NOTES for Luk 20:1-26
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.