Jesus’s vineyard story.

Jesus began to teach them in analogies. “A person planted a vineyard. He put a fence round it. He dug a trough. He built a tower. He rented it to farmers, and went abroad.

“One time he sent a slave to the farmers to collect some of the fruit from the vineyard—and, catching him, they beat him and sent him away with nothing. Again, he sent them another slave, and this one they hit over the head and insulted. He sent another, and this one they killed. Many others were sent, and either beaten or killed, till one was left: A beloved son. He sent the son to them last, saying, ‘They’ll respect my son.’

“Those farmers told one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, so we can kill him, and the inheritance will be ours!’ Catching him, they killed him and threw him out of the vineyard.

“What will the master of the vineyard do? He’ll come and kill the farmers. He’ll rent the vineyard to others. Haven’t you read this scripture?—

 

‘The builders rejected a stone.

This has come to be the head of the corner.

By the Lord, this came to be.

It is wonderful in our sight.’”

 

The leaders were looking for some way to arrest Jesus. They feared the crowd. They knew the analogy he told was for them. They went away, leaving him.

—

Rejecting Jesus’s authority.

Jesus didn’t tell this story to the crowd. He told it right after the head priests, scribes, and elders came to him to ask where his authority came from. As I stated in the previous article, Jesus didn’t answer their question because it would have been a waste of breath; they already had it in their heads to reject him. And rejection is the impetus for this story. It was of a vineyard owner whose employees rejected his rule, and of a stone which builders had likewise rejected.

I expect you’ve read the story, but once again briefly: The owner of a vineyard sent slaves to collect his due of his vineyard. Having no respect for the owner’s slaves, his tenants abused and killed them. Upon sending his own son—which, in Roman-influenced Jewish culture of the day, should have been respected just the same as if he were his father—the tenants killed him too, and Jesus points out the owner now has no choice but to destroy his tenants.

This brings up an interesting question: Did the senators recognize Jesus meant himself when he referred to “the son” in this story?

Sure. No, they wouldn’t have thought of Jesus as the eternal second person of the Trinity, God himself, God incarnate. That’s what we Christians mean by Son of God. But that revelation came later. At the time, not even Jesus’s followers understood him that way yet. Instead, “son of God” was one of the titles of the king of Israel, the Messiah, as demonstrated in Psalm 2. The king was God’s adopted son. And if Jesus was their king and Messiah, then yeah, he’d have the title “son of God.” They just wouldn’t have figured he was literally the son of God. (Though, as it turns out, he is.)

So in this story, the owner (obviously God) sends servants (obviously his prophets and judges) to receive what’s due him from his tenants (obviously his people). But they treat the owner’s servants horribly, culminating in killing the owner’s son (obviously the Messiah, whom most people realized Jesus was). So the tenants were due for some judgment. And woe to the leaders over those people, who conspired to kill the son so they could remain in power.

Of course Jesus was talking about them.

The rejected stone.

Psalm 118 is a Hallel psalm, meaning a psalm mostly focused on praising God. “The builders rejected a stone” shows up in the middle of it, as even a non-sequitur: What else in this psalm has anything to do with construction? Nothing. It just pops up. Probably struck everybody as an odd thing to just throw into the middle of a worship song. And yet there it is—and Jesus pointed to it as referring to him. Because he’s inherently valuable, and is the cornerstone of God’s new temple.

Yet the senators utterly missed this. As anyone will when they seek power, when they seek leaders they can respect, rather than God. Lately certain preachers have come under a bit of criticism because they keep trying to recast Jesus as an ass-kicking mighty warrior rather than the kind, humble Son of Man: They like the idea of Jesus as William Wallace (more accurately, Mel Gibson’s portrayal of Wallace in Braveheart), and not as he actually is, because they want to be Wallace instead of Jesus. How do you reconcile this paradox? Simple: Make Jesus into Wallace.

To give an example from another popular movie, Talladega Nights:

Ricky. Dear tiny infant Jesus…

Carley. Hey, um… you know sweetie, Jesus did grow up. You don’t always have to call him baby. It’s a bit odd and off-putting to pray to a baby.

Ricky. Well look, I like the Christmas Jesus best, and I’m saying grace. When you say grace, you can say it to grown-up Jesus, or teenage Jesus, or bearded Jesus, or whatever you want.

Cal. I like to think of Jesus as wearing a tuxedo T-shirt, ’cause it says, like, “I want to be formal, but I’m here to party too.” I like to party, so I like my Jesus to party.

Walker. I like to think of Jesus like a ninja, fighting off evil samurai.

Ricky. Dear 8 pounds 6 ounces baby Jesus, newborn, not even spoken a word yet, yet still omnipotent…

Christians regularly suffer from this problem. The Judean leaders did as well. The elders expected Messiah to come from the upper class, not the lower: They expected him to worry about their worries, and uphold the status quo; not to not care about their misplaced priorities, and intend to destroy the status quo. The Jews who actually followed God—the Pharisees—had the same heiney-kicking idea of Messiah as those who reimagine Jesus do (only they were thinking of Judas Maccabeus, not Braveheart). But to the scribes, Jesus wasn’t holy enough: He performed exorcisms on Sabbath, and quoted himself instead of the great Pharisee masters. As far as they were concerned, he was using the devil’s power, not his own. And the Sadducees didn’t believe in a coming Messiah at all: It didn’t matter what Jesus looked like, because any Messiah was wrong.

So when Jesus quoted Psalm 118, he was using it as a metaphor to again speak of the senators. The builders were them. The stone was Jesus. And God was gonna do something great with the stone, despite their intentions—or apathy.

(Was this what the psalmist had in mind when she wrote Psalm 118? Doesn’t matter. Jesus, and his later followers, repurposed this verse to talk about the senators’, and this world’s, rejection of Jesus. They missed him. Let’s not do likewise because we prefer the idols of our imagination to the real Messiah.)