It’s the final journey to Jerusalem. There’s not much more time left for teaching. No more days left for walking into the hills, or beside the sea. The time is running out. What has begun happening now is what Jesus has been expecting would happen.
He’s here in the temple with some of his disciples and other people who have come to hear him. The people who are following Jesus around now are of serious concern to the temple priests. Those followers are, after all, seated in front of Jesus, not in front of them. They’re listening to this upstart rabbi from out in the sticks, not them. The priests are about to lose the people, and that means nothing but trouble with a capital T. Rome depends on the priests and scribes and elders to maintain calm among the Jewish people. If things get out of hand it will be the priests themselves who will be called before Pilate, the emperor’s representative, to explain what has happened. The priests have seen the dozens of crosses on the hill just outside the city, and they have experienced the Romans unhesitating ability to use those crosses to put their enemies out of circulation.
No, no, no, no..they must take control from this trash-talking preacher!
“By what authority are you doing these things?” one of the priests shouts at Jesus, interrupting him. “Who gave you this authority?” ( Luke 20:2)
They’re trying to trap Jesus now by making him answer in a way that will get him indicted by the civil authorities. That way, their hands will be clean when the Romans come to take him away. But Jesus, being Jesus, doesn’t answer them, he returns the volley, and asks them a question which will get them in trouble with the people no matter how they answer. It’s a trick question, a very smart question, and you can read it in verse 3 if you’d like, but I want to stop right here and point out something about the way Jesus taught people- teaches us- about the Kingdom of God.
When Jesus teaches, he never goes to the blackboard. He never turns on a Powerpoint presentation or starts handing out topical outlines for the day. He is always operating from the presumption, the knowledge, that the important answers, the stuff we need to know about, is already in us. On another occasion, when confronted by the Pharisees and priests, he told them to stop thinking about when and how where the Kingdom of God would come: “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation,” Jesus told them, “the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17: 21)
I don’t think I personally can overemphasize this enough. Jesus didn’t teach with answers, he taught with questions, and as we’ll see again in a moment, stories. He asked questions and told stories because of the respect he had for the people who were listening to him. Jesus knew the yarn God had used to knit people together in their mother’s wombs. He knew the Image of God that was imprinted on each and every person. All that Godstuff in a person was still there even if it had been buried for years under the cultural and religious debris of life, and what Jesus did better than any teacher before or since was help people to rediscover the God in them, on their own.
The Kingdom of God is within you, he told them, and then he began to help them find it again. By doing it this way, Jesus wasn’t always successful. Some people wouldn’t get the point of his stories- “So, what are you saying, Jesus- that we should all join the Church of the Good Samaritan?” Not everyone gets the point, or they are too uncomfortable with the answer that comes bubbling to the surface of their hearts when confronted with one of Jesus’ pointed questions. But for those who do get it- for those who have ears to ears, as Jesus said over and over again- for those people the world becomes different. The world changes forever. The Kingdom of God begins slowly leaking into their worldview and, if they allow it to, it becomes a thunderstorm that never stops.
Back to today’s story. Jesus has effectively, for the moment, hushed the priests who are interrupting him. I can imagine him shifting his eyes from them, and back to the people who are feeling a little bit uncomfortable right now, a little bit scared. Jesus has just shut down the priests who hold a great deal of real power over the people, and they know those priests right now are most likely in the process of taking names. I can imagine, easily, Jesus giving the crowd a quick wink at this point. Verse 9:
He went on to tell the people this parable: "A man planted a vineyard, rented it to some farmers and went away for a long time. 10 At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants so they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 11 He sent another servant, but that one also they beat and treated shamefully and sent away empty-handed. 12 He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out.
Stop. This parable, this story, is different from any Jesus has told before. This is the last story he would tell before the events of the last week of his human life would begin the next day. This was the Saturday before Palm Sunday. Everything he teaches from this point on will told only to the disciples. This is the final story he has for the people. And while he speaking it into the ears of the people, he is aiming it at the hearts of the Pharisees and priests who are still listening, even though they are pretending not to.
He sent still a third, and they wounded him and threw him out. Verse 13 "Then the owner of the vineyard said, 'What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.'
14 "But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. 'This is the heir,' they said. 'Let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' 15 So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
"What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? 16 He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others."
When the people heard this, they said, "May this never be!"
Most of the people are getting most of this story. They’re putting 2 and 2 together quickly. God had sent the prophets over and over again to the vineyards of Israel but just like the servants in the story, the prophets had literally been beaten and treated shamefully by the people- the sharecroppers of the vineyard. As a result of those rejections, the people of Israel had been kicked out of their homeland. That fear of being sent from their homeland is where the priests and Pharisees had stepped in. When people, then and now, are afraid, they are willing to hand over the control of their lives to others claiming authority.
But what about this “son of the vineyard’s owner”? Who’s that? This is the first and last parable Jesus told in which one of the main characters of the story was himself. How many mouths dropped open that day as that realization began to dawn?
Certainly not all of them, because there is still enough fear in the room for some of the people to protest the ending of this story. “May this never be!” they argued, I’m guessing with a sidelong glance back at the priests who were by now seething.
So Jesus brings in some supporting data from the Psalms. He uses the priest’s precious scriptures to write up a writ of indictment against them:
Verse 17. Jesus looked directly at them and asked, "Then what is the meaning of that which is written:
"'The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone'?
18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed."
19 The teachers of the law and the chief priests looked for a way to arrest him immediately, because they knew he had spoken this parable against them. But they were afraid of the people.
They were afraid of the people. Fear begets fear begets fear. What the blackboard and Powerpoint teachers of the law did at this point was to stomp out of the room in a flurry of huffiness and insult. And we know from what follows that they hid out from the people for the next several days and began sending spies to gather information about Jesus which they could go the Roman authorities with. In fact, that the priests even found a special spy named Judas, inside Jesus’ inner circle.
Jesus could have jumped all over the priests and Pharisees, got the crowd all stirred up, and begun right here the kind of insurrection that Judas and others were hoping he would. Instead, he told a story. It was a story designed to do exactly what all the other stories Jesus told had been designed to do- cause the Kingdom of God to come to the surface in those who were hearing it.
And it did in two ways. For those with ears to hear and hearts to be changed, they had just heard Jesus clearly identify himself as the son of the vineyard owner, the son of God, the cornerstone- referred to in the Psalms. They would be among the few who would know what was really happening on that cross the following Friday.
Others with ears to hear, but hearts unwilling to change- the teachers of the law- had the Kingdom of God stimulated in them that day too, but for those with a vested interest in the status quo, the Kingdom of God is worse than a salmonella stomache ache.
As with all of Jesus’ parables, there was the local and immediate meaning and a larger, universal, and eternal meaning. This parable meant something specific to those in front of Jesus that day. But what does it mean to those of us with Jesus this day?
At this point I could give you a 1, 2, 3 list of major points and we’d remember them all about as long as it takes to hit the sidewalk just outside. Or, I can try to do what Jesus did and tell you a story:
Once upon a time there was a woman who raised roses. She had tea roses in the window boxes, antique roses in the backyard, and hybrid roses of all colors tastefully planted throughout her front landscape. She worked hard to grow them; she had special soil and fertilizer delivered from the gardening center, hovered nearby while her yard man spread the soil and fertilizer, and personally checked the Rainbird water controls daily.
It was her greatest desire to win “Best of Show” at the Rose Nationals each year and she’d come close in the past. Each September, on the day before the Rose Show was to begin, she would put on her L.L.Bean muckaboots, her Abercombrie and Fitch garden apron, and with her Swedish steel scissors, imported from the Dieter-Schmidt Tool Craft Center in Dresden, Germany, proceed into her gardens with a Styrofoam encased vase, a stainless steel metric ruler, and high hopes. Checking each rose for size, petal count, and swirl balance, she would choose five of the very best roses to enter into that year’s contest.
She stressed all of that night and throughout the following day as she and her husband drove to the show. Arriving hours before the judging would begin, she spread her fine Irish linen tablecloth, chose five of the seven cut glass antique rose vases she’d brought along, fretted and fussed over the perfect angular placement of each rose and each vase, brushed each them carefully with a tiny ultra-fine sable brush, and misted each of them with a blend of water and sucrose so that precisely placed drops would enhance each petals beauty.
Some years she had won First Place. Many years she had won 2d or 3rd place. And each year’s failures- and that’s all they are if you don’t win Best of Show- each year’s failures would be unceremoniously dug up by the yard man and thrown in the front yard dumpster.
This year, though, would be different. The woman had worked throughout the winter, spring, and summer, grafting, transplanting, and daily fussing over a hybrid rose born of two of the antique roses from the backyard. The Queen Victoria Pink and the Grover Cleveland Yellow would she knew, produce a one-of-a- kind peach colored beauty come September and indeed it did.
It was the Best of Show that year and the woman was the talk of Rose Societies everywhere. When it came time to name the rose, she named it the Peachy Elizabeth Carson Shaw, which was, of course, her own name.
Still beaming with the pride that only a Best of Show award can bring, Elizabeth, upon arriving home, made a beeline for her closest neighbors, so she could share with them the pictures and the trophy she had won, all by herself.
In the neighbor’s front yard, she noticed that the neighbor’s 6 year old granddaughter, come for a visit, was lying on her elbows in the front yard staring intently at some weed there. “What on earth are you doing, honey?” Elizabeth asked the little girl, but then the neighbor’s door opened and Elizabeth didn’t have time to wait for an answer
Melanie- that was the little girl’s name- Melanie didn’t want to answer anyway. She didn’t want to scare away the little white butterfly which had landed on the yellow, end-of-summer dandelion in front of her. She tried to count the petals but forgot she was counting when she saw that each petal looked the same but was just a little bit different. Then she saw the butterfly’s long tongue dipping into the dandelion, and then..and then, she thought she saw the butterfly’s little black marble eyes move in her direction!
And it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen and she would never forget it. Twenty-seven years later, in fact, she took her own three children into the backyard one September afternoon to see if they could find dandelion’s of their own, and maybe even have their own breath taken away by a little white butterfly’s friendly greetings.
Let anyone with ears, hear.
Amen
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