Love Song of the Vineyard (Reprise)
Click here to listen to this sermon. “ Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a winepress in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit ” (Matthew 21:33-34). Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ! Are you familiar with the term “reprise” when it is applied to a song? A reprise returns to an earlier song, often with a change in style or music that lets us hear it in a new way —like “Let It Go” in Disney’s Frozen or “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” on the Beatles album of the same name. You might call our Gospel text a “reprise.” Jesus takes up the vineyard song God sang through Isaiah seven centuries earlier and gives it a new setting and a sharper ending. You just heard the original song in our Old Testament reading. The vineyard Isaiah san...