who spent most of their time down in Jerusalem. We call people like this absentee landowners. It’s something we’re familiar with here in northern Michigan, isn’t it? People who own significant amounts of land in our area but who may spend just a few weeks here over the summer months.

In Israel, that prime land was typically farmland – large vineyards or olive groves or fig groves. The landowners allowed locals to live on and farm the land. And these tenant farmers would pay rent to the landowner in the form of a percentage of the land’s produce. It would be anywhere from a quarter to a half of the crop produced, depending on the lease agreement. But peasant tenant farmers didn’t get rich doing this. It would be a small miracle if they were able to fully support their families with everything they needed. Still, it was a common arrangement. One of the primary populations who owned land in this way were the wealthy and powerful religious leaders who spend most of their time in Jerusalem.

In the parable Jesus tells, the landowner put care and thought into planting his vineyard. He built a fence and watchtower to protect it. He dug a pit for a winepress so that the grapes could be processed right there on site. Then he found some tenant farmers to lease the vineyard from him and left things in their hands.

Then, when “the season came” for the first gatherable harvest, he sent a servant to get his agreed upon portion of the harvest. Now, anyone who plants a vineyard or an orchard knows that they don’t produce fruit right away. It takes not months but years for them to produce a real crop. In fact, according to Old Testament law, a new vineyard was to be allowed to produce a crop for four years before the grapes that were produced were actually pressed.

Leviticus 19:23-25 says, “When you come into the land and plant any kind of tree for food, then you shall regard its fruit as forbidden. Three years it shall be forbidden to you; it must not be eaten. And in the fourth year all its fruit shall be holy, an offering of praise to the Lord. But in the fifth year you may eat of its fruit, to increase its yield for you: I am the Lord your God.”

So the first three crops were destroyed and then the fourth, the first real crop, was given as an offering to God. THEN the farmer and landowner could start keeping the harvest for themselves. The vineyard owner leaves his vineyard in the hands of his tenant farmers for a long time.

But now, the time has come to collect his portion of the first usable crop, so he sends a servant to collect it. And then another. And another. And another. And another. But each time a servant arrived, the tenant farmers treated him harshly. Some they beat and sent away empty handed. Others they killed. They refused to accept or honor the owner’s rightful claim to the fruit produced on his land. They weren’t going to give him anything. They weren’t going to honor the lease agreement. They were basically stealing his land, daring him to come and face them himself.

Now, remember, Jesus is in the middle of a confrontation with the religious leaders, many of whom would have been landowners just like the man in the story. They should have been sympathetic to the plight of the landowner. And of course they would have known that all the landowner needed to do was approach the appropriate authorities and the Roman military would take care of the issue. The rebellious tenants would be forcibly removed from his land and punished, perhaps killed because they had committed murder in their rebellion. The normal course of things was clear. The landowner would send the authorities to deal with them.

But, as is usually the case in the parables told by Jesus, that isn’t what happened. The landowner just keeps sending more and more servants to try to collect what is rightfully his. Until finally, in desperation, he goes not to the Roman authorities but to his son. His “beloved son.” That’s a common Jewish idiom meaning “only son.” The phrase used here only appears three times in Mark – once at Jesus’ baptism: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mk. 1:11); once at his transfiguration: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him” (Mk. 9:7); and here.

The religious leaders, who weren’t there at his baptism or transfiguration would have missed the point. But Mark’s readers, and we, know what Jesus is doing here. Through Mark’s writing, we were on the banks of the Jordan as Jesus was baptized by his cousin, John the Baptist. And we were on the Mount of Transfiguration with Peter, James, and John. We’ve heard the words “Beloved Son” before. We know who Jesus is referring to. He’s referring to himself. HE is the beloved Son. That makes God the owner of the vineyard.

In the imagery of the parable, then, the servant after servant send to collect from the tenants were the Old Testament prophets, virtually all of whom were martyred because they spoke an inconvenient truth to people who wouldn’t hear it. Here’s the real question, though. If the unfaithful tenants consistently beat, abused, even killed the servants he’d sent, why would he risk his only son and heir.

Grace doesn’t naturally flow from our hearts. But it flows with force and power from the heart of God. I’d be keeping my son as far away from them as possible. Let the Romans deal with them. If I were that landowner, I’d be going “scorched earth” on them. I’d make sure the Romans knew, “I don’t care what you do to them. Just get those filthy ingrates off my land, and make sure they never want to even think about coming anywhere near a property that’s in my name ever again.”

But that isn’t what this landowner does. That isn’t what God does. He sends his only son, knowing full well what they will do to him. There is grace, deep grace, in his heart. He is begging, pleading with them to come to their senses and recognize his rightful claim on the land and the crop it produces. Jesus is giving us another chance to peer into the heart of God. To see his undying love and grace. One scholar calls this the “blessed idiocy of grace.”

This may be a harsh parable of judgment, but there is grace in it. There is always grace in God’s heart. Jesus is telling this parable as a warning to the religious leaders. Mark tells us that “they perceived that he had told the parable against them.” He is warning them. This is the enigma of the cross. He came to die. He had to die. But even as he approached the cross, he was warning those who would send him there, pleading, cajoling, begging them to turn their hearts to their heavenly Father. Not in a desperate attempt to save his own life. He came TO die. But in a gracious act of love toward those who would destroy him. For maybe, after he died, after he rose again, maybe they would wake up to their foolishness and receive in faith the very one they had crucified. There is no heart so hardened that God will not continue to knock.

You see, to us, grace doesn’t make sense. And that’s why we reject is so quickly. We cannot earn this kind of grace. And we don’t deserve it. All we can do is receive it, because God offers it. And why does God offer it? Because he loves you. He deeply, passionately, desperately loves you.

This kind of grace may not make sense. Neither does the response of the tenant farmers. Let’s be honest, they’re idiots. They lease land from the landowner, and then, when he comes to collect his due, they run off, beat, abuse, and then kill his servants. Until he, in desperation, sends not the army but his only son, his beloved son. And what do they do to him? Look at Vv. 7-8.

“If we kill him, there will be no more heir. It will all be ours.” Um, no. There’s still a landowner. And when his son is rejected, and treated just the servants he sent before were treated, he will have had enough. Their plans do not take into account the landowner himself.

How often do our plans take no account of God? Oh, we may read a parable like this one and say, “I’d never kill one of his servants or his son. I’m not going to reject him that way.” Oh, we may not be that blatant, but we reject him just the same. In his gospel, Luke records another parable Jesus told. In this parable, a farmer’s land produces bountifully. And when it does, he says to himself, “I’m set. I’ve got it all. Enough to live the way I want and retire comfortably. I’ve made it. I’ve done it. I’m going to tear down the barns and silos I have and build newer, bigger ones to store all that I’ve produced on my farm, and then I’ll be able to retire a rich man. All I’ll have to do is relax, eat, drink, and have a good time.”

How often do we do that? We look at what we’ve accomplished, what we’ve built and earned, and we say “I’ve made it. I can kick back and relax now. Look at all that I have.” Ah, but Luke’s parable continues. “But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Lk. 12:20). We may not plot and plan with the overt arrogance of the tenant farmers, but we still plot and plan with no thought given to God at all. We may not be as openly rebellious as the tenant farmers, but we are no less foolish.

So, his son dead, thrown out of the vineyard, the landowner comes to destroy the tenant farmers and leases his vineyard to others. And then Jesus quotes from Psalm 118. “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (V. 10) He will be vindicated. He – the rejected Son, is the cornerstone of the kingdom of God, and when he comes again, there will be no mistaking him.

But what I want us to notice is the action of the landowner. His son is his final offer of grace. There would not be another. And we, sitting outside this parable looking in, snicker and sneer at the foolishness of the tenant farmers, not realizing that in our own rejection of Jesus we condemn ourselves. Grace will serve it’s purpose. God’s heart will always beat with love. God IS love. Grace is the current expression of that love.

But there will come a time when God’s patience must come to an end, when God’s grace must no longer rule the day. When Christ returns in unmistakable power. When even our broken sense of justice demands satisfaction and God will act to right every wrong.

Every one of us will either face the end of our own lives on this earth – that time when, as Luke’s parable says, our “soul will be required of us.” Or we will witness with our still living eyes Christ’s victorious return. One of those two is the destiny of all. Are we foolishly rejecting the Son? Maybe not as blatantly as the tenant farmers in Jesus’ parable. He was targeting and directly pleading with the religious leaders to consider the eternal consequences of their hardened hearts. Many of us or more like the rich fool in Luke’s parable – working, planning, saving and storing for a plush end to our lives. Giving no consideration to God, to God’s rightful claim over our lives. Are we producing fruit and giving him his due, or are we foolishly pretending that we can stand on our own merit?

Jesus is God’s last offer of grace. The offer will not last forever. I would much rather be thought a fool by those who know me now, and be vindicated when Christ returns, than to be respected now for my efforts and my talent and my resources, only for my utter foolishness to come out then.

The great actor, Cary Grant, once told how he was walking along a street and he passed by a guy whose eyes locked onto him with excitement. The man said, “Wait a minute, you’re … you’re – I know who you are; don’t tell me – uh, Rock Hud – No, you’re …” Grant thought he’d help him, so he finished the man’s sentence: “Cary Grant.” And the fellow said, “No, that’s not it! You’re …” There was Cary Grant identifying himself with his own name, but the fellow had someone else in mind.

John says of Jesus, “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.” (Jn 1:10). And even when Jesus identified who he was – the Son of God – the response was often not a welcome recognition.[i]

Jesus is God’s last offer of grace. Do you see him? Do you recognize him. Will you risk being called a fool for now, only to be viewed as eternally wise in the end? God will not wait forever. Let’s pray.

[i] Robert F. Simms, Boone, North Carolina. Leadership, Vol. 11, no. 4.