Word Pictures

When we were first married, we attended a marriage seminar. John Trent and Gary Smiley authored that seminar, although they didn’t teach it. The seminar taught us how to make word pictures to express our emotions. For example, if a spouse ignored the other and spent time at a party with his or her friends, the spouse could say, “I felt like the last leaf hanging on a tree before winter.” It vividly portrays how lonely the spouse was. We still use such word pictures.

Biblical authors used parables as word pictures. The most famous was Nathan’s story to David about a rich man who stole his neighbor’s only beloved lamb and killed it for his friend’s visit. David was furious and wanted justice; then, Nathan explained he was that rich and cruel man who took a Hittites’ only wife when he had others and could have had more.

Similarly, at the temple in Jerusalem, Jesus said a parable of a vineyard master who had gone on a long journey sending three servants to gather the harvest, only to have them chased away by the tenant vine growers (Luke 20:9–12). Each time, their cruelty intensified: from “beating and sending” the first to “beating, shaming, and sending” the second, to “traumatizing (traumatizo) and sending” the third. The master was perplexed. He thought if he would send his “only beloved son,” they would respect and submit to him (20:13). Instead, the vine growers thought if they killed the heir, they would inherit the vineyard and did just that (20:14–15). The master was furious, came to the vineyard, killed the vine growers, and gave the vineyard to other vine growers (20:16).

While the people said, “Oh no, may that never happen” (mi yenito, a Greek phrase that expresses absolute shock), the scribes and chief priests knew that Jesus talked about them (20:19). Just as Jesus predicted, they “sought for him to lay their hands upon him at that hour” (20:19). But fearing the people, they didn’t.

While that was happening, Jesus said,

“What is written? The stone which the builders rejected—that became the headstone” (20:17)

He quoted Psalm 118, a psalm of praise to YHWH, who mightily delivered them from their enemies and protected them from dying. Therefore, the psalmist praised God and wanted the Israelites to glorify God. One of YHWH’s specialties was taking something rejected, like a stone that builders rejected, and making it into the most crucial headstone, capstone, or cornerstone. From the religious leaders’ perspective, Jesus was nobody; he didn’t have authority, education, religiosity, or noble birth. He was just a carpenter’s son, born out of wedlock, uneducated, and a peasant from Galilee. So, they rejected him. But God had not. He had made Jesus the headstone. As such,

“Everyone who falls upon that stone will be scandalized; everyone on whom that stone falls will be crushed” (20:18).

The basic message was to be on Jesus’s side. He might not be someone of noble birth with an Ivy League education, but he was God’s selected headstone, just like the parabolic master’s beloved son. To oppose him was to bring oneself distress.

Unlike the religious leaders, by God’s grace, we have accepted him as God’s greatest gift to us. Let’s continue to value him. Fighting against him would be unpleasant!