Proper 22, Year A
October 6, 2002
Christ Church, Covington

“Jesus said to them, ‘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 amazing in our eyes”?’” (Matt. 19:35).

Jesus taught in parables, in stories drawn from everyday life that illustrated the nature of the coming kingdom of God. As Matthew’s Gospel claims, “Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing” (Matt. 13:34). A parable attempts to make a point clear without addressing the issue directly; in other words, to reveal without being obvious. The stories of Garrison Keiller are an example of this technique: he seems to be talking about Lake Woebegone and the Chatterbox Café, but you don’t need to listen too long before you realize the stories are really about love, mercy, and grace. Yet at the same time, in a contrary movement, parables contain an element of concealment; they’re a sort of “in joke” that only the initiated understand. There’s a bit of the old Pythonesque “wink, wink; nudge, nudge” that goes along with a parable.

So much for style; what about substance? Parables indicate the topsy-turvey nature of the kingdom (“the last shall be first, and the first last”: Matt. 20:16), and are also a call to action on behalf of the kingdom (“on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it”: Matt. 13:46). In the parables, the kingdom of God is never far away; as in the parable of the five wise virgins, and the five foolish who fall asleep, “Keep awake therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” (Matt. 25:13).

The parable that Jesus tells in our Gospel today is one that has been heavily worked over, and applied to Jesus himself. The landowner is God, who sends his servants (the prophets) to recall his People to their loyalty as tenants of the vineyard. When the prophets are rejected, the landowner sends his son (Jesus) who is then beaten and cast out of the vineyard and killed. Punishment is swift, and the vineyard is taken away from God’s People and given to others who are worthy.

In this instance, most clearly, the story that Jesus tells suddenly is transformed into something else: the story of Jesus himself. Or, put another way, the parable that Jesus tells becomes the parable that Jesus is. Jesus is the emissary of the kingdom, who in his very being itself is the kingdom come among us. His teaching is, in the final examination, inseparable from who he is, and from the story of his death and life. In fact, the teaching is incomprehensible when it is abstracted from his person, and the vital context of death and resurrection. Jesus is God’s parable, God’s story, both revealing and concealing; God’s parable addressed to us, and demanding a response.

The key interpretive verse is from the Psalms, the songs of worship that are repeated so often in the Gospels and which supply one of the chief interpretive tools for the story of Jesus Christ. “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes” (Ps. 118: 22-23). The verse from the psalms is a prophecy of resurrection, used in this parable and elsewhere to refer to the rejected stone which is now at the head of the corner, raised up and exalted and made the crucial stone of God’s new building, the Church.
The parable, which otherwise ends with the destruction of the rebellious tenants and their replacement by others, really culminates earlier, with this cry of resurrection triumph. It is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that makes this parable, and the parable that is Jesus Christ, hold together. It is by his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead that Jesus Christ turns everything upside down. In these mighty acts of God in Christ the kingdom has come among us. Jesus' passage from death to life is God’s call to us to action; after this reversal, nothing can ever be the same again. The interpreters of this parable have followed a sure instinct, in understanding the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the key to everything else.

As the psalm says, “it is amazing in our eyes”. We ought to be amazed enough, disoriented and then reoriented again by the dying and rising of Christ, to respond in new ways and with new patterns of living. Jesus is God’s story, told again and again to humanity, so that the stories of our lives and their endings may be changed forever. Leaving the old behind, and stretching out toward the new life of the kingdom, may we receive the life that Christ Jesus has won for us, and the kingdom of which he is the rightful heir.


The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.

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