A love unlike another
“Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit… Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said. “But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. — Matthew 21:33-43 Our God says, “My ways are not your ways, and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8). You can say that again!
Who does what the vineyard owner does in our lesson? Who thinks like that? He carefully crafts and cultivates the vineyard. That’s not strange. Nor is it necessarily odd that he would entrust his vineyard to the care of tenant farmers.
But when his representatives are beaten, killed and stoned, respectively, by the wicked tenants, how would you expect the vineyard owner to react? What would you expect him to do next? Send MORE servants? Really? And when the owner hears that those servants have been greeted by clubs, knives and rocks, what would be the next logical step?
How many would answer that the owner should definitely send his son, his flesh and blood, the thing he holds most dear in life?
Who does what the vineyard owner does in our text?
Who thinks like that?
God does. Crazy commitment! Inexplicable love!
How desperately he wanted Israel to turn to him and be saved. How patiently he waited for them. How persistently he pursued them.
Love makes us do surprising, maybe even outrageous things. The love-struck young man drives eight hours in a snowstorm just to hold his sweetheart’s hand. The half-asleep dad rolls out of bed in the middle of the night to go fetch his teenage daughter whose car has run out of gas. As imperfect and flawed as we are, we will go the most enormous lengths for the people we love.
How far God was willing to go to draw Israel to himself! How far God was ready to go to bring us to himself! Keep in mind that we know something that Jesus doesn’t reveal in the parable.
Not only did the landowner send his son to the vineyard, we know that he sent him with the full knowledge that that son was going to be killed. In fact, that’s why he sent him. The father sent his dear son, his flesh and blood, his dearest treasure to be mocked, beaten and murdered — so that we could be his own, together with those who literally mocked him and beat him and killed him.
To give up something so pure in exchange for something so vile … it makes no sense. But that’s what grace is. May we always treasure that grace, that crazy commitment, that inexpressible love.
Happy to know how much my God loves me! Just like you!