I wonder what happened to Jesus after he got off his donkey on Palm Sunday? I bet his head was spinning! If Matthew’s Gospel is chronological, he is soon head to head with those out to destroy him.
What does Jesus do when he wants to make a point? He tells a story.
So here, Jesus tells a story to the Pharisees and chief priests about rejection. A landowner leased his vineyard to others while he travelled, and when he sent servants to collect the produce, the tenants beat and killed them. This happened twice. Then Jesus continues:
Finally he sent his son to them, saying, “They will respect my son.” But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. (Matthew 21:37-39).
Then Jesus quotes the psalmist from Psalm 118, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes’?”
Throughout the Old Testament God sent prophets to Israel to call them to turn away from their sin and turn back to God. All of them were mistreated by Israel, just like those sent by the landowner in Jesus’ parable. Then, just like the landowner in the parable, God sent his Son, Jesus—“They will respect my son”—but they did not. And on Good Friday Jesus was rejected, seized, beaten — thrown out of the vineyard of Jerusalem, and killed.
But Jesus was raised from the dead, so that “the stone that the builders rejected” indeed became “the cornerstone” not only for a new church, but for a new world. Now there’s hope for this very different and difficult Holy Week! As well as fun stuff like this sent to us to keep us laughing!!
Jesus knows the end of the story as he enters the Jerusalem fray. He’s told his disciples it several times. He knows suffering and torment and social distancing are coming, and are unavoidable but he knows as he tells this story they will not have the last word. The danger for us is we know the end of the story so we dodge the horrible bits. Congregations who’ve suffered me on Easter Sunday (and will again in 2021) will hear me say over and over again that Jesus is a crucified and risen Lord. He has to beat something and rise from something. Easter comes because we do Good Friday first.
But I think looking the chief priests in the eye here, Jesus loves telling this story! In the midst of coming indescribable suffering he has hope because he knows the rejected one will eventually be the risen and glorified one, and their sort of negative religion will be seen as nothing but ecclesiastical power games.
I wonder what the story Jesus tells has to say to encourage us as Holy Week opens up before us? As the sun shines brightly into our homes and we see daffodils in bloom outside but we cannot apart from going out a short distance explore new life coming, and Mr Hancock says if people keep going out to beaches for barbecues and parks to sunbathe we will all be locked up, how do we know if we feel rejected today that we will rise one day? As I write this I’m watching the chief medical officer in Scotland be crucified in a press conference for spending two weekends in her second home. Life is not normal and tempers are rising when people make mistakes. I think it was a mistake or maybe it wasn’t but its painful to watch her stand there and go red... the BBC political correspondent has just described what we’ve just seen live as “the most excruciating press conference I’ve ever seen.”
Let one of my favourite theologians put what I’m trying to say far better than me:
When the crucified Jesus is called "the image of the invisible God," the meaning is that THIS is God, and God is like THIS.
Being rejected is horrific.
I remember the brutal picking of the football sides in PE at school. I was never picked but forced on a side as I was so inept at sport.
I remember being unemployed after failing my A levels (well I did get RE :) ) and being rejected time after time for jobs I applied for.
I remember being matched to a large town church with over 400 members in the first round of stationing once and being rejected by them in the matching meeting for being in their words “woefully inexperienced”!
I remember the pain of going through a divorce, and to have to accept a marriage was over. When we are in the dark place of rejection, we feel we will remain rejected and beaten for ever...
But this story, given to us on the evening of Palm Sunday reminds us where we find ourselves today will not be where we will be for ever. We sit in a holiday let because our rented home did not work out, we are here until July at least, but one day we will be allowed to move on to new adventures that are planned for us. We have no answers today but nor does anyone. But this virus cannot go on forever. We have to sit tight for now and help by being good, the end to hopefully come quicker. But the end will come!
Take my life experiences:
I was cruelly rejected by captains of football teams at school. But I kept smiling even though I hated PE. And one day when school reports were given out, the PE teacher gave me an A for effort which made me laugh out loud!
After nine long months of unemployment in 1986 I got a job. I never thought anyone would employ me. The job centre in Harpenden as everyone else went to university treated me appallingly as did my mother who used to shout at me “don’t come home until you’ve found a job!” The job I got was only working a photocopier but it was work and it was worth again.
It turned out the church that rejected me (I knew after ten minutes I wasn’t going) was not easy and I got a nicer appointment in the next stationing round.
And after a divorce, vowing I would never ever get married again, well, look what happened!
I guess hearing Jesus tell this story again tonight reminds me of two things:
One, we need to hang in there. Even when it is hard. Sometimes we cannot avoid hard times. And even rejection. The call of the Church is to be a community of living stones with Christ, the rejected one, the cornerstone holding us together. In the old Worthing Circuit there was a town centre church called Cornerstone. It had a fabulous cafe in it by a bus stop and did amazing pastoral stuff for people who dropped in. It’s now closed but I used to admire how day after day faithful people just used to be there...
In this mad time, the Church is recreating itself. This morning I’ve been able to dip into worship on line, hearing Grace and her children in the Nidd Valley Circuit sing “We have a king who rides a donkey”; seeing my friend’s daughter Katherine in Harpenden do some intercessions with a palm cross and then to share with Canon Sarah live from the Vicarage on Holy Island break bread. We are seeing people do virtual church in huge numbers. I often wonder whether it’s worth posting these thoughts as I don’t know if anyone reads them. Then I get really kind messages saying how reading my rambling helps. Thank you.
Then we need to take a long term view. How will this end? For now we keep going faithfully until the end comes. We started another Scandinavian drama with subtitles on BBC4 last night called “Twin” - you have to concentrate hard on it! But now we are gripped to see how it works out so we will not give up on it. So let’s keep going. Jesus gives us the end. Our rejection and our tiredness and in churches sometimes wondering if it is worth keeping going, will be rewarded.
The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is amazing in our eyes”
Let Moltmann from Theology of Hope have my penultimate paragraph !
“That is why faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.”
We are called to be faithful. We are called to hold on. We are called to anticipate Easter. And don’t overlook these verses in the story. No wonder the chief priests and Pharisees want to arrest Jesus there and then but dare not because of the crowd.
“Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.’
And the King James Version puts it even more powerfully:
“And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.” Ouch!
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