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Mark 12:1–12 (ESV)
1 And he began to speak to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard and put a fence around it and dug a pit for the winepress and built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went into another country. 2 When the season came, he sent a servant to the tenants to get from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 And they took him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Again he sent to them another servant, and they struck him on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 And he sent another, and him they killed. And so with many others: some they beat, and some they killed. 6 He had still one other, a beloved son. Finally he sent him to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ 7 But those tenants said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8 And they took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. 9 What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Have you not read this Scripture:
“ ‘The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
11 this was the Lord’s doing,
and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”
12 And they were seeking to arrest him but feared the people, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away.
This passage is part of an ongoing situation that goes all the way back to Mark 11.15 with the cleansing of the Temple. Remember that the fig tree and the clearing of the Temple are related. The Temple, while it looks beautiful outwardly, isn’t producing fruit in keeping with the calling that God has for His people: to be a light to the nations, witnessing to the glory, love, mercy, and forgiveness of the Lord Almighty. Instead, God’s people have bunkered down, keeping anyone who is not Jewish at arm’s length and refusing to engage others with the love and grace of the Lord.
Specifically, as it relates to this passage, religious leaders were concerned with their position, power, and control, rather than with producing fruit and being a light to the world. They had fallen short; worse, they had predetermined what the Messiah and the kingdom of God would look like and do, and they were unwilling to see and do anything beyond their limited vision.
Jesus told this hard parable against the religious leadership. In the parable, the vineyard represents the Temple and the people of God; the tenants are the leaders of the Jewish people, and the servants are the prophets from the Old Testament; and the son in the parable is Jesus Himself. The parable has a tragic ending: the son was killed by the tenants, and the owner of the vineyard dealt with the tenants accordingly, with the vineyard eventually being given to others.
And the Stone? That relates back to Daniel 2 and the dream of the king that Daniel interprets. In that dream, the kingdoms of the world are represented by successive kingdoms of gold, silver, bronze, and iron. Each kingdom is less glorious than the previous, and finally, there comes the weakest kingdom of all, made of clay and iron. And then the Stone. The Stone destroys the last kingdom and becomes a mountain, a new sort of kingdom that will fill the whole world.
This is a very plain parable, and any Jewish person would have caught its meaning. The religious leaders certainly caught the meaning, and they were furious with Jesus, and they looked for a way to arrest Him. This parable is foreshadowing what will shortly unfold: Jesus will suffer, be crucified, and die outside the walls of Jerusalem.
It may seem amazing to us that these people didn’t respond to Jesus when they saw Him. They were blinded by their desires and agendas, and they didn’t listen to the voice of the Lord, let alone follow His call for them as His people. They literally missed the Son of God in their midst.
Now, before we get too down on them, we must realize that we’re not very different. Our default setting is to keep things just the way that they are. We are experts at knowing what church should look like, and any person who comes into the life of our church, well, we’ll do our best to make them just like us.
Do you hear it? It’s that same bunker mentality of the religious leaders, and it leads to our failure to reach out to the mission field that is right outside our front door.
If we are going to let Jesus be the Lord of our lives, if we are going to really entrust Him with everything, then be ready to be unsettled, be willing to let go of your control and preconceptions of what the church should look like, do, and be. It’s the only way we can follow where Jesus leads and be His missional disciples with the same heart and purpose as Jesus (remember the key verse for Mark’s Gospel? Mark 10.45).
God bless you, and know that you are constantly in my prayers!
Scott
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