The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes
In the parable we hear today, Jesus is telling as an allegory of God’s work within Israel.
He uses images from the prophet Isaiah and the Psalms to tell the religious leaders what has happened, what is going to happen, and how this is going to effect them.
On the surface, it seems to be quite straightforward, but a closer look reveals what Jesus says is far more potent, and also raises some difficult questions for the church today.
There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watch-tower.
This imagery comes from the Isaiah reading from earlier:
Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watch-tower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it.
The beloved is God, and the vineyard is Israel.
Jesus is setting the scene for the religious leaders, so they know exactly what he is talking about. There would be no question in their minds about what he is talking about:
it is about God and Israel.
Two sets of slaves are sent to collect the produce:
The first set of three, one is beaten, one killed, one stoned.
The second set is larger, and is treated in the same violent way.
These slaves represent the prophets who were ignored by the religious leaders at the time.
The landowner sends his son, and they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him
The son is Jesus, and this fortells his crucifixion.
We have to look at the owner of the vineyard here.
He sends a delegation and they are killed.
A normal human reaction to that would have been to send an army to sort this out.
But he doesn’t.
He doesn’t react with violence.
He sends another delegation.
When they are killed, surely his response should be ‘they’ve had one chance, now I’ll send in the army and get them out of my land.’
But it isn’t.
He send his son, the heir.
This is not a normal reaction.
After two sets of horrific violence and death inflicted on your people, why would you send your son?
Surely now would be the time for vengeance.
The son is killed.
Jesus puts it to the chief priests and elders:
Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?’
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.’
The chief priests and elders react as we would expect.
Jesus does not supply this answer.
It is the chief priest and elders.
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”?
He questions their response.
He doesn’t agree with them.
He doesn’t condone the violent response at all.
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”?
God didn’t retaliate with violence.
Instead he sent his son to die, the stone the builders rejected.
He was raised, he became the cornerstone
This is a different way of authority and power.
It shuns violence and aggression and revenge.
Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.
Jesus is saying to the chief priest and elders
that because they are still clinging to power and authority,
they can’t see how God might be working in a way that does not take life,
but rather gives life.
They can’t see how their use and abuse of their authority is actually keeping God out.
The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.
This is a message for the church today.
We don’t stumble over the block that is Christ, the cornerstone.
We stumble when we follow the way of the elder and chief priests.
We stumble when we strive to hold on to authority and power.
We stumble when we embrace the way the world understands power
rather than the way of God,
God who showed us the ultimate power when his son gave his life on the cross.
God who showed real power is not life taking, but life giving
when his son was resurrected to new life, a life in which we all share.
Jesus tells us that the kingdom will be taken from us if we continue to act out of power instead of love, compassion and selflessness.
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone
The cornerstone of the faith that is borne out of love, and forgiveness, not power, control and violence.
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