In high school I was on the track team – I was a sprinter. Our coach would make us sprinters run long distance as well as run sprints for practice. We hated running long distance, it was so boring, it was so tedious, we felt it was against our nature. But still we had to run a three mile loop that the coach had assigned to us every practice.
We soon discovered that we could cut the three mile loop in half if we cut though a couple of vineyards. I was a simple matter of taking a right turn and running about 200 yards through one vineyard hopping a barbed wire fence and then running about another 200 yards through the next vineyard. We all decided we would take the shortcut the next day.
Now if you have never been in a vineyard, understand that the grape vines can be quite thick and quite tall. They run in these long rows. The vines in this vineyard were over five feet tall and fairly dense, they grew on a wire trellis – it was like running between huge hedges.
It seemed like simple matter of a quick shortcut, except for the vineyard caretaker who lived in a house in the vineyard. On our run the next day we turned into the vineyard excited about our brilliant shortcut. The vineyard caretaker laid in wait until we were about 100 yards into the first vineyard, then the side door of his house burst open, the caretaker stepped out, shotgun in hand. He wasted no time – KABLAM! Fortunately we were some distance from the caretakers house, but, that rock salt he hit us with still hurt like the dickens.
It is amazing how fast you can run, and how easily you can leap over a barbed wire fence when someone behind you is reloading a shotgun. After a few more tries of running through the vineyard, we figured out the range of his shotgun and were able to stay out of its reach (yes, as dumb high school kids we tried again and again). Still, every time we took the shortcut, I ran through that vineyard as though my life depended on it.
The vineyard caretaker probably knew he couldn’t keep us out of the vineyard, but if he kept us moving we couldn’t eat any grapes. He was doing his job, keeping the vines safe so the owner could have a good profit at harvest time. Unlike the vineyard caretakers in Jesus’ parable, this man did his job, he represented the owner, he kept us on the run - the caretakers of the vineyard in Jesus’ parable did not represent the owner. In fact they not only didn’t represent the owner, they tried to usurp the owner and take his rightful place.
Yes, this passage is about Jesus being the Messiah and Jesus being the rightful authority as opposed to the religious leaders of the day, but this passage is also about you and about me, especially you and I as Americans. See, as the religious leaders of the day thought they were the final authority and they enriched themselves with that perceived authority, we as Americans see ourselves as the final authority, to the damage of our Christian walk. Are we living like the religious leaders in Jesus’ day who were overconfident in their authority?
Let’s look a our Scripture today and see what God has there for our lives.
Starting in verses 27/28 we see that Jesus has arrived back in Jerusalem and is walking through the Temple. Remember, last time Jesus was there at the Temple He drove out all the merchants from the court of the Gentiles and would not let anyone bring merchandise through. Also, remember that the merchants were there because they had the ok by the Temple authorities. There is also the possibility that those who let the merchants do business in the Temple saw some profit from it – in other words, some sort of fee for right to do business may have exchanged hands between the merchants and the Temple authorities.
With all this in mind, we see Jesus strolling through the Temple, the same Temple that He threw merchants out of the day before, the exact same Temple where He caused a big brouhaha Jesus the day before…here we see Jesus waltzing right back in, like nothing had ever happened. Jesus, by showing His face again the next day shows that He clearly had no remorse for the incident, why? Because He felt He was in the right AND that He had the authority to do so.
The religious authorities don’t see it that way. So upon seeing that Jesus is back at the Temple, they question him. It is clear that this is not a spontaneous question that comes occurs to them as the spot Jesus; It is a question that has arisen as a result of their discussion about the conduct of Jesus. Now, they could have questioned a long list of things couldn’t have they? But what they choose to question is His authority. Why is that? Because they feel they are the authority, in fact they feel they are the final authority. The absolute final authority. Who is this Jesus, poor son of a carpenter from Nazareth? Who is He to make any demands in this Temple? Look, let’s be frank, to people in Jerusalem being from Nazareth as about as cultured as, for us here in Anchorage, as a guy coming from Chicken, Alaska….ok, that’s not fair…maybe Yukon Territory, in the middle of nowhere, Canada. Jesus was a country bumpkin in their eyes and what they saw was some bubba hillbilly coming into the most sacred place in all of Israel causing trouble. Who did He think He was?
So they question His authority. (Verse 28) The actions that Jesus had taken the day before (throwing out merchants from the Temple) – by what authority did Jesus drive out the people out? After all, the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders authorized the buying and selling. Was this action by Jesus’ own authority – as a prophet, or by someone else’s authority, and if so who? Really, this is a rhetorical question to them. The religious authorities believe they know the answer – “Jesus doesn’t have any authority”. They don’t expect any kind of a real answer from Jesus, they are making a statement of their authority and in doing so, hope that Jesus will just slink away.
I don’t know, maybe they are looking for an apology. Maybe they are hoping that Jesus might concede that things got a little out of control, that His emotions got the best of Him…but Jesus, He doesn’t back down, and that is because Jesus believes that He was in the right. He was right to throw all those people out of the Temple.
Notice there in verse 29, Jesus doesn’t answer the question does He? This was a typical of a rabbinic style of argument of the day. A rabbi if was questioned, many times he would answer a question with a question. This is what Jesus does. He is not evading the issue, He is using the form of argument that the Hebrews of the day were all familiar with – Jesus does this so that what He says will be perfectly clear to all those around Him. Certainly Jesus could have claimed his authority by quoting Scripture after Scripture, but He doesn’t. Jesus presents a witness, John the Baptist.
John the Baptist is the primary witness Jesus uses to claim his identity and authority. Whatever they decide about John, they decide about him. The religious authorities are now in a bind. The populace believes, and rightly so, that John was a prophet and if John was a prophet, then his authority was certainly from God. See, they know what is coming next. They know what is coming next because they know this style of argumentation, and so do the people listening to the exchange: Jesus will next say, “If John the Baptist had his authority from God, why didn’t you listen to him?” So, to get out of the bind, the pretend to not know – but everyone knew they were lying.
Did you notice that the religious authorities don’t consider the facts about John the Baptist, they don’t think theologically (what is true or false), even though it is a theological question – they think pragmatically (what is to the best of our advantage) and they think politically (what will people think?), but they never think theologically. The issue here was not lack of evidence, but a refusal to draw a conclusion from the evidence given. They don’t consider the facts because the facts do not matter to them, to them, what matters is that they are the ultimate authority.
So Jesus decides to tell a parable to highlight their mistaken belief. This parable is styled to be very easily understood, it is styled so that no one could miss its meaning. The parable given is an illusion to song of the vineyard found in Isaiah 5:1-7. The reason Jesus alludes to this passage is that He wants to draw attention to the abuse of the religious leaders leadership position.
The owner of the vineyard has done every measure possible to protect his investment, he built a wall around it, (unlike the vineyard owner in my home town) dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. (verse 12:1) The caretakers are there to not only nurture the vines, but to also protect the vines – and they do, but they do it for their own personal enrichment, and not for the owners enrichment.
We see in verse 2 that there was a contract between the owner and the caretakers, the type of contract mentioned was common in the day. Remember, Palestine was occupied by Rome at this time. The whole upper Jordan Valley and the Galilean uplands were in the hands of foreign landlords at this time and it was common for a contract to stipulate rent in form of a portion of the produce. The crucial detail here is that the owner is living abroad.
Those taking care of the vineyard are locals, those who are sent to collect are foreigners. What local neighbor is going to object to the running off of foreign rent collectors? There may be a feeling that the land was stolen from the locals. So they beat the first, shame the next, and the collectors kept coming – so they kept refusing them. I imagine that with each successful refusal to pay rent they become more and more bold in their attacks on the collectors. So when the son of the owner arrives, well, their hearts have hardened and it is not difficult to kill the son and be rid of him.
Why would they kill the son anyway? When the son shows up, the caretakers in their eagerness to enrich themselves, would assume the owner is dead when the son shows up. Under specified circumstances those who lived on the land could seize the land if the owner was powerless to defend himself. According to law, the caretakers could take the land if the heir was eliminated. Once the heir was eliminated the land would be ownerless property, and if not claimed in a period of time, those living on the land would receive it. Kind of a squatters rights of the day. We see this in verse 7, where the caretakers speak of a petition that they have drawn up themselves in their own interest, “This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.” Historically, wine was high on the export list from Palestine and the caretakers are eager to make a full profit.
It would have been expected that the owner’s son would draw respect, be it Jesus or not, which had been denied the others, who would have been slaves or some form of servant. The final indignity would be to cast the body out of the vineyard to rot. The caretakers made a bad assumption and the owner would take recourse through the government and lease the land to others.
Te religious leaders are furious, this parable is about them and they know what Jesus is implying about them. Jesus implies that the religious leaders rejected God’s final messenger and that the sacred trust will now be transferred to the new Israel. Jesus is also implying that the religious leaders of Israel have historically rejected the messengers of God, the prophets of old, and that the current lot of religious leaders is not different as they rejected not only the prophet John the Baptist, but also God’s son, the messiah, Jesus Christ. The capstone Jesus refers to in verse 10 is frequently used as a reference to the Messiah in Jewish writings. (this comes from Psalm 118:22f) This reference to the stone confirms Jesus’ identification with the son in the story.
Now hold on a minute here. It is very easy for us to criticize the Jewish religious leaders of Jesus day and to think we are not like them. But the truth is, we tend to think like them. Here in this passage, chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders believe they are the final authority about who Jesus was. Their question about Jesus’ authority is really a question about who Jesus is. Here in our time, here in America, Americans, both believers and unbelievers believe this exact same thing – they believe they are the final authority about who Jesus is. I will even go further and say that every person in America believes that they are the final authority on who Jesus is, period. You and I believe this too. Really. We practice this belief by asking others, “Who do you believe Jesus is?”, it is as if we create and establish who Jesus is by our opinion, by our vote of confidence. “Well, I believe Jesus is this, or that”, and so we build this picture of our own personal Jesus. In my opinion Jesus is….and here in America, one person’s opinion is just as valid as the next opinion. So we create, especially here in the church, a personal image of Jesus, to fit, in many cases, what may be for our own personal benefit. And we are right, according to society, for everyone has a right to their own personal opinion, because, like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, we all are the ultimate authority.
See what I am saying? We as Americans place a very high value on the freedom of personal opinion. We are free to believe whatever we want to, no matter how crazy it is. One place we can plainly see this today is the arena of public opinion. We see this by the creation of the perception of who public people are by popular opinion. A public personality is created, molded and sometimes destroyed by popular opinion. Some examples that come to mind are currently in the news are Brittney Spears, O.J. Simpson, and every political candidate running for president. We see different commentators give their opinion on who a public person is, a perception is built, and by in large, that is who we take them as – remember Dan Quayle and the potato, remember Michael Dukakis and the tank ride?
Understand, the religious leaders of Jesus day adhered to all the right principles, they lived very moral lives, they knew the bible very well, they were good people and by all appearances they were following God, but what was their downfall? Their downfall is a principle that we highly value: The right to the authority of a person’s personal opinion. They exercise their right to a personal evaluation of Jesus and in the process, in their evaluation they look past who Jesus is and see only their personal goals.
See, in the personal opinion of the religious authorities of the day, Jesus was a nobody. But in the grand scheme of things, did their personal opinion matter? No, it did not. What we see here, in this scripture today, is that personal opinion is of no relevance when it comes to Jesus Christ. Their opinion, my opinion…your opinion does not matter. The fact is, everyone, even the disciples had an opinion, an evaluation of Jesus that day – and none of them were on the money. People who were for Jesus, people who were against Jesus, their opinions just were not accurate.
You know as we experience the modern media the popularity of Jesus rises and falls with the tide of changing opinion. In one issue of a news magazine Jesus and Christianity will be held up as good and in a subsequent issue they will be held up as detrimental to society. We know better than to pay attention to popular opinion.
Certainly we don’t want to make the same mistake that the religious leaders of Jesus day did when they exercised their privilege of personal opinion. Because not only were their opinions inaccurate, their actions blinded the to the truth. Notice that upon the religious authorities evaluation of Jesus they decide to sideline Him. (verse 12) Why is that? Because they are the final authority, and when one is the final authority, all others must be sidelined.
Here is where we have to be careful, even as believers: We can value our opinion so highly that we reject what we see in Scripture and we do it without blinking an eye. Then we wonder why, “why is our faith not strong?” Perhaps we have sidelined Jesus in favor of our personal opinion.
For our evaluation of Jesus we have two things given to us to make an accurate assessment: First the revealed Word of God, this God has given us to understand who Jesus is and second, we have confirmation through the Holy Spirit.
This is not a mystery, nor is it rocket science, let us not dismiss Jesus with personal opinion.
