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S. Lent 5.25 Luke 20:9-20

“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone it will crush him…”

What does this mean?

A good Lutheran question for a passage that has puzzled many, down through the ages. It’s the punchline (see what I did there? 😉 for the joke Jesus tells about the wicked tenants in the Master’s vineyard. “Three wicked tenants walk into a bar…” Personally, I think there’s dark humor in all Jesus’ parables and until you get that, I don’t think you really get any of them. Maybe the true successors of the OT prophets are more often found in the comedy clubs of lower Manhattan than in the pulpits of modern Christendom?

It’s perilous to explain a joke; which is why it’s always tricky, preaching on Jesus’ parables. But getting the context is often helpful. Jesus tells this one after his triumphal entry on Palm Sunday—like Monday or Tuesday of Holy Week (which we’re going to consider next Sunday, a bit out of order) after his lament for how Jerusalem treats him, after he cleanses the temple, and right after the scribes and chief priests question his authority.

It’s a darkly humorous little story about how God’s people Israel treat him after all the good he’s done for them, simple as that. No mystery there. Even the chief priests and scribes “perceive he told this parable about them”. They get the joke but don’t like being the butt of it. Who does?

I wonder if any of us get the joke? I think mostly we do not get it; myself included. I think I just got it hearing it for like the 491st time this week in Tuesday morning bible study (which is at 9:45 am from now on, note the time change 😉

I think we don’t get it because we’re the butt of Jesus’ joke, here, too; and we don’t like that at all, anymore than the original audience of ladies and germs. But until you realize Jesus is laughing at you, not with you, and until you can laugh at yourself, you’re not laughing with him, which means you’re not laughing at all. You’re about as funny as a heart-attack, clenching your teeth, trying to decide how to shut up this smart guy, once and for all.

The only way to have fun with Jesus, is at the expense of your dignity and pride—to learn to see yourself as the butt of all his jokes and get over yourself, already, to see that his mockery is always gentle, his yoke easy, his burden light, designed always to evince… a smile not a scowl. Failing that, it will eventually hit you: that if you’re not laughing with him, you won’t be laughing at anything at all. You’ll be sad and miserable, forever—forgetting Israel’s father’s name is literally… LAUGHTER!

OK. The conventional reading of this parable is to see that the Old Testament Israelites are the wicked tenants. God sent them his prophets in 3 waves: the patriarchs from Abraham through Moses; the monarchy from Samuel to Jeremiah, and finally, the post-exilic prophets from Haggai till Malachi, culminating spectacularly with John the Baptist, the last and most hilarious of them all.

Those old prophets were lonely and beat characters without many friends. For every David who loved and heard them gladly, there were far more like Ahab, Jezebel who imprisoned, murdered, or flayed them alive. Look how John the Baptist ended up! Initially popular, he ended up with his severed head on a platter at a dancing girl’s whim.

God’s bright idea in the story that, after such a gruesome and hostile audience’s reception of his servants: “why not send them my only-begotten, beloved Son (the funniest of the bunch)? Surely they’ll hear him, enjoy his dark humor?” But that (unsurprisingly? 😉 ends horribly! They eliminate him with extreme prejudice, thinking, bizarrely, that, in this way, they will have a clear path to his inheritance.

But, au contraire, Pierre! (Pardon my French! 😉

Matthew’s version of the conclusion is: “he will bring those wretches to a wretched end, wretchedly”—a comical lot of wretchedness!—“and give the vineyard to others who will bear the fruit of it graciously.”

The audience… boos, jeers: “No way! Surely not!” But Jesus looks directly at them and delivers his punchline: “What then is this that is written? The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone? Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.” 😉

The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived they were the butt of the joke, but—they feared the people who did find it funny and were laughing at them, not with them. So they planned to send spies to catch Jesus out accusing him of things like insurrection, anarchy, impiety, etc…

Our trouble getting the joke’s our thinking (like White Lotus’s Mrs. Ratliff 😉 the butt of it is “the Jews, or Buddhists, not Christian folks like us with good values.” We think we’re high-value tenants who deserve the vineyard. We fail to see NEW TESTAMENT Israel’s still Israel!

Because, we do the same damn thing as the original tenants! Our mistake is simple: we try using the gifts of God for our self-interested ends. We try to make God fit our mold. That’s what “falling on the stone” looks like—it’s grabbing God like we’re the master builders, for Christ’s sake, fitting him into our story. It’s trying to lift the Rock (that’s far to big to lift 😉 Then, it’ll just fall on us and crush us! Because God will not be moved or molded or used as part of our building programs!

But what else can you do with a Rock too big to lift?!!!

Ah, now you’re asking the right question!—the very question Jesus answers for us in his very first Sermon on the Mount, the punchline of which is this: “Everyone who hears these words of mine and heeds them will be like a wise man who built his house on the Rock! And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house. But it did not fall because it had been built on the Rock.” 😉

You can be built on the Rock that is Jesus! That’s Option 3 with the Rock! You don’t 1) fall on it, scavenging building materiel. You don’t 2) try lifting it—it’s too big a Rock to lift and will only fall on you and crush you! You 3) let the Rock build you into his house by the passive non-rejection of childlike faith 🙂

Which is another way of saying you finally see: YOU ARE the butt of this joke! and laugh at your hilarious attempts at self-justification!

This is the “quite disinterested self-abandonment of adoration”—the real key to Xn faith which stops asking what we can do for God and simply lets him have his way with us. And if he laughs at us, we’ll laugh right along with him, too—finally in on the joke; and the Peace, surpassing all understanding, will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.