The Stone

Matthew 21:33-46

October 8, 2023

 

Warning labels are an inherent part of our modern society. It seems that just about everything we use or consume or touch or even smell has a warning attached to it. We’ve all seen the pharmaceutical ads where the first 50 seconds of a 60 second spot touts a new medication’s amazing, miraculous, curative benefits, and then the last 10 seconds are used to list every conceivable side effect. Often, the side effects sound worse than the illness that warrants the medication. But if the warnings were not given, whether it’s on a new medication or something else, there would be a public outcry. It is in the best interest of everyone to be warned about something potentially dangerous or threatening to our health or well-being, even when the dangers come with something that may help us in the long run. 

            I sometimes think the same should be true for scripture. A warning label should be pasted both on the outside and inside cover of every Bible. Before we turn one page of our Bible, whatever the translation, there should be a warning label.

“Warning to all readers! You enter these pages at your own risk. Reading may change you.”   

            I don’t say this to be irreverent. I say this because I believe that being faithful means that we must read scripture on its terms, not ours. It is not easy to do. I would much rather read the passages and stories in the Bible that confirm my understanding of God and skip the ones that challenge my preconceptions and firmly held notions. Yet if I want to be faithful in reading scripture, then I must also read the passages and stories and parables that challenge me, that push back at me, that make me struggle. I must read scripture on its own terms, not mine. That is where the warning label comes in. Reading scripture on its own terms may force us to not only see God differently, but to see ourselves differently as well. This passage from Matthew has the power to do both, so you have been warned. We read it at our own risk.

            As I studied this passage, what I repeatedly read in commentaries is that this parable has been used to justify anti-Semitism. If we read this story as pure allegory, it is easy to see how that interpretation has been reached.

To better understand the parable itself, we need to understand the scene in which it is set. Jesus is in the final days before his arrest and crucifixion. He is in the temple. He is in a confrontation with the Pharisees and scribes, the religious authorities. They want to stop him, silence him, at any cost. They have been challenging his authority. Jesus has responded to their challenges with parables. Our parable today, like another we’ve read in recent weeks, takes place in a vineyard.

The vineyard would have been a relatable, familiar example to the people listening to Jesus. In this story a vineyard was planted by a landowner. The landowner plants it, puts a fence around it, digs a wine press, and builds a watchtower. This was what any responsible landowner, any good landowner, would have done. He leaves the vineyard in the hands of his tenants and goes to another country. When harvest time rolls around, he sends his servants to the tenants to collect his share of the harvest. Again, this would have been standard practice. But the tenants turn on the servants. They beat one, they kill another, and they stone a third. Yet the landowner does not retaliate. Instead he sends more slaves to them, and those slaves are treated the same way. 

            I suspect that everyone who heard Jesus tell this was thinking that surely the landowner would now rain down vengeance on the heads of the tenants. It was bad enough that they beat and killed the first slaves sent to them, but to do that a second time? No landowner would put up with that. But here’s the twist; not only did the landowner not retaliate, but he also decided to send one more emissary: his son. Surely, he thinks, his son will be respected. They won’t harm the landowner’s own flesh and blood. But when the tenants see the son approaching, they hatch a plot.

“Let’s kill the son, and then we’ll receive the inheritance.”

They seize the son, throw him out of the vineyard, and kill him too. When Jesus finishes his story, he asks the Pharisees,

“Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”

The Pharisees respond,

“He will put those wretches to death and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”

            Just as Jesus did in the previous parables, the question that Jesus asks of the Pharisees puts them in a position to condemn themselves. The ones who refuse to give the share of the harvest to the landowner, the ones who kill the slaves and son of the landowner, then have the audacity and sense of entitlement to believe that the inheritance will still come to them, are the ones who will be put to a miserable death. They are the ones who will lose their place in the vineyard to others. The point of the parable seems obvious. Jesus says it. The Pharisees are the wicked tenants. 

            If the Pharisees are the wicked tenants who kill not only the slaves, but the son, then we can see how some interpreters have made the leap that the Jews are the ones who are sent out of the vineyard, and the Christians are the new tenants who “produce at the harvest time.” Reading the parable this way makes it an “us versus them” scenario. But here is where the warning label is needed. What makes us think that we – Christians, good church goers, etc. – are always the good guys? What makes us assume that we are the “good guys” in every story or parable?

Even more importantly, Matthew was writing to a congregation that was Jewish. Would he have been preaching their own replacement to them, to his people? I’m not convinced this parable is about one religious group replacing another, but about those who are called to be stewards of the vineyard – caretakers and cultivators – forgetting that call and grasping for power and ownership instead. The tenants seemed to have been confused as to who exactly owned that vineyard. The text makes it clear – it wasn’t them. But they were determined to live as though they owned it, as though they held power over it, and they made ghastly, terrible, deadly decisions to hold onto that power. And the repercussions of their decisions would not only haunt them but haunt future generations as well.

It seems to me that Jesus was calling out the Pharisees for forgetting the One to whom they and everyone else belonged. He called them out for forgetting that they were called to be stewards, not only of the Law, but of people. They were not the owners of the Law, but they thought they were. They believed it gave them power and they abused that power and they hurt God’s children, and that includes themselves. Jesus challenged the Pharisees and the religious leaders and all those who thought they knew God’s will and possessed power that only belongs to God to realize that God was and is doing a new thing. God would not be limited by their dogma. And God will not tolerate their abuse. Jesus goes on to quote,

“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” 

            The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. 

            Jesus also said,

“The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” 

            I have always heard those words as a terrible and violent punishment, a terrible, violent judgment. Yet maybe it isn’t a literal judgment. Maybe falling on that stone, the stone, is exactly what must happen for us to see the truth about ourselves, to see the truth of bad decisions we make, to see the truth about our own lives and the struggles that we wage in our own hearts. Perhaps falling on the stone is what must happen to break open our hardened hearts and closed minds and blinded eyes and tightly clenched hands.

            “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”

            This isn’t a parable about destruction for destruction’s sake. This is a parable about God building something new, using the stone that was rejected by some to be the cornerstone, the building block for the new thing God is doing.

            Yes, this is a hard, hard parable to read, to hear, to understand. But hearing the truth about us is never easy. Hearing the truth about our actions, our past, our history is painful. But it’s also necessary. Jesus was telling the Pharisees the truth about themselves, about their leadership, about their abuses. He was telling them that he was the stone upon which they would fall. They didn’t want to hear it. But maybe in doing this he was also offering them grace. Maybe he was also offering them mercy, a chance to repent, to turn around, to reorient themselves in the path God called them to follow. Maybe Jesus knew that he was the stone they must fall upon for their hearts to be broken wide open. Maybe he didn’t want the Pharisees, even them, to be destroyed as much as he wanted them to be made whole. Maybe that’s what we need from this parable as well: a moment of truth-telling that breaks our hearts wide open and God’s grace that makes us whole.

            Warning to all who would hear these words. They just might change us.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.