The Stone That Was Rejected May Not Be What You Think

One of our favorite comedians, Nate Bargatze, has a hilarious bit where he walks into a Starbucks and asks for an “iced coffee with cream…” The server, however, heard something different and asked him multiple times, “So you want an iced coffee, whipped cream?” but she says it fast and it sounds the same to him. So Nate thinks she’s saying “iced coffee with cream” and the server thinks he’s saying “ice coffee whipped cream.” And he tells a really funny story about this misunderstanding.

Our scriptural tradition is frequently subject to misunderstanding, and today’s readings are no exception. While I love the first reading from Genesis 37 about Joseph (the Joseph with the “technicolor dream coat”), I will be focusing my reflection on our gospel from Matthew 21. In prior years I have written a little about Joseph which you can read here, and I have also written some other reflections on the gospel that unpack some of its other themes related to parables.

The gospel reading from Matthew 21 is sometimes referred to as the “Parable of the Tenants.” In the story, a man establishes a vineyard, puts a fence around it and leases it out to people. The landowner then goes away on a trip. At harvest time, he sends people to “collect” the rent. The tenants beat up and kill the servants who are sent. So the landowner sends more servants. Same result. Finally the landowner sends his “beloved son” and thinks, “Surely they will listen to him.” The tenants see the son and say, “Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.” And they proceed to kill him.

Jesus then goes on to ask the crowd, “So what’s the landowner going to do when he comes back?” And the crowd says, “Put the tenants to death and lease the land to others!” Everyday people in Jesus’ time understood how the world worked, in part, because they were the folks who were regularly subjected to the whims of landowners! But there’s a lot happening in this passage.

For centuries, Christians read this story from their own vantage point. A traditional understanding is that God is the landowner who leases out the land to the Jewish people (the original tenants). The tenants beat up and kill the servants of the landowner (the prophets) and, ultimately, the son of the landowner (Jesus). Thus the land (the kingdom of God) will be given to new tenants (non-Jewish people – aka Christians) who are “better” tenants.

It all makes sense, right?

If we slow things down a bit, we’ll see that this interpretation paints the Jewish people in a very negative light, and as Christians we must EVER be on the lookout for the ways that our tradition has fueled anti-Jewish hate. This interpretation suggests that Jewish people rejected the prophets, killed the Messiah and thus are punished by God – having the kingdom taken from them. It’s not hard to see that this reading of the passage easily lends itself to anti-Jewish sentiment and to forms of Christian righteousness and Christian nationalism that deeply scar our world.

Many biblical scholars with a bent towards social justice now reject this interpretation (you can probably see why) and suggest something else.

It’s often helpful to ask, “Where is God in this story?” Is God the landowner who gets angry and wipes everyone out and starts all over? Was that Jesus’ understanding of God? What else might this passage be trying to tell us?

Some of the modern scholars I read, like Ched Myers, have said that God is actually not in the parable at all!  God is only referenced AFTER the parable when Jesus quotes psalm 118 and says, “Did you never read in the Scriptures: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes? Therefore, I say to you, the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”

With this in mind, I invite you to try on this interpretation instead:

A wealthy landowner buys up a lot of land that was being farmed by subsistence farmers. The owner puts a wall around it with “Private property” signs everywhere and then says, “You can now lease the land from me.” The farmers, having no alternative, have to farm that land in order to live. The landlord moves away and travels – maybe even doing this in multiple places – buying up more and more land and leasing it out to poorer people. 

At harvest time, the landlord sends servants to collect. The tenants resist and rebel, however, because they can barely even feed their families off of what they make – let alone have ‘extra’ to pay the rent to this guy who lives God knows where. Finally the landlord sends his son. The tenants – who actually know the law – know that if the son dies then the line of inheritance is broken and the landowner can’t pass the property on to anyone. The tenants figure, “This is our best shot at getting land back that was once ours and has been taken from us,” and they kill the son. The landowner is furious, and instead of changing the system of ownership, he kills all of the tenants and finds new people to lease the land to.

Just let this interpretation sink in. It is, in fact, one that we see repeated over and over throughout history. It is one we see playing out in our country.

It’s at this point in the story that Jesus introduces the line from Psalm 118 where he says that the “stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” In this interpretation, Jesus is not referring to himself as the “stone” but rather the economic system of sharing and “Sabbath economics” (found in Exodus 16). The economic system of God’s generosity is the “stone that has been rejected”! Israel – and the Romans – have opted instead for a model of extractive capitalism that concentrates wealth, land and resources in the hands of a few while so many go without.

That’s when Jesus says that the “kingdom will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.” What he means is that God’s kin-dom cannot flourish under a system of such extremes and will thus be given to the ones who, in fact, PRACTICE Sabbath economics. They will be the ones who truly understand God’s ways. The chief priests and Pharisees get very upset with this and want to arrest him – not because he’s getting “theological” – but because he’s getting political and economic (and not in their favor)!

I know that I have spent a bit of extra time on this, but I do hope that it is making the point. Some of the modern scholarship is showing us that a parable such as this – which we assumed was about faith in Jesus – is more likely a critique of economic systems that are pretty much taken for granted in our modern context. Systems that prey upon people without resources. Systems that concentrate wealth. Systems that protect private property. Systems that leave more and more people with fewer and fewer options. Systems that move us further and further from God’s kin-dom.

For today, let’s sit in prayer with this new interpretation. Reflect on the story of a wealthy landowner who charges a lot of rent from people who cannot afford it and gets upset when the people rebel and demand change.

Let us reflect on the economic system of “taking only what we need” as the cornerstone of God’s kin-dom that has been rejected by the builders of our current economic systems.

And let us dream of what a world would look like where this system is not only valued but embodied in our collective life. May we be the people who produce this fruit!