"Stick and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me!" You’ve no doubt heard that little rhyme, and you’ve probably even used it at times. When I was growing up it was the standard playground retort to an insult. But of course we all know that those words were simply a bluff. They had as much value as the rhyme itself. Words have a capacity to hurt far greater than any sticks or stones. I’m sure, looking around the room today, that there are people here who are still bearing the scars of things people have said to them in the past; even the long gone past. Not that all words of insult hurt as much as each other. Words that come out as a slip of the tongue are not nearly as painful as those that are premeditated, that are aimed at hurting us. And the pain is magnified if they come from someone close to us; from a child, or a brother or sister or parent.
But that sort of insult pales into insignificance when compared to the insult that Jesus is telling us about in Luke 20. If you like, this is the ultimate insult, because it’s delivered not against a fellow human being, but against the loving, the long-suffering heart of God himself. This is the last parable in Luke’s gospel and perhaps the last that Jesus ever told. In fact there’s some argument about whether this is a parable at all. Rather it’s more of an allegory where, unlike the other parables, the meaning is barely hidden in details of the story itself. Certainly, the scribes and the chief priests, at the end of the parable, have no trouble working out what it means. So let’s look at it to see what Jesus has to teach us by it.
1. The Human Condition
You may remember from last week that Jesus told the parable of the 10 pounds just as he was about to enter Jerusalem. Well, now he’s entered the city with quite a fanfare, and the first thing he’s done is to drive out the money changers and merchants from the temple precincts. This of course doesn’t make the Pharisees and Chief Priests very happy, so they challenge him on where he gets the authority for an act like that. His response is to turn the tables back on them. He asks them how they understood John’s baptism - was it from heaven or was it of human origin. In other words, where did John’s authority come from? Well, that puts them in a bit of a spin, and while they’re fumbling for an answer, he tells them this story.
He begins by saying: "A man planted a vineyard, and leased it to tenants, and went to another country for a long time." Now for Jesus’ listeners this would have rung loud bells. The vineyard was a well-known OT metaphor for the Nation of Israel. In Is 5, God tells them how he planted a vineyard but when he came to harvest it, all he could find was bad fruit. It was such a famous parable of the failure of Israel that Jesus’ hearers couldn’t have helped but think of it as they listened to this parable. And as the parable progresses it becomes more and more clear that he’s pointing the finger of criticism at them. Elsewhere he accuses them of being no better than their forefathers who killed the prophets (Lk 11:47-49) and here he goes further in predicting that they’ll even kill God’s only son.
At first the story only indicates their greed and their impudence towards the owner. But as the story progresses we find the true motivation behind this incredible act of rebellion. v14: "But when the tenants saw the son, they discussed it among themselves and said, ’This is the heir; let us kill him so that the inheritance may be ours.’" The true motivation behind their action is this: although they’ve been placed in the vineyard as tenants, they don’t want to acknowledge the true owner of the vineyard. They want to be the owners themselves.
Now, the danger when we read a parable like this is to see what Jesus is saying in the original context, that is, that the Jewish leaders have rejected God’s rule over them, and are about to reject God’s Son as well; and to leave it there. We think what terrible people these hypocritical chief priests and scribes were, and we think that’s all there is to learn from it. But that’s to miss the sting in the tale.
Because what Jesus is describing here is the condition of every fallen human being. The vineyard is a picture not just of Israel, but of the whole world. All of us have been put on this earth as tenants in God’s vineyard. And what’s our response? We don’t want to be tenants, paying rent. We want to be the owners. Adam and Eve were placed in the garden in the first place and given the task of tending it and what happened? They decided it would be good to be like God, knowing the difference between good and evil. And human beings have been doing the same thing ever since. The people of Israel from the moment God liberated them from Egypt, kept on turning away from the true worship of God to idols, until, eventually, God expelled them from the promised land and sent them into exile. The Kings of Israel present a long line of failure after failure to do what was right, with the odd exception. And it’s continued right through to our own day. A hundred years ago, humanist philosophers were predicting a golden age, where God would be irrelevant, when poverty, disease, war, would all be done away with. Human advances in science and medicine and sociology would solve all our problems for us. Well, 100 years later we look around our world and see incurable diseases still rife, wars happening with an increasing regularity, relationships breaking down at an alarming rate and we wonder how could things have got so bad? What’s gone wrong in God’s vineyard?
The answer is clear: People are still wanting to run the vineyard themselves, rather than follow God’s direction.
This is the root source of the ecological problems in our world. Here is why millions are starving while a small number waste the world’s food resources. Here’s why the socialist dreams of the communist bloc failed to materialise. Here’s why 40% of marriages end in divorce. Why? Because none of us want to follow someone else’s agenda. We want to be the owners not the tenants.
And can I just say that this is just as much a problem in the Church. Someone was joking recently that one denomination’s method of church growth is to have a fight and split the church. But it isn’t a joke is it? How many new denominations or independent churches have sprung up in the past century that way? All because people didn’t want to follow someone else’s lead.
As you listen to this story you notice 2 things. First, the insane insolence of the tenants. This is a rebellion that’s doomed to failure. Yet they seem to think they can get away with it. How can we puny creatures think we can shake our fists at God and not suffer any consequences. How can we go on rejecting anything and anyone that God sends to remind us of the debt we owe him and think we can get away with it? There’s no way God will put up with that sort of thing! Is there? Here’s the 2nd interesting thing you discover. The amazing thing about this story is that the owner, that is God, tolerates their rebellion for so long.
Here’s the amazing thing about the Biblical story. God’s incomprehensible concern for us. The lengths to which God will go to keep us on track, to maintain contact with us, despite our stubbornness and blind ignorance. And of course the length to which God will go is to send his own Son on a rescue mission.
Jesus’ Mission
You see the response of the owner to the repeated refusal to listen to his envoys is to decide to send his own son in a last attempt to talk reason to them. Now notice how Jesus at this point answers the question of the chief priests in v2, as he identifies himself as that Son, as the unique, the beloved, Son of God.
And notice that that claim is as important today as it was in Jesus’ day. There are still people in the church today who want to downplay, or even deny, the deity of Christ. I was talking to someone the other day who told me about a time his father was talking to his local minister commenting on the difficulty he had with the idea of Jesus’ resurrection, and the minister replied, "that’s OK I have the same trouble. In fact I don’t really believe the resurrection happened at all." Well, what sort of a state is the church in if its leaders don’t believe in the deity of Christ? The leaders of Jesus’ day didn’t, of course, and as a result, they put him to death. One can only think that had Jesus come today his end would have been the same. Rejected by those he came to save. Put to death because we didn’t want to submit to God’s authority. Because we wanted to be the owners, not the tenants.
Jesus Understanding of the Future
What’s clear in this story is that Jesus understands what awaits him at the end of the week. He’s clearly predicting his death at the hands of those God has put in charge of his nation.
But equally clear is Jesus’ understanding of the long term future. He knows that the eternal gospel doesn’t allow for anyone to run the vineyard except God himself. Listen to how the angels in Rev 14 announce the eternal Gospel: (Rev 14:6-7 NRSV) "Then I saw another angel flying in midheaven, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth -- to every nation and tribe and language and people. 7He said in a loud voice, "Fear God and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come; and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water."" The eternal Gospel which has been proclaimed from the beginning right through to the end is this: God is to be worshipped and glorified. He is the only God. Obey him. And the end of history will see God finally losing patience with those who continue to rebel against him. God will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.
Of course the danger is that we look at events and think that God isn’t doing anything about evil in the world; more importantly we see that he lets us get away with evil in our own lives; and we think we can go on getting away with it. We think we can sin with impunity. But God is not mocked. He doesn’t ignore us. Divine patience isn’t the same as divine indifference. His patience is merely to give us more time to repent. But a time will come when time will have run out. When he will come to judge the world.
And notice the basis on which that judgement will take place.
Having heard the punch line, Jesus’ hearers say "Heaven forbid!" Then he looks straight at them, as if to make his point even stronger, and says: "What then does this text mean: ’The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’? 18Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls." ’The stone that the builders rejected’ is a quote from Ps 118, a psalm about the Messiah. It’s a psalm that tells how the Messiah appears defeated, perhaps even dead, yet God lifts him up and makes him King. It was the words of that psalm that the people had shouted as Jesus entered Jerusalem a few days earlier. So again, Jesus is pointing to himself as the issue on which people will stand or fall. He is the stone on which they’ll stumble. And the bit about the stone falling on those who oppose him reminds me of the end of the story of Samson when Samson pushes the pillars apart and the whole building falls down, killing all the Philistines inside. It’s as though Jesus is saying, if you push me out of the structure, the structure will fall. If we don’t want Jesus at the centre, what will hold up the religion? Nothing! And the end result will be that we’ll be crushed in the collapse of whatever it is we’ve built up.
The basis on which God will judge the world will be the way people have responded to his Son. The basis on which God will judge me, and you, will be on our response to Jesus. Have you believed in him as God’s only Son? Have you called on him in repentance and faith to forgive your rebellion? It’s as though Jesus turns now to look straight at each one of us, just as he did to those in the crowd that day and asks, "Will you believe in me? Will you put your trust in me? Will you pay me the honour and obedience that I’m due?" Our eternal future depends on our response to that question. I pray that for every one of us the answer would be "Yes, Lord, I will!"
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