NOTES for Luk 20:9-18

The parable of the vineyard, like all parables of this kind, concerns above all the people of God: in the prophetic tradition they are usually symbolically called the vineyard. In this context the meaning of the parable becomes entirely clear, and everyone listening to Jesus understands it. More than that: those whom what He said directly concerned understood perfectly that it concerned them; the cry "May this never be!" is the best proof.

The Savior's answer to this "May this never be!" is also unambiguous enough: He reminds those listening to Him about the cornerstone. The image of the cornerstone appears constantly in Jesus' parables, and its meaning lies in the fact that such stones, used in building a house as the corner elements of a strip foundation, were good for nothing except the purpose for which they were intended. There is no doubt that, in speaking of the cornerstone, Jesus has Himself in mind, thereby making His listeners characters in the parable He has told. As we can see, He wants to make those listening to Him understand that each of them stands before a choice from which there is no escape.

Many people would have liked Jesus to turn out to be one among many - prophets, preachers, teachers of the Torah - in short, an ordinary man. Then He could be listened to without really heeding Him, and accepted without truly accepting Him, as we always do when inwardly we disagree with the speaker. In that case, polite, formal acceptance means only agreement with the other person's right to have his own opinion, a point of view different from ours, one that at times is, in essence, of no concern to us. But the one putting forward that point of view must then also recognize our right to our own understanding of truth, different from the one he proposes. He must allow what today is called pluralism, acknowledge the relativity of every truth and every opinion, including his own, and then in turn he will be allowed to speak, like everyone else.

Had Jesus agreed to such rules of the game, He would perhaps not have had to die on the cross. But that is precisely the point: He could in no way agree to them, not because He absolutely had to prove something to someone and win all the disputes into which His listeners drew Him, but because accepting such rules would have been false testimony for Him and the collapse of His mission.

After all, He brought the Kingdom into the world and revealed to the world the fullness of God, and this was no longer simply one opinion among many, or even one revelation among many: He truly revealed to the world the whole fullness of truth and the whole fullness of revelation. All the great sages and prophets who came before Him asked questions and expressed opinions; He did not ask questions, He answered them, and He Himself became the answer to every possible question. And He could be accepted only as such: any other attitude toward Him would be deceit.

Of course, if a person truly does not realize Who is before him, the matter can still be set right: what is not realized today can be realized tomorrow. But if the issue is an unwillingness to accept the obvious, an unwillingness to give up one's own right to an opinion in the face of the living Truth, the situation is a dead end: the Truth cannot stop being truth, no matter how much someone may want it to. What remains is either to accept or to reject. Either to regard this strange Teacher as the One He Himself considers Himself to be, or to treat Him, at best, as a madman, and at worst, as a conscious apostate and blasphemer claiming what no human being can claim. A choice had to be made: there was no third option.

Bible readers often understand the question about authority put to Jesus by representatives of the Temple leadership as a kind of trick, an attempt to silence Him or make Him publicly acknowledge the authority and primacy of the priesthood in matters of spiritual life. Yet the question was sincere in its own way, though of course not in the sense in which Jesus Himself could have answered it.

It is no accident that He answers a question with a question, asking His questioners about John’s baptism. John’s baptism was a kind of spiritual touchstone that tested a person’s sincerity, whatever social group they belonged to. One had either to acknowledge the obvious action of God’s Spirit or evade the answer so as not to appear a blasphemer. Those who questioned Jesus about His authority likewise preferred to evade the answer. In this way Jesus lets them know that they have no right to ask Him the questions they are asking. No right before God.

There are questions and answers that presuppose absolute sincerity. One can ask God any question, for example, but on one indispensable condition: being ready to hear any answer, perhaps one entirely unexpected by the questioner. Without such readiness it is pointless to ask: God does not usually answer someone who is not prepared to hear any answer. But sometimes even the most ordinary people are asked questions whose answers can be heard only when one is ready for anything. This is all the more true when it concerns Jesus. And the point is not that, on hearing what they do not wish to hear, people will most likely ignore the answer or even pretend not to have heard or understood it.

The point is that an answer given by God always entails consequences. It is not merely information: it is God’s will in action. And a person who has received an answer from God becomes part of that action, part of God’s plan. This is not an answer one can simply take note of and then go on living as though nothing had happened. But if someone resists God and does not want the answer they have heard, they become God’s opponent. It is no accident that immediately after the dialogue about authority, the Evangelist gives the Saviour’s parable of the vineyard, whose meaning was perfectly clear to all who were listening to Jesus.

It is as though Jesus were saying to His questioners: you are already resisting God, so at least do not ask unnecessary questions; do not invite trouble here and now. He understands what a direct answer would mean for them. Of course, sooner or later everyone will have to stand before God. But Jesus does not hasten events. What matters to Him is not bringing the day of Judgement closer, but bringing the Kingdom into the world, so that as many people as possible may have time to be saved before that day of Judgement. That is why He acts as He does: not destroying, but saving.

Luke repeatedly emphasises the persistence with which representatives of the official religious circles ask Jesus the same question again and again: ‘By what authority do you do these things?’ (vv. 1–2). And again and again, Jesus does not answer directly. Yet, from a human point of view, the question could be considered quite appropriate: Jesus has just entered Jerusalem in triumph, and an enthusiastic crowd has greeted him as the Messiah; now, once more, he is behaving in a wholly incomprehensible way, and no one knows what to expect next from this strange Man who persistently refuses to fit into any framework.

Jesus, of course, does not refuse to answer in order to surround himself and the situation with an air of mystery, which he always avoided. Evidently, he does not answer because his mission really did not fit the frameworks familiar to his questioners. He is the Messiah, but not the Messiah the people expected; he could also be called a Teacher, but not in the sense in which religious circles used that word. Of course, those frameworks could have been expanded, but only with the questioners' agreement. Jesus tries to do this; it is no accident that he asks them about John's washing or ‘baptism’. An honest answer to this question determines how far Jesus' interlocutors will be able to understand and accept not only John but Jesus himself. But they refuse to answer, preferring to evade a difficult and unwelcome question; Jesus then understands that further conversation is useless (vv. 3–8).

His only answer is the parable of the vineyard (vv. 9–16), whose meaning, judging by their response ‘May it never be!’, his hearers understood perfectly. But Jesus leaves his listeners no false hopes: his remark about the cornerstone makes everything unmistakably clear (vv. 17–18). It is then that they want to kill Jesus, to get rid of this uncompromising Preacher (vv. 19–20), who, as has now become entirely clear, will not leave them alone or make any compromise. They also tried to trap him through his refusal to compromise (vv. 21–22): their question deliberately put the respondent in a losing position. To answer ‘yes’ meant being branded a traitor and collaborator; to answer ‘no’ was, under Roman law, tantamount to calling for rebellion, with all the consequences that entailed.

Here too, Jesus remains true to himself: he bears witness to the Kingdom, but not the Kingdom his hearers dream of; he bears witness to the one he himself has brought into the world. Thus, fitting into no framework and accepting no compromise, the Saviour who brought the Kingdom into the world gradually found himself alone, and his mission became a way of the Cross.

Such is the difficult fate of Christian revelation: all the time, everyone who could fish something out of it for himself tried to use it for his own purposes. But its true divinity consists in this, that these attempts never succeeded completely, and sooner or later they failed.

Such also is the fate of those who try to present the Christian gospel as a textbook of revolution and Christ as the chief revolutionary of all times and peoples. Such attempts have been made more than once in the history of European culture. Yet precisely to them one can present the words of today's Gospel reading: "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's." The apostles Paul and Peter were probably inspired by these words when they spoke the following words to the people of God. "Therefore be subject to every human authority for the Lord's sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors" (1 Pet 2:13). "Let every soul be subject to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist have been established by God" (Rom 13:1).

Only in one case is submission to the authorities impossible: when authority appropriates divine powers for itself; what is God's can be given only to God. That is why the early Christians went, on the one hand, against the words of Peter and Paul, but on the other hand, if one looks more deeply at all three quotations mentioned here, it becomes clear that they were walking the only true path.

Should a Christian pay taxes? Christ's words about tribute to Caesar have often been understood as justification for a kind of “reasonable balance” between secular and religious life. Caesar, it is said, has his claims on us, and God has His. But Caesar and God are incomparable, both in their power and in our responsibility before them. God alone created us and gives us life. God alone must we serve and worship. We have received everything from God.

Many people think that we must first render “to Caesar what is Caesar's,” and then give God whatever remains. But if we first render to God His “due” (and we owe Him far more than we possess—remember the parable of the talents), what will be left for poor Caesar? Of course, a Christian must take part in the life of society, including paying taxes to the state, but this is not service to Caesar (one cannot serve two masters); it is service to society, to people, to our neighbours, and therefore service to love and to God. Thus Jesus' words about tribute continue His parable of the vineyard: we cultivate God's vineyard and must give Him its fruit.

There is a certain fatalism in the parable of the vineyard tenants: the chief priests must kill the Son who was sent, just as their ancestors killed and persecuted the prophets. But there is a way out of this fatal circle, for every listener to a parable can identify himself with one character or another and see how he must act in order to follow his chosen path. In this sense, each of us freely chooses his own path, while the parable merely points out the existing alternatives and the way out of the situation. Here too the question is posed squarely: the chief priests can either identify themselves with those who killed and persecuted the prophets, or refrain from doing so and gain the opportunity freely to recognize in Jesus the Anointed One, the Christ. But they prefer not to take risky steps and simply to remove the Jesus who offended them. If only we knew how to use parables for their intended purpose and see in them not a statement of a future tragedy, but a challenge, one more occasion to choose...

The chief priests and scribes who ask by what authority Christ acts have become entangled in their own speculations. Jesus therefore not only refused to answer the question but also made the scribes understand that people who are indifferent to truth cannot hear and receive it. After all, they could have answered the question Christ put to the elders of the people in one of the two ways indicated in the question itself: either from heaven or from people. ‘We do not know’ would, of course, have been a possible and acceptable response if their ignorance had been sincere. But the scribes do not even wish to consider privately which answer is true. Instead, they rack their brains over the situation they will find themselves in and how they will look with each possible answer. In doing so, however, they show their indifference to the will of the One who is Truth itself.

That is why the parable of the wicked tenants, in whose characters the leaders of the people recognised themselves, aroused their anger. Yet in telling a parable about people who replace service with the exploitation of an advantageous position, Christ addresses not only those listening to Him but all of us. If we regard the Church as a source of earthly well-being, sooner or later Christ will get in our way and we will want to do without Him. But then we too will be driven out of the vineyard.