Luke 20:9-19

Confrontation – Priests Dispossessed

Luke 20:9-19 - Parable: Murderous Tenants of a Vineyard

⁹ He set about telling this parable to the people,

“A man planted a vineyard.

He then leased it to some tenant-farmers

and went away for a considerable time.

¹⁰ At the appropriate time he sent a slave to the tenants

so that they could hand over to him

the produce of the vineyard.

But the tenants, after beating him up,

sent him back empty-handed.

¹¹ Once again he sent another slave.

That one too they sent back empty-handed

after beating him up and insulting him.

¹² Yet again he sent a third slave.

This one they wounded and then threw out.

¹³ The master of the vineyard then said,

“What shall I do?

I shall send my beloved son.

Hopefully they will respect him.”

¹⁴ But when the tenants saw him coming,

they plotted among themselves and said,

‘This is the heir.

Let us kill him

and then the inheritance will be ours.

¹⁵ And throwing him out outside the vineyard,

they killed him.

What now will the master of the vineyard do to them?

¹⁶ He will come and destroy those tenants,

and give the vineyard to others.”

Those who were listening said,

“That must not happen!”

Luke made the point that Jesus addressed his story to the people. Yet really those he had in mind were the chief priests and scribes, who were obviously still present and listening.

As the pilgrims listened to the story their natural sympathies would have lain with the tenants. Many of them would have been tenant farmers in Galilee, deprived of ownership of their land through their inability to pay their debts. Much of their former land belonged now to the Jerusalem aristocracy, among them priests and scribes.

The chief priests and scribes would have heard the story differently, initially identifying with the absentee owner. However, Jesus’ question took a different shift when he posed the final question; and the chief priests and scribes, at least, began to see its symbolic relevance.

In Jesus’ mind the tenants would have been the priests and scribes. They were the ones who

had looked after their own interests
had killed the prophets
and would soon kill Jesus, God’s son.

They were the ones whom God would destroy. Their response of “That must not happen!” showed that they had heard the message. To make his point even clearer, Jesus added a further reflection:

¹⁷ But looking right at them, he said,

“What then is this text about?

‘The stone which the builders discarded,

this has become the cornerstone.

¹⁸ Anyone who trips over that stone will fracture their limbs,

and on whom it falls will be crushed’.”

Jesus referred to three stones:

a rejected cornerstone
a stumbling block
and a stone that crushed.

All three images had Scriptural precedents.

Psalm 118 (the same scriptural source of the crowd’s greeting of Jesus when he had entered the city as the one who comes in the name of the Lord) also had the lines:

The stone that the builders rejected

has become the chief cornerstone.

This is the LORD’s doing;

it is marvelous in our eyes. (Psalm 118.22-23)

Jesus’ story had spoken of the son whom, throwing him out outside the vineyard, they killed ... He now identified himself with the rejected stone that, by the action of God, would become the cornerstone within the new Israel. The chief priests and scribes had forfeited their responsibilities.

Continuing his stone imagery, Jesus then borrowed from Isaiah, insisting that the stumbling stone (everyone who trips over that stone) for the leaders was precisely Jesus himself, due to their inability to recognise him as the envoy of God.

But the LORD of hosts …will become ... a stone one strikes against;

for both houses of Israel he will become a rock one stumbles over—

a trap and a snare for the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

And many among them shall stumble... (Isaiah 8:13-14)

This sense of Jesus as the criterion for stumbling or otherwise had already been foreshadowed in the song of Simeon in the Infancy Narratives:

Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary,

“This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel,

and to be a sign that will be opposed

so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed ....” (2:34-35)

The third image of the stone that crushes expressed the thought patterns of Daniel:

And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom

that shall never be destroyed,

nor shall this kingdom be left to another people.

It shall crush all these kingdoms and bring them to an end,

and it shall stand forever;

just as you saw that a stone was cut from the mountain not by hands,

and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold.

(Daniel 2:44-45)

The reference raised again the issue of kingship. Though the Kingdom of God ushered in by Jesus would indeed stand forever, it would not crush other kingdoms as one more political kingdom might. The strong language referred rather to the eventual irresistible outcome of the Kingdom of God.

¹⁹ The scribes and the chief priests

sought to lay hands on him right then,

but they feared the people.

They realised that he told this parable against them.

Jesus’ final comment served to further challenge the honour of the priests and scribes. Their unwillingness, or inability, to respond adequately to Jesus meant that in the eyes of the crowd Jesus’ honour had increased even further. Their task had become even more difficult.

Their loss of face did not stop for a moment their determination to discredit Jesus. Only when Jesus had been discredited in the eyes of the general population, only when he had lost his “honour” status in relation to them, would it be safe to take the next step and move towards his eventual elimination. Either that, or they would have to find some way to arrest him secretly, bring him to trial behind closed doors, and somehow persuade the Roman authorities, with as little public exposure as possible on their part, to condemn and execute him. For that, they would need to manufacture some political criminal charge.

Next >> Luke 20:20-26