Episode Transcript
PRAYER OF CONSECRATION
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Abba, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Abba, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Mark 12:1–12 (NIV)
Jesus then began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully. He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed.
“He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’
“But the tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.
“What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. Haven’t you read this passage of Scripture:
“‘The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”
Then the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd; so they left him and went away.
CONSIDER THIS
While Jesus was in Jerusalem, walking in the temple courts, the chief priests, teachers of the law, and elders questioned him in terms of his authority. Jesus, in turn, wisely challenged the questioners: “John’s baptism—was it from heaven, or of human origin? Tell me!” (Mark 11:30). Since the religious leaders refused to answer this question—probably because their answer would get them into trouble with the people—then Jesus would not answer theirs as well. Nevertheless, in our text, which immediately follows this account, Jesus did answer the question of his authority—but not in a way that the religious leaders would appreciate.
It is exceedingly difficult to communicate painful truths to people who are self-deceived, who are largely unaware of their own participation in evil. A direct approach of calling such people out on their actions rarely works. It’s just so much wasted effort and may even be counterproductive. Indeed, many people are masters at verbal self-defense; they quickly accuse the accusers of some fault, throwing back the charge and, thereby, never considering their own shortcomings, or they simply hide behind the pretense of a well-constructed image of the self that is ever beyond accusation, and in their minds at least, beyond evil. To get through to such people, it is best to proceed not directly but indirectly, perhaps through a story or a parable. This is precisely what Jesus did in our account.
If one crafts an engaging story or parable in which listeners will get caught up in the narrative, then they will often be eager to make deeply held judgments about the justice or injustice of particular actions in the story and sometimes, as a consequence, unwittingly condemn themselves. This is what the prophet Nathan did when he told a story about a ewe lamb to King David, who with great passion, and a strong sense of righteousness, ended up convicting himself (2 Sam. 12:1–15). “You are the man!” Nathan cried (v. 7). And while parables in the Gospels are often used to keep some as the outsiders that they are, to use the words of Mark’s gospel, “so that, ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise, they might turn and be forgiven!’” (4:12), the situation in our text is much different. Jesus actually employs the form of a parable, which in this instance functions in many respects as an extended analogy, in order to reveal to these questioning religious leaders not only who they are, beyond the facades of piety, but also who Jesus is and from where his great authority comes.
Employing the images of a vineyard, winepress, and watchtower that are also found in Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard (where, however, they have different meanings, see Isaiah 5:1–7), Jesus told the story of a man who “planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower.” The man then “rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place.” At harvest time the owner of the vineyard, who is clearly God in this parable, sent a servant (that is, a prophet) to collect some of the fruit of the vineyard, to receive some of the produce of the kingdom of God. We will see toward the end of this parable why the vineyard cannot be Israel, Judea, or the Jewish people but represents nothing less than the kingdom of God, itself, that had been planted by the Almighty at the beginning of the story and that was now tended by tenants (the religious leaders of Israel in the past and of the Jews in this present, first-century setting).
The parable continues and we observe that wave after wave of servants (prophets) were sent by the owner of the vineyard (God) to the tenants (religious leaders) who increased the brutality of their response with each successive wave—first beating, then striking on the head, and then ultimately killing. So great was the patience of the owner in this narrative that even after all this abuse, more servants were sent: “some of them they beat, others they killed.” Finally, in the face of repeated failure, the owner of the vineyard (God) sent his son, whom he loved, and who was none other than Jesus: “They will respect my son.” As the heir sent by the Father, Jesus should have received the fruit of the kingdom. But the tenants of the story, the religious leaders, had something else in mind.
The key to unraveling the deep meaning embedded in this artfully crafted parable has to do with the proper identification of the vineyard. First of all, we know that the vineyard cannot be the one imagined earlier by Isaiah in the form of Israel, simply because Israel cannot be given to others as our text indicates: “He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” Such an identification would simply be absurd. Second, that there are actually two vineyards in our text, and not one, is evident once we recognize that the tenants (the religious leaders) believe that the living God is not really necessary for the ongoing life of the vineyard that they are managing quite well, thank you very much, and that by all accounts they want to own utterly—all by themselves!
In fact, they think that God is either dead or is of so little consequence that if they kill his son then the vineyard will be theirs! So then, the first vineyard in our parable is the one planted by the Most High, the Holy One of Israel, at the beginning, and it represents nothing less than the kingdom of God. This is the vineyard that will be given to others after the wicked tenants are killed. The son, who is Jesus, is utterly identified with this vineyard, this kingdom, and so he quite naturally seeks some of its fruit on behalf of his Father. Accordingly, when the tenants (the religious leaders) cast the son out of the vineyard, it is not the kingdom of God that’s intended here, that is, the first sense of the word vineyard. Clearly, the religious leaders do not have that kind of power and authority, although in their stubborn pride, they think that they do. Simply put, they cannot cast Jesus out of the kingdom of God. That’s an impossibility. It’s deeply problematic to think otherwise. So then, when the tenants (the religious leaders) throw the son out of the vineyard, it’s out of a kingdom very much of their own making.
What is the nature of this second vineyard, this substitute kingdom, that the religious leaders had created? It is an all-too-human kingdom, one that grants the religious leaders enormous privileges of power and authority, as they oversee both the temple and the traditions, and one that places them ever at the center. If we could compare this kingdom to a hymn, it would not be the means whereby the religious leaders worshiped the one who transcended them in holiness, beauty, and glory. Instead, its lyrics would be marked by “the I, me, mine, self, and the like.”1 In other words, it would be characterized by the language of a very horizontal, self-referential religion. Elsewhere, in the Gospel of Matthew, for instance, Jesus cautioned his followers about self-invested religion that was masquerading as the worship of the God of Israel: “Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others” (Matt. 23:5–7).
Put another way, the religious leaders—the tenants of our text—created a tribe, with sharp in-group and out-group relations, with powerful social forces of popularity and approval, all of which made them the stars of the story. They believed that they were holy and righteous, faithful to the traditions that they had been given, because, among other things, they continually separated themselves from those whom they despised: “‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get’” (Luke 18:11–12). Moreover, these religious leaders did not like to think that they were merely tenants, common laborers, but that they were or, at least, should be the owners—that the vineyard really did belong to them. Naturally, they appealed to God in all of this, to buttress their power, to legitimize their position, and this worked well in the eyes of so many people, but on some level, even these religious leaders realized, in their moments of fleeting honesty, that they were participating in a sham that was chock-full of hypocrisy. How was this so? Because when the son of the vineyard owner came, they did indeed recognize him. They knew precisely who he was. And what did they want to do in order to maintain the pretense? They wanted to kill him! They had bloody murder on their minds.
In sorting out the two different vineyards, with their respective kingdoms, we are in a better position to understand the climax of the passage: “‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.’” In the past many have interpreted this particular verse in terms of the ignorance of the builders in not recognizing the worth of the stone they had, in fact, rejected. However, that interpretation is not a possibility here. Not only does the parable inform us that the tenants realized who the son of the owner of the vineyard actually was, but Jesus himself also revealed to the religious leaders in real life by means of this parable that his authority came not from below but from above—that he was and is the Son of God. If the religious leaders understood the parable well enough to recognize that it had been spoken against them, then they also realized, on some level, that the Father of Jesus is the rightful owner of the vineyard. Consequently, the rejection of Jesus by the religious leaders—they “looked for a way to arrest him”—arose not out of ignorance, which would imply no fault, but out of genuine knowledge of who Jesus was and what kind of threat—and it was a threat—he posed to their kingdom.
THE PRAYER
Father, may your kingdom come in all of its fullness in my heart and home. Displace any vain attempt to set up my own kingdom, and welcome instead my surrender to your Holy Presence and kindly leading.
