Luke 20 #6: ἐξουσία: Contemplative thought on the role of authority as seen in Luke 20:9-19 (Segment 6.A): The Revolt of the Vineyard's Tenants
Finally, we come to our final passage Luke 20:9-19 knowing that there is still a segment ahead to write on that concerns each of these passages in relation to how the author uses the term or the idea of ‘robbery’ and then again the relationship of these passages to the object ‘stone’! Some of this has already begun to be brought out in a few of the previous articles but I hope to go back and draw some further conclusions with one or two more articles on each or at least do some further contemplation on these subjects within this passage. At that point, then I will gather all the articles as a final paper and decide if I want to do any further editing or compile it into a book type of form and then I will consider if I want to do anything further with the final ‘edition’ or hold on to it for further use. So, if you have not been following along with the previous blog articles I encourage you to go back and begin reading those and then get back in touch with me about how it impacted you or if you agree or disagree with the way I portrayed anything in the past articles than let me know. If you just enjoyed reading and following along with me through the chapters, send me a note and let me know that also! Since I rarely consulted any sort of commentary on these selections, this is my personal interpretation of these passages and I noted in one commentary that I glanced at after I wrote something that I had a different view than the commentary I think on the passage so I know that I have further research I could do in the future on other’s ideas and how they match or don’t match my interpretations.
I am excited to be wrapping up the first part of these reflection articles that cover Luke 19:1-20:19. In coming to the final article of this first main section, I spent some time thinking about the pictures that come to my mind as I have studied each of these sections. Some quick summaries of the previous 5 sections may help us get a general view of some of what is being communicated within Luke 19-20 so that we may have a starting point of the context as we continue into this last section. Some main ideas that you may have noticed as you walked through Luke 19-20 with me are 1. Jesus comes to seek and to save the lost and give them purpose in his kingdom. 2. This world has two kingdoms and we must make an individual choice as to which kingdom we will choose to serve during our time on earth. 3. Jesus faces his coming death in full submission to His Father as he enters Jerusalem and his disciples want to both honor and defend him showing him to be a righteous and worthy king. 4. Amidst Jesus’ own passion predictions of himself that have come in the previous chapters of Luke, He prophesies the downfall of the Pharisees, Jerusalem, and the Temple, all of whom have dishonored Him and therefore, also God. 5. Jesus’ authority, like John, comes from God and He is not accountable to the chief priests, scribes, and elders but only to His Father.
In Luke 20:9, there is a shift in the focus of Jesus’ attention. He had been in dialogue with the chief priests, scribes, and elders in Luke 20:1-8 and then in 20:9, Jesus seems to escape further conflict with them temporarily by throwing His attention straight into the people that are listening to Him in the temple. Therefore, he is diverting the control of the conversation out of the hands of the chief priests, scribes, and elders and to others in his surroundings which are the listening ears of attentive people. He speaks a parable, a story that holds significant truth but was not factually true but instead made up. Perhaps it may be parallel to a circumstance that he knew or that was familiar to some of the people with identities changed or facts manipulated in order to communicate a message. Parables are stories that were typically thought up in order to help bring home a message to the people that they would relate to.
The content of the parable is that a man leases a vineyard that he has just planted to some new tenants and then he leaves the country. As owner of the vineyard, he decides to ask for some of the harvest and for a share of what grows in his vineyard and as a result he sends someone to collect the share. The first servant is beat and leaves empty handed. The second servant was beat and insulted and also leaves empty handed. The third servant was wounded and thrown out of the vineyard. It seemed that the tenants were revolting against the owner and did not want to give any shares and the owner is perplexed at the tenants and considers what to do and decides to send his beloved son hoping that they will respect his son! The tenants see the son coming and they begin to discuss between themselves what they will do when the son arrives. They decide that since the son is heir they will kill him in order to collect the son’s full inheritance themselves. The idea is that the owner, who is the father, will eventually be removed from his ownership position probably through death and old age and his plans for the vineyard would then fall leaving the vineyard in their hands rather than the hands of his son. The question then is will their plan work against the owner? I want to say no, but the answer is, “Yes.” When the son arrived, the tenants threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. It seems that their plan was a success! The vineyard would soon be theirs, but the problem remained about what the owner would then do and indeed the parable says that the owner will come and destroy the tenants and then find new tenants to work it and care for it! The people listening to Jesus, upon hearing that the tenants would be destroyed and the vineyard given to others, respond with the cry, “Heaven forbid!” Jesus looks back at them and says “Then what is the meaning of Psalm 118:22, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the corner stone?” He explains that anyone who falls on the cornerstone will be broken to pieces or if the cornerstone falls on anyone than it will crush anyone it falls on. Hearing this made the scribes and chief priests angry because they realized Jesus was speaking against them and so they wanted to lay hands on him or arrest him in that hour but they did not only because they feared the people that were listening to Jesus.
This parable brings into question the validity of the authority of the owner in sending his servants and his son when they are all beaten, thrown out, and the son himself killed. We might think it a fair question to ask, “What kind of a master or what kind of an owner or what kind of a god would send his own servants, hired hands, or son only to see each of them beaten, conquered, destroyed, or killed?” A wise owner who is a good steward of his resources would manage his own estate in a way that he delegates responsibilities to others who show integrity and he himself would notice character and obedience of his own slaves and workers. Sending his own servants and his own son is a sign of respect, obedience, and commitment toward those who are working for him. Testing the quality of what is being produced in the vineyard is going to be part of the job of the owner in order to make sure that the vineyard workers are producing good fruit both of themselves and of the ground. Only a good master or owner and only a good God would be concerned with both the vineyard and the workers renting out the vineyard. One who is concerned with only the vineyard is not going to concern himself with the conduct and affairs of the workers. One who is concerned with only the workers and not the vineyard may not get a strong harvest if the vineyard does not have quality soil. However, the owner is concerned with both but the problem is that the workers conduct and affairs are showing contempt toward the owner. They seem to want to keep the vineyard so there does not seem to be a problem directly with the vineyard itself. So again not only is this a good owner but this is a patient owner that is testing the work of the hands of the tenants to analyze their own conduct. He notices how they treat his servants. He notices that the tenants are rejecting his most obedient servants. As he patiently manages his resources through his delegations, he notices that the tenants do not show upright character but the servants are showing dedication to him! The owner is not only good, and patient but he is a wise owner judging the tenants according to their behavior. He suffers along with his own servants who are beaten. He loses his son in the process. The workers show conceit and arrogance as they conspire to keep the vineyard and are willing to kill to get it rather than work according to the rules of the owner in humble submission to the one who gave them permission to be in the vineyard.
God is like this! God is good to us! He loves us and cares for us and provides for us! He calls us out of sin and away from sinful and deceitful behavior and he calls us to live according to His plan for our life rather than according to our own selfish plans! God is good! God is patient! He sees us and knows when we do wrong! While we are still involved in sin and engaged in evil behavior, He calls to us and reveals Himself to us and speaks life to us calling us out of sin and to a life with Him! He calls us to repent and turn to Him away from our wicked ways and He is patient and just to forgive us of our sin! No matter how many times we do wrong, he continues to call us back to Him and He continues to forgive us when we sin and when we are willing to receive His forgiveness than we are made clean in His sight! God is patient and willing to open the door that all may come in and receive Him as Jesus Christ the Lord! God is patient willing for us to come to Him in prayer and receive eternal life and become part of the family of God! He notices us in our weakest moments and in our greatest strengths and is patiently calling us to repentance, confession, and sanctification so that we may be made holy and righteous in His sight! God is wise! God directs the paths of the humble and gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. He protects the broken. He loosens the chains of injustice and unties to chords of the yoke to set the oppressed free and break every yoke! He proclaims release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. God is a wise God in what he does! He sent His only son not to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Only an owner who is trusting in a good, patient, and wise God would be a good, patient, and wise person as he deals with contemptable, evil, and wicked tenants. The owner’s servants and son are in an awkward position though! They are being beat for obeying their master and the son is killed for obediently checking on the vineyard and tenants and for being an heir! This doesn’t change the fact that the beatings and death of the servants and son, on account of the contempt of the tenants, meant that the servants and son had less authority as representatives of the owner. In other words, the tenants could not manipulate the servants and the son in a way that would make them loose their authority to carry out the business of the owner. The worst they could do was persecute and martyr them which they did but the tenant’s rejection of them did not change who they represented. The owner never once withdrew the authority he bestowed on the servants and the son on account of the persecution and then the martyrdom that came from the tenants. During this whole escape, they continue to represent the owner regardless of the actions of the tenant. Their identity was with the owner and their actions were portraying faithfulness while the tenants displayed aggression, rebellion, revolt, and disobedience to the very person that gave them the right to be in the vineyard. These were not tenants of integrity but of fraudulence. The owner bestowed authority on the servants to carry a message all the way into the vineyard to the tenants that was for the sole reason that the owner wanted a share in the crop of his own vineyard! That request should have been welcomed and it wasn’t! In addition, the son should have been welcomed and he wasn’t! If the owner himself, was a person of greatness, then his son also would be a person of the same. He would be a person of renown. A person of renown was visiting them in the vineyard and they rejected his visitation! Jesus had just said regarding the citizens of Jerusalem in Luke 19:44, “You did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” In the parable of the vineyard, Jesus was saying again of the tenants, “You did not recognize the time of your visitation from God in the Son!” The son was one who was doing the will of the father and his authority came from his father but the tenants rejected the advances of the owner to humble them through sending his own son to them. What a privilege that would have been had they acknowledged the son as coming from the Father and welcomed him with open arms and said “Yes the vineyard belongs to you” and “Yes, we joyfully give you a share in the harvest of your own field!” “Yes, we are the workers, but you are the owner!” Instead, they said, “No.”
Another fair question we might ask is, “Can the tenants be justified in taking over the vineyard against the owner’s wishes? Is there any argument here that the workers are greater than the owner or the owner and his son?” The tenants wanted what they couldn’t have. They committed the sin of covetousness. This was one of the 10 commandments that Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai when the Israelites were in the wilderness! Exodus 20:17 says, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” This is in fact breaking the 10th commandment. According to this verse in Exodus, the owner was not just an owner. He was a neighbor and the tenants sin started off very innocent it seems. All they wanted was something that belonged to their neighbor. They looked over the fence and saw a good field and decided they liked their neighbor’s field and they wanted it. How many of us do that? Instead of remembering the law of Moses, they said, “Well ya, maybe we can rent it.” An innocent move on the tenant’s part ends up in murder? How? They coveted what belonged to their neighbor. They said, “I want that and I will stop at no cost!” They were willing to beat and kill for it but they still lost the vineyard and then their lives at the end! They had no lasting authority over the servants and the son and what authority they exercised they exercised unjustly and that authority was taken from them. It was removed from them. In the end, they didn’t break just the 10th commandment of Moses, but they broke the 6th (thou shalt not murder), and the 8th commandment (you shall not steal), and perhaps even the 9th commandment (you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor) concerning giving false testimony of the servants and the son and the owner. Jesus is saying to his disciples in John 13:15-18a after he washes their feet, “For I have set you an example that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen.” There is a very big distinction between the tenants in the vineyard and the servants sent by the owner as messengers of the owner. The servants were chosen but the tenants were merely hired hands. John 10:11-15 says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away-and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.” The tenants could not justify their actions in taking over the vineyard in a court of law of that day had this not been a parable which meant that they could not override or overpower the word of the owner and therefore were not greater than the owner and his son!
Finally, we might ask, “How does the owner show his authority in taking the vineyard back especially in light of the loss he experienced of his son?!” His own son was killed. The heir was murdered. His plans for the vineyard seemed to fail. It would no longer be given to his own flesh and blood and it seemed that putting a servant in place of his own son might also fail as was sometimes custom. What a loss! The owner tested the tenants and found them fraudulent and lacking character and lacking in goodness of heart. How would he take back his vineyard? The answer is simple: Luke 20:16 says, “He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.” The response of Jesus’ listeners in verse 16 makes me wonder if they would have been good friends with the tenants but this is only a parable so how could they be friends with people that were fabricated in a story and not living breathing historical contemporaries! They cried out, “Heaven forbid!” In other words, they said, “Oh no! The owner will destroy the tenants!? May God in heaven forbid such a thing!” Would God do such a thing as destroy them? Romans 3:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death.” It also says, “The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus!” How can someone who has not received the gift of life receive eternal life? The tenants wage for the sin they committed was death. They broke the law of Moses. They disregarded the righteous and humble way of obeying the owner. They did not have life. Therefore they received condemnation for their sin and were judged worthy of death and so the owner punished them by coming back to destroy them and then he makes plans to find new tenants, tenants that would be obedient and good. The entire purpose of the owner in coming back to the vineyard by the end of the parable was to destroy the wicked tenants! How devastating it is for them not to have welcomed the servants in the first place and in so doing they would have welcomed the owner. How devastating it is for them not to have welcomed the son and in so doing they would have welcomed the owner also and saved their own lives! The owner shows his authority in taking the vineyard back by his return to the vineyard and by doing more than just displacing the tenants but by killing them.
Jesus spoke this parable and the people listening were troubled by the end that the tenants were given. They had questions perhaps of the authority of the owner to judge the tenants as worthy of death. Perhaps they should have been forgiven and merely ejected or displaced from the vineyard. Yet they received death as a penalty for their sin. Jesus replies in verse 17 with Psalm 118:22 in answer to the core reason of why they received for their wage death: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” and verse 18, “Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” In other words, they rejected the owner who was concerned that the vineyard be in good hands and worked properly by proper people. When they rejected the owner, essentially they were rejecting the cornerstone, and in so doing the cornerstone would crush them or they would break themselves when they fell against the owner’s commands and revolted against him.
We will look more intensively at the meaning of these verse soon but for now, it will suffice to say, according to my knowledge, that in building a brand new building or some sort of structure out of stone, the cornerstone is the stone by which the pattern is set for the rest of the stones to be laid. Simply put, it is the first stone that a builder uses. Therefore, to reject the first stone was to mar the complex or facility that was being built. The rest of the walls would not fit together when the cornerstone was laid incorrectly (in the case that it was rejected). If the cornerstone needed to be reset, then the whole building would be messed up. Therefore, if you fell on the cornerstone in verse 18 you would hurt yourself or if it fell on you then you would die under the very weight that it carries. The cornerstone may be more visible than the rest of the stones and may have a distinct characteristic about its look since it is set apart from the rest of the stones. Jerusalem itself was going to fall in a revolt that would be a few decades away. The citizens in the temple were rejecting Jesus as the Son of God and the religious leaders were conspiring against him and questioning his authority in verses 1-8. He would be killed in a matter of a week by some of the very people that were listening to him in the temple just as the son was killed by the tenants.
As we wrap up this series on authority and its relationship specifically to Luke 20:9-19, we can pick up on the idea that plotting against true and righteous authority brings death and destruction. We should heed the warnings of the authorities that speak the words of God. The owner has a greater authority than the hired hand. The owner of the vineyard is Jesus himself and His authority stands true and greater because He was sent by God to be Savior of the world.
Take a few minutes and think upon these verses in relation to today’s article and then spend some time in prayer:
2 Chronicles 7:13-14 says, “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Matthew 25:34-43, 46 says, “Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”……And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
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