In today’s Gospel Jesus both quotes a Scripture text from the Psalms and alludes to a passage in the prophet Isaiah. Jesus quotes Psalm 118:
“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes?”
Jesus is the stone rejected by the “builders,” that is, some of the Jewish chief priest and some of the Pharisees as we hear later in today’s Gospel passage: “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they knew that he was speaking about them.”
Jesus has just told them the Parable of the Tenants which alludes to Isaiah’s Song or Parable of the Vineyard (Isaiah 5:1-8). In both parables a “landowner… planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower.” The landowner expected to obtain his produce from his vineyard. In Isaiah the owner “waited for the crop of grapes” but it yielded “rotten grapes.” In Jesus retelling of this parable of Isaiah the tenants instead of giving the owner his yield seized and beat his servants and finally seize and kill his son. This Son is Jesus who is the stone rejected by some Jewish leaders whom God has made the cornerstone or foundation of the people of God.
In the Acts of the Apostles Peter quotes this same passage of Psalm 118 as he speaks to the Jewish Sanhedrin after healing a crippled beggar in the name of Jesus:
“…then all of you…should know that it was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead; in his name this man stands before you healed. He is ‘the stone rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.’ There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.” (Acts 4:10-12).
Jesus challenges you and me today to allow God to open our eyes to the new, surprising, and at times maybe even scandalous ways God is working in our world and in our daily lives. Jesus is the stone rejected that has become the cornerstone of our lives.
Image: “Cornerstone” by littlehuw is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.