By What Authority?
February 15, 2023
The Cornerstone, Rejected and Affirmed!
Parable of the Vineyard
Or, if you prefer, on YouTube:
My AI Speech Coach is curious to know if you could elaborate by answering the following questions:
Question 1: What other stories does Jesus tell in the bible to illustrate his teachings?
Question 2: How can we apply the teachings of Jesus to our lives today?
Question 3: What is the significance of the stone that the builders rejected?
Question 4: How can we better understand the mystery of our faith?
Question 5: What practical steps can we take to live out the teachings of Jesus in our everyday lives?
Not bad discussion question suggestions!
TRANSCRIPT
Here is the transcript of the talk with all the "um"s, "ah,"s, "and,"s and problems:
Hi, good morning. I had some time this morning and I thought I would record and go live at the same time, uh, with Bible study based on the day's lectionary readings. As you know, I use the, uh, common lectionary as a guide, uh, for choosing my daily readings, some of them, and my preaching, uh, texts on Sundays. I haven't always done this, and I may not always do it. The nice thing about being from a baptistic and free church tradition is you can kind of follow whatever you want to do and whatever, wherever the spirit leads, and that's where the leadership has been.
Uh, for my own personal discipline over the last few years, I'm going to, uh, turn off my face in a moment and put on the, uh, PowerPoint that I've prepared for today. We're gonna touch to, uh, some of the scriptures. What we may do if we have time, and if there's sufficient interest. I may come back to some questions at the end, but I'm just gonna go through these scriptures right now, mainly because I'm work on my own.
I'm my own engineer and not a very good one. And it's hard for me to track too many things. At the same time, as the Fellowship of Joy grows online, maybe we'll attract some volunteers and we can figure out how to manage, uh, more interactive, uh, participation. But for now, uh, this is sort of the way it's gonna be. If my face in the corner doesn't distract anyone, I may just leave it there.
But this is Bible study. You see, I'm not that good at selfies, but I wanted to be able to identify who was, who was speaking when we got around to it. Would you join me in prayer this morning if you're live? And you know, it really doesn't matter matter if you're watching this on a video because, uh, God doesn't so much keep track of time as a priority in our prayers, but our hearts, and it is a mystery.
But mysteries are a <laugh> wonderful part of our faith and, uh, essential to our faith. Our Father, today, we come to you across the miles, across, uh, time across space, uh, and across, uh, many different differences in our backgrounds and our predispositions, uh, maybe different faiths to explore scripture and what is being said in scripture. We don't intend to be exhaustive. We don't intend to touch to every fine point, but help us to use the scripture and to receive the scripture as your gift to us, to, uh, direct our thinking toward you and toward something you would have us consider and, uh, life change, uh, in Jesus name.
Amen. Well, we're gonna begin with just a note about two of the Psalms to today. Uh, Psalm 1 0 1 and Psalm 1 0 9, Psalm 1 0 9 has been used as a weapon to prey against people. But I will say to you that it is primarily an expression of a leader's indignation at wickedness and anger at his. And in this case, it was a hymn, uh, most likely, uh, his disgust at, uh, other leaders who are operating against him and against God.
It's not an endorsement for us that want revenge or to seek revenge, but it is an honest portrayal of a person's, uh, feelings at the moment, uh, as he sides with God's ways and against anything that is against God. He's feeling the brunt of God's anger, uh, in, uh, Isaiah 64, uh, verse nine, and is feeling, uh, rejected by God and is really shaking his fist to God when he says, don't be so angry with us, Lord.
Uh, please don't remember our sins forever. Look at us, we pray and see that we are all your people. Well, when it comes to our own sins, we, we want mercy. And when it comes to other people's sins, we often want justice. And sometimes it's not justice we want, but retribution. But remember that it is mercy and justice that display the heart of God. So one Psalm 1 0 1, uh, verses one through two, I will sing of mercy and justice to you.
Oh, Lord, will I sing, uh, praises? I will strive to follow a blameless course. Oh, when will you come to me? I will walk with sincerity of heart within my house. Now, I wanted to touch to that a little bit as we prepared to go into today's gospel text from Mark 1127 through 12, which also expresses, uh, some very human, uh, understanding of what's going on in this context as well as a larger, uh, divine perspective.
Again, they came to Jerusalem as he, and we're talking about Jesus was walking in the temple. The chief priest in ascribes came to him and said, by what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you the authority to do them? Well, I think that is, is an important factor to consider the legitimacy of the question as well as the context of the question. Rabbis didn't teach on their own authority.
And these, uh, chief priests and scribes and elders, among them are some rabbis. And, and of course, the chief priests were walking a line between their religious duties and their political duties, uh, related to the temple and the religious observance. But they spent a lot of their time arguing the fine points of the law and citing references and citing various authorities who interpreted the law. And these citations would go back for centuries.
And here comes Jesus. And he doesn't always give book, chapter and verse. He refers to something that is in the common knowledge of the people in scriptures, and what he's doing seems at odds with what is being taught. And they say, well, whose authority are you operating under? So he asks them a rather pointed question to turn the tables. Jesus is often turning the tables. I I don't mean just the tables of the money changers in the outta court of the temple, but I mean, he turns the tables of the discussion because he knows what they're doing.
You know, he knows they have an agenda with their questions. It's not just a question, it's an, it is an agenda list question. So he says, well, I'll ask you one question. Answer me. I'll, I'll tell you a and if you do, I'll tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven or was it from human origin? Answer me. So rather than cite their authorities, and rather than give an honest answer, they calculated how their answer would be received by the crowd, and they argued with one another first.
And they said, well, if we say from heaven, he'll say, well, why didn't you believe him? And but if we say of human origin, uh, they were afraid of the crowd for all regarded John as a prophet. So they answer Jesus, we don't know. And Jesus said, well, neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. See, you don't have to answer every question, do you, especially if you think you're being set up.
And Jesus is not only intelligent and not only shrewd, but Jesus is also inspired by the spirit of his Father and the Spirit, uh, who is the Holy Spirit. And he is moved and directed, and he's all wise. And so he answers with great wisdom, and then he takes it a little further and he tells a story. Well, this story is, is, uh, a parable that means it has a teaching. It doesn't have to relate at all points,1,2,3, 4, like an allegory, but it is designed for a purpose.
So let's look at the story first. He began to speak to them in parables. A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a pit for the wine press, and built a watch tower. And then he leased it to the tenants and went to another country. That's not an uncommon practice. He's an absentee landlord, but he finds some good tenants. Uh, it is the business proposition. They take care of the vineyard, they treat it with respect, they try to make a profit on it, but they also are working to, uh, earn the man a profit.
So when the season came, he sent a, a slave to the tenants to collect from them his share of the produce of the vineyard. To pause here a second, I say, this is not an endorsement of slavery. It's not an endorsement of the practice of the time. It is a story told in the context of common practice. So he wants to collect his share, he wants to collect his rent. Well, they seized him and beat him and sent him away empty-handed again.
He sent another slave to him. This one they beat over the head and insulted, then he sent another, and that one they killed. So they're escalating in their violence against these people that, uh, the, that vineyard owner is sending to collect his legitimate share is legitimate rent, which, uh, was in, in the context of a share of the prophets. You know, it was a fair rent. You know, if they didn't, hadn't really made anything, uh, the rent would've been calculated on that basis.
Well, and so it was with many others. He kept trying to collect the rent, and they kept me treating him. Uh, would this story have actually happened? Uh, I think Jesus is giving us an amazingly exaggerated, uh, story, uh, so that we will feel ultimate indignation at the, uh, just position of this vineyard owner. Uh, and so it was with many others. Some may beat others. They killed, he had still won another, another, a beloved son.
Okay? What's gonna happen with the beloved son? Are you, are you in stitches? Are you waiting? Are you, are you on the edge of your seat to see how this story is gonna turn out? Well, here it is. He sent him to them saying, they will respect my son. But those tents said to one another, this is the, he, uh, come let us kill him in the inheritance will be ours. Oh, they're, they're really tricky, aren't they?
They're going for the big stuff. They think, ah, man, we're gonna, we're gonna take this thing over. And so they seized him, killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. What then will the owner of the vineyard do? Now he'll come and destroy the vineyards and give the vineyards to others. This is a story about people who are forgetting, who owns the vineyard, and thinking that if they mistreat the representatives of the owner, they're gonna get the big prize, but they're just setting themselves up to lose.
There it is. It's not a story about the character of God. If anything, the vineyard owner is very patient. This is a story, uh, of a character of, of the tenants and the landowner. And what are you gonna expect if, are you gonna just keep mistreating God's spokespeople, God's prophets, and thinking that if you can dominate them, that, uh, ultimately, uh, you can take over God's kingdom, that you can possess God's kingdom even by killing God's spokespeople and God's son?
And so Jesus is giving a story that might appear to the people who are questioning him, to have nothing to do with their questions because they're wiggling, but he is, he is not gonna squirm with them. Let 'em squirm because he is directing this back. They asked him about authority. He says, what is real authority? Who owns this vineyard? Who does, who does the kingdom belong to? And, uh, you're gonna mistreat slaves and spokespeople and servants, and you're gonna mistreat people.
You're gonna walk all over people, and you think you're gonna gain dominance with God. Well, here's how he concludes it. Here's how he draws the application. Haven't you read the scripture? Now you are form authority, okay? Haven't you read the scripture? The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing and is amazing in his eyes. And it's like this, the people who speak for God, prophets, teachers, rabbis, interpreters of God's law and God's truth, spokespeople of the times to from, from God to the people.
They say something that is often unpopular, that goes against the grain, that speaks against our greed and our indifference that speaks against our injustice, that speaks to the, uh, structures of the day. But it very well, well be, may well be that the structures of the day are built upon wrong foundations or wrong and on, wrong cornerstones, and you reject to your peril, uh, those things that are true and that are cornerstone troops.
And in this case, a cornerstone representative of divinity and truth itself. See, Isaiah speaks of the suffering servants as he was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Yet we did steam him, afflicted, smitten of God, even. But here, Jesus quote scripture and says, the stone that the builders reject it turns out, turns out that's the cornerstone, the thing you despise the most. The thing is that you reject the most at your peril, at your peril, because this is the cornerstone.
You have to deal with the cornerstone. You have to build around the cornerstone. You have to build a pond, the cornerstone. Well, at this point, they woke up and they realized, <laugh>, that Jesus was talking about them. So they wanted to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd. So they left him and went their way. I'd like you to ponder that today. I don't wanna give you all the answers.
I may have some questions. I I'm gonna try to get back on here and see if you're posting any questions in the comments or prayer requests. If not, you can do it later and we can have an ongoing conversation. And the Facebook thread, you're getting this on YouTube, there are ways to contact me, or if you're getting this on LinkedIn or Twitter, you know how to get in touch with me. I'm, I'm easy to find.
But I wanna take you to a portion of the official reading today, because Paul is in his understanding of his mission, an interpreter of Jesus in terms of how do you apply these cornerstone teachings of Jesus to everyday life? And when he is writing to Timothy, his, he considered him a son, uh, a son in ministry, and a son in the faith, uh, he is giving a lot of very specific instructions that are specific to specific churches.
But this insight comes out today, and it pops me right between the eyes, you know, like a bullet. I hope to come to you soon, but I'm writing these instructions to you, so you may know that if I'm delayed, uh, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bull work of, of the truth. Well, another bit of cornerstone.
A living a stone on top of the stones of, of the house that God is building a household of God, the oco of God, the, the, the, the family of God, if you will, uh, your how do you behave as God's people in the world? How do you behave in relationship to each other? How do you bela behave based upon the truth that is given based upon Christ as the chief cornerstone?
How do you live? Sometimes it gets very, very specific in terms of, of defining relationships, which are defined by the law of love. Love God, love your neighbor, revere God, respect your neighbor, and especially your brothers and sisters in the faith, because this is frankly, the laboratory that becomes the proving grounds of how we could behave in the whole world if we recognize that we were one big family. But he takes us back to Christ.
And he says, without any doubt, the mystery of our religion is great. It's mysterious. It's wondrous like the mystery of the sun. I think this may be the sun that's turning around here. I'm not sure it could be one of the planets. Uh, my astronomy is not great. I just live in deep re reverence for what God has has created, and, uh, it causes me awe. But he makes a summary statement, which I think is a great statement of faith.
All this is out of first Timothy three, 14 through 16. He was revealed in the flesh, vindicated in the spirit, seen by angels proclaimed among the Gentiles, believed in throughout the world, taken up into the glory. What a grand and glorious statement of faith and of the faith that has been delivered to us and made available to us in Christ. Uh, I'm trying to get to my, um, to my Facebook interface so that I can see if we have any discussion or questions.
I won't belabor it forever, but I'm gonna do my best to check. And, um, if I see them, I will try to answer them. If not, I promise to come back to them. Ah, here we are. I am somewhere. Anyway, I, in the meantime, I'm gonna start praying, uh, for you and for, for this application, our father today. I'm sure that as we gather for this, uh, Bible study and this time of fellowship across the miles that there are brothers and sisters, um, that are in need of your special touch.
I am certain that there are those who, uh, are confused and wondering and wondering and grieving and in pain and in sorrow and in the valley of decision. I pray for them, oh God, I pray that your spirit might touch their lives and that you might direct them and heal them and comfort them and strengthen them and be their God and their God. Help us to make Jesus who he already is for us in our lives.
In actuality, the chief cornerstone, even though he is the stone that the builders rejected in his name, we pray all these things. And now the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and be gracious under you, and give you peace through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. We'll do this again soon.