We cannot hinder the gospel. The word of God will not be locked within the confines of a context two millennia removed from our time. John Calvin understood this. In his commentary on this parable he identified two points that transcend time and place: (1) we should expect people, and especially religious leaders, to try to hinder the reign of Christ; and (2) whatever contrivances are mounted against the church, God will be victorious. All human hindering will be for nought.
Andrew Purves writes that the parable teaches us to expect rejection, but not just of the gospel. It is more a system of ideas, more than an argument, more than a series of propositions inviting head nodding or verbal assent. The defining point, the focal point of the rejection which we are to expect is very precise: Jesus Christ. Personal rejection – described as the premeditated murder of the landowner’s son – is the heart of the parable.
Let’s step back for just a moment. Matthew describes Jesus standing in the temple, the place of God’s dwelling on earth (a house already destroyed and the Presence departed by the time that Matthew edited his gospel account). Only days before his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus tells a story to the people who have been set apart to keep God’s house in order. We know two things about those within earshot of Jesus’ parable: (1) they do not believe that Jesus has divine authorization to speak to them; and (2) their minds have remained unchanged in response to another messenger, the Baptizer John.
The immediate theological debate between the temple leaders and Jesus moves into round two. Jesus had already bested them in their attempt to discredit his authority when they refused to acknowledge John’s authority. The parable to the two sons, one openly disobedient but later repentant and obedient, the other openly servile but disobedient in the end, had hit its mark. And still the temple leaders refused to give in to Jesus’ truth. So Jesus says, “Listen to another parable.”
The sophisticated temple leaders weren’t going to be swayed by folksy stories from the countryside. Jesus goes to the heart of their theological power base – the Law and the Prophets. Jesus bases his parable on a well-known passage from Isaiah (it’s from chapter 5.)
My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside.Jesus compounded the force of this image with a quotation from the powerful Psalm 118:
He dug it,
cleared away its stones,
planted it with excellent vines,
built a tower inside it,
and dug out a wine vat in it.
He expected it to grow good grapes—
but it grew rotten grapes.
So now, you who live in Jerusalem, you people of Judah,
judge between me and my vineyard:
What more was there to do for my vineyard
that I haven’t done for it?
When I expected it to grow good grapes,
why did it grow rotten grapes? . . .
The vineyard of the Lord of heavenly forces is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah are the plantings in which God delighted.
God expected justice, but there was bloodshed;
righteousness, but there was a cry of distress!
The stone that the builders rejectedThe issue, then, is the rejection of Jesus and the refusal to acknowledge him as Lord, God’s anointed, through whom God lavishly has given life.
has become the cornerstone.
The Lord has done this,
and it’s amazing in our eyes.
In every fiber of this parable about the rejection of and deadly violence against the landowner’s son is the reminder that the heart of faith is relationship with Jesus. The tenant farmers did not seize and kill an idea, a principle, or a system of doctrine. They seized and killed the landowner’s son. The gospel comes to us as a person.
It is obvious in the Isaiah reference and in Jesus’ parable who was rejecting his authority then. If rejection is part of the continuing legacy of the parable, who is rejecting Jesus today? The vineyard of the early 21st century is vulnerable to destruction. It is being assailed from the outside by virulent new atheisms which are based on a strident and aggressive rationalism which routinely dismisses Christian faith. There is also a growing apathy and indifference that isn’t particularly anti-church but which is certainly not pro-church.
But Jesus wasn’t speaking about the philosophies and theologies of the occupying empire. Jesus was addressing the leaders of the temple, the inner circle of those supposedly closest to God. Jesus’ complaint against them was that they had so narrowly constricted the faith that it had become a strait-jacketed and sedated prisoner locked away from its very source.
Some of God’s people today strait-jacket the faith in ways which exclude the very people whom God seeks to welcome into the community of sinners being sanctified through relationship with Jesus. Another extreme includes people for whom there are no boundaries, no absolutes, no guiding reference points to distinguish holy and sacred from profane and irreverent.
It is this deeper, internal sense that Jesus’ parable strikes at. The parable is less concerned about Jesus being rejected by strangers than it is about his being rejected by members of his own household, especially those in leadership. Calvin refers to church people rising up against their head, tenant farmers against the landowner. Given the architectural image of the foundation stone being rejected, the parable is about Jesus being betrayed by some of those he has called into positions of leadership. So each of us is called to repentance and renewal, not once in a lifetime or yearly, but daily.
Even though the cornerstone may be rejected, it doesn’t cease being the cornerstone. Whoever falls on the stone – that is whoever seeks to break Christ – will be broken by it. Attack on Jesus is pointless and fruitless. Jesus is not diminished by rejection. And in spite of betrayal he keeps the place that God has given to him. As the psalmist said, “The Lord has done this.”
So we come to this table today. It is not my table or the Session’s table. None of you can claim it as solely yours. It is Christ’s table. He invites all who trust in him to come. On this World Communion Sunday, we remember that this table goes around the world uniting the faithful of every language and culture, every tribe and clan. We don’t come here to highlight what separates us from other believers. We don’t come to shut some out because they don’t believe or think in exactly the way we do. We come to celebrate what unites us – the person of Jesus Christ. We celebrate the Word made flesh, the relationship which God created especially to bring grace and salvation, peace and restoration to humanity.
This table goes to the east as far as we can see, It goes to the west far beyond the horizon. It goes so far north that it becomes the south to which it goes in the other direction. This table is the assurance that in spite of rejection and betrayal, in spite of watered down thinking or strait-jacketed narrow thinking, God’s relationship to humanity in Christ will never fail. It is the Lord’s doing. All human hindering will be for nought.
Welcome to the table of Christ. Come joyfully to meet your Savior.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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