day four: Christ, the Cornerstone
/Readings: Psalm 118, Isaiah 28:16, Luke 20:9-18, 1 Peter 2:4-10
It’s the middle of the week that would become the most pivotal of human history—the one that would become known as Passion Week, the stretch of days between the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem and the Resurrection a week later. The Christ is teaching the people in the temple and begins to tell a story of a vineyard’s owner whose tenant vine-growers have abused his absence. The owner sends a servant to demand his just payment, but the vine-growers beat him and throw him out. A second servant is sent, and treated the same way. Then a third.
The owner of the vineyard said, “What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.” But when the vine-growers saw him, they reasoned with one another, saying, “This is the heir; let us kill him so that the inheritance will be ours.” So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
Luke 20:13-15a
Then, as the people gasp in horror, Jesus quotes from the Passover Psalm, the very one that they would all be singing in a few days as they prepared for the Feast of Unleavened Bread: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief corner stone” (Psalm 118:22).
In Hebrew, the word “son” is pronounced ben. The word “stone” is pronounced eben. In a masterful play on words, Jesus links the rejected stone with the murdered son—the Messiah with the Son of God. Just a few days later, when the Jews, like the vicious vine-growers, crucified Him, He would prove to be both: a “stone of stumbling” to those who reject Him, and yet a “precious value” to the ones who make Him their foundation.
