The Duty of Stewards: A Lenten Meditation on Luke 20

Then said the lord of the vineyard, What shall I do?

I will send my beloved son: it may be they will

reverence him when they see him.

But when the husbandmen saw him,

they reasoned among themselves, saying,

This is the heir: come, let us kill him,

that the inheritance may be ours.

So they cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him.

 What therefore shall the lord of the vineyard do unto them?

He shall come and destroy these husbandmen,

and shall give the vineyard to others.

For those with a soft and squishy view of Jesus, this week’s Gospel reading can seem severe.  What is recounted in Luke 20 continues an increasingly accusatory series of teachings which Jesus levels at the religious leaders of His day, and which the Church in every age ought listen to carefully.  What emerges in this particular parable are the duties and consequences of stewardship.

Stewardship in this passage (not to be confused with the sophomoric euphemism that’s been used to shake down congregations in recent decades for ever greater financial donations to nebulous or nefarious church budget goals) has to do with several key elements.  First, there’s a distinction between the actual owner of the vineyard, and the steward who tends it.  While the steward works in the vineyard, he does not own it any more than the person who takes your money at the cash register in your local pub necessarily owns the pub.  Secondly, the steward serves in the vineyard under the terms established by the owner, and not vice versa.  To invert this relationship would be as ridiculous as inverting the responsibilities and accountability of your local pub owner and his hired kitchen staff.  Lastly, there are consequences which will be exacted upon the stewards by the owner, relative to the faithful execution of their duties.  That same pub owner will reward his kitchen staff according the terms of their employment if they do well, but will fire them if they start giving the clientele food poisoning by being unsanitary.  (For the record, I love a good pub… not that anyone might be able to tell.  Remember to support them for their great brews and food, and the excellent atmosphere they provide for deep theological dialogue.)

While we all may be aware of tensions between workers and their bosses, Jesus’ parable amps things up a bit.  Imagine that the owner of your local pub owns many establishments in many different places, and he expects to see his revenue coming back to him from each.  Imagine also that one of those pubs decided to withhold their revenue from the owner and use it on themselves.  How long do you think it would take the owner to show up with a court order and the police, fire those unfaithful stewards, prosecute them for their theft, and hire new workers for his pub that would faithfully execute their duties?  In Jesus’ story, however, the owner is much more longsuffering about his vineyard and his tenants.  He sends representatives several times to receive what is rightfully his, and repeatedly the stewards abuse his representatives and deny him.  Lastly, the owner sends his only son—the heir of all the owner’s wealth and prosperity—to receive what was his father’s due.  In an unbelievable act of evil, the stewards decide to murder the son of the owner, hoping that the father will die childless, and the vineyard will be theirs forever.  It is a level of insanity, hubris, and wickedness that far surpasses that of a cashier who pockets a few extra bucks from the till, and it brings from the owner a totality of wrath that destroys these unfaithful stewards, giving their duties to others.

While in practical terms the parable sounds ghastly, whether using the business model of 1^st century Israel or 21^st century Portland, this story ultimately isn’t about business owners and workers.  It’s about Jesus.  Who planted the vineyard of the world and the whole cosmos, and set mankind into its primordial garden to tend and care for it?  Who made the promise to save His people after their fateful fall into sin and death?  Who gave the concrete knowledge of good and evil, by speaking His Word of Law upon Mount Sinai?  Who gave the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation to His people by grace through faith in His Word of Gospel fulfilled on Mount Calvary?  Who calls and gathers His people together in every age and place through His Word and Sacraments, promising eternal life to all who will repent and believe in Him?  Jesus.

Of course, who is it that mankind rejected in the Garden?  Who did they reject before they were washed away in the great deluge of Noah’s age, or when they murdered the prophets in Elijah’s age, or when they murdered the Messiah who was Himself God Incarnate?  Who do they reject still, when they substitute their own words, their own traditions, their own pride, their own power, their own prestige, for the Eternal Word of God?  Jesus.

And what is the consequence of either rejecting or receiving Jesus?  The alternatives could not be more drastically different.  For those who receive Him by grace through faith, hearing, abiding, and believing in His Word, they are blessed to serve in His Kingdom forever.  They have the forgiveness of their sins, eternal life, and salvation from the powers of death and hell.  They have the dignity of noble work, and rest in their Savior.  They have peace with God their Creator, and with their neighbors.  Their friends are the saints and angels in this world and the next, a vibrant and joyous throng that sings forever of the wondrous love, mercy, and salvation of their God.  Theirs is the fellowship of Almighty God, in a perfected union which reflects the eternal and perfect unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God now and forever.

But for those who reject Jesus, who deny His Law and His Gospel, turning His grace and mercy and love into wickedness, selfishness, abuse, and evil; those who seize the reigns of power for their own benefit, either in the secular halls of civil government or the sacred corridors of the Church trod by the hallowed martyrs; those who take the world for their own unbridled gratification, shamelessly appeasing the god of their lusts and the appetites of their bellies; those who persecute the Word of God and its bearers, showing their scorn of God by their mistreatment of His people; those who dream that the world belongs to them with all of its produce, denying the God of all creation by withholding their prosperity from their neighbors in need; those who think they can wipe out or marginalize the Son of God and thereby seize the Father’s Kingdom for themselves:  for them, there is nothing but darkness, pain, and suffering forever.  They have what little they had been given in this world ripped from their cold, dead hands, as their day of reckoning arrives.  They have the terror of meeting God as their enemy, with no power of their own to escape Him.  They have the justice of the Law delivered to them in full measure, as the grace of the Gospel they repudiated disappears from their sight.  They have the flames which burn and yet never consume, as the passions and lusts which they once worshipped now become their eternal tormentors.  They have the terrible darkness of hell, having cast away the beautiful light of heaven.  They have the screams of their own lonely despair ringing in their ears, cacophonously merged with the screaming hosts of the hopelessly lost.  Theirs is the solitary containment of evil, forever put beyond the ability to harm or abuse the children of light.

And for you, dear child, which will you choose?  There is no sideline, no middle ground.  There is only God and His stewards to whom He has given His Word and His multitudinous gifts.  For us, there is only either faith or unbelief—to love and trust our Savior resting in His grace, or to hate and reject Him.  The time approaches for the judgment of all, and for all people it is as inescapable as death itself.  Jesus comes to rescue you from the dark fate which looms before you, and comes ever nearer with each passing day.  Hear Him—believe Him—trust Him—and live.

Amen.