Matthew 21:33-44
Many of Jesus’ messages had an immediately positive and uplifting impact on his listeners. Today’s message, from St. Matthew’s Gospel, is not one of those.
There are some humbling and hard-to-accept truths associated with sinful humanity’s existence in this fallen world, and associated with sinful humanity’s alienation from a holy God, that Jesus wants people to grapple with, and face up to.
His words in today’s text are intended to get people to think about the seriousness of their spiritual problems – problems in their own hearts, and in their standing with God – and to get people to take God’s reactions and solutions to these problems seriously. Quoting from Psalm 118, Jesus says this to the priests and Pharisees:
“Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’? Therefore I say to you, …whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.”
There were no government OSHA regulations in those days, to guarantee the safety of construction workers at the workplace. In the ancient world, the labor force on a major construction project was often comprised of conscripted workers, or even slaves, who were forced to their jobs by the government.
The lives of these workers were generally not valued very highly. Measures to promote safety and prevent accidents were few. Injuries and deaths on the job were frequent.
The kind of tasks that are done today by one man operating a massive crane, were done in Jesus’ time by hundreds of men, pushing and pulling large blocks of quarried stone up improvised ramps. When it came time to drop one of those huge stone blocks into place, well, everyone had better make sure he was out of the way.
Because of the physical momentum of hundreds of men pushing and pulling, if you slipped and lost your footing at just the wrong moment, and ended up under the block that was in the process of being dropped, the descent of that block could not be halted to give you time to crawl out from under it before it fell.
Instead, you would be crushed. You would have no chance of escape.
The temple complex in Jerusalem was still under construction during the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry. Even though the main building was finished and in use, there were still some unfinished parts of the larger complex – especially the outer courts and outer walls.
Jesus was in Jerusalem when he spoke of himself as the stone that the builders – that is, the Jewish leaders – had rejected; and when he spoke of what would happen when this stone would fall on someone.
The temple was visible from almost anywhere in the city. The kind of construction accidents to which Jesus was alluding, and which he was using to illustrate his deeper point, had no doubt happened there. And some of his listeners may even have witnessed such accidents themselves.
For those who had seen them happen, and for those who had heard about them, a shiver would go down their spine whenever they thought about the poor man who had been crushed in such a way.
With his words, Jesus deliberately called forth such images and such thoughts. He wanted his listeners to be a bit unsettled, and to feel a bit frightened, when they thought about the deeper spiritual issues of human existence that his startling words were illustrating: namely, what it is like for an impenitent and unbelieving person to be crushed by the irreversible momentum of divine justice.
It is not a pretty picture. When a hardened unbeliever dies in his sins, angry at God and man, he will not be able to get out of the way of the massive cornerstone of divine judgment that will be dropped into place over him, for the construction of God’s kingdom of righteousness.
The weight of God’s wrath will come down on him in an instant, when God’s Son comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead. All of his excuses and self-justifications will be for nothing. They, and he, will be crushed. His destiny with be a destiny of eternal death.
That’s the kind of encounter a careless or unlucky construction worker may have with a heavy cornerstone. That’s the kind of encounter an impenitent and unbelieving person, at the end of his mortal life, will definitely have with Christ, the almighty Lord of the universe and the judge of all men.
“On whomever [this stone] falls, it will grind him to powder.”
That’s the real Jesus speaking, not the benign and unthreatening Jesus of popular imagination. And as the real Jesus would continue to guide our thoughts today, he calls upon us to consider yet another category of less deadly construction site accidents.
At a modern construction site you will usually see lots of sturdy metal scaffolding on which workers can safely stand and walk. You will also usually see an abundance of safety netting, to catch a hapless worker who might lose his balance and fall.
Not so at an ancient work site – such as the temple complex in Jerusalem. The scaffolding then was made of wood, and could often be quite rickety and unstable. And I don’t think the concept of safety netting had even been dreamt of yet.
And so, there were lots of falls at those old work sites. And when someone fell onto the stonework below, he would be hurt – severely so in many cases. Thoughts of such crippling injuries no doubt came to the minds of the Lord’s listeners when he said:
“Whoever falls on this stone will be broken.”
They knew that a worker who experienced such a fall would probably never be the same again. Broken bones often did not mend well in ancient times.
A crippled worker who had been injured in such a way would likely never again be able to support himself with his own labor. His sense of self-sufficiency, and his human pride, would be gone.
A man with such an injury, from such a fall, would be and remain a broken man: dependent on others, and unable to take care of himself.
These things are not pleasant for people to think about. But according to Christ, who used these exact images in his preaching, they are necessary for people to think about. They are necessary for you and me to think about.
We noted that in the case of a hardened unbeliever, God’s punishment crushes and pulverizes him when Christ, as the judge of the world, falls on him. But an encounter with God’s law will not leave you and other Christians unscathed, either.
If you sin against God and violate his will, you will end up being broken by the conviction of his law. When you in this way fall onto the hard, unyielding cornerstone of Christ and his holiness, it will break you.
Jesus breaks your pride when he impresses on you the full demands of God’s law – as he does through the Sermon on the Mount, for example. Here he says:
“You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
This expectation is still in effect. God has not compromised his holiness, just because the human race is always rebelling against his holiness.
And when Jesus speaks in this way – when he speaks in this way to you – your spiritual self-sufficiency, and your lack of reliance on God, are indeed exposed and broken. Your moral self-satisfaction, and your opinion that you are “good enough” as you are – without the need to change – are shattered.
And there are many circumstances in this world that God uses for the same purpose – that is, to humble you, and to awaken you from the slumbering deception that everything is okay in your life: even without God to protect you, and even without the authority of his Word to govern you.
The failures and disappointments that we experience in this world often have the effect of making it very clear to us that we cannot ultimately rely on ourselves: on our own labors, or on our own cleverness. The exhortation and encouragement of Proverbs 3 can then be appreciated with a new and vivid clarity:
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.”
The reason why God breaks weak and wandering Christians in these ways, is not as a prelude to a final, damning judgment. It is a call to repentance, which is a prelude to their receiving God’s forgiveness, and to their being transformed into the image of God’s Son.
Remember, falling on the cornerstone is not the same as having the cornerstone fall on you. When the cornerstone falls on you, there is no survival, as far as life with God is concerned. But when you fall on the cornerstone, you will survive, and live on, with God: with a greater dependence on his saving grace, and with a greater appreciation for his healing gifts.
Those who are crushed under the weight of the cornerstone, are those who are condemned forever, in their unbelief and unrepentant wickedness. But those who are merely broken by their fall onto the cornerstone, are those whose lives are destined by God’s grace to be reshaped, and reconfigured, to become what they need to be, so that they can be a part of God’s kingdom forever.
God breaks us with his law, precisely so that he can heal us with his gospel. Jesus “disassembles” the self-centered lives that we construct, so that he can reassemble our lives in his own image – with himself at the center – and conform us to his pattern of love and truth.
When you, with your lingering pride and self-satisfaction, fall onto the cornerstone that is Christ, God does intend in this way to destroy your pride and self-satisfaction. But he doesn’t intend to destroy you.
He intends to destroy the sinful attitudes that infect you, for your own good, so that your relationship with him – in the end – will be what it is supposed to be.
And when we are broken in this way, and repent of our failures and transgressions, God’s restoring forgiveness in Christ is indeed then sought. That’s when we speak, as our own, the words of King David in Psalm 51:
“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.”
And such a prayer, spoken at such a time for such a reason, is always answered with an unqualified “Yes.” As St. James reminds us,
“God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
He gives the grace of his forgiveness, through and because of the sacrificial death of his Son. He gives the grace of eternal life, through and because of the victorious resurrection of his Son.
God does not break us in our sinfulness because he enjoys breaking us. But he breaks us in our sinfulness, so that he can recreate us in his righteousness, justify us and be reconciled to us, and put his own life within us. St. Paul writes in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians:
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.”
The old must pass away, in order for the new to come: the new reality of our eternal hope in Christ, our eternal citizenship in his kingdom, and our eternal membership in his family. The old must be crushed down, in order for the new to be raised up.
We don’t want to be damned in an eternal separation from God. We don’t want the cornerstone of Christ as judge to fall upon us and destroy us.
But with God’s help, we are willing to fall on the cornerstone of Christ as Savior. We want God to change us and recreate us: in our faith and values, in our commitments and convictions, and in our character and inner constitution.
In the hindsight of faith, as we look back on a lifetime of trials and tribulations, we can often see how God used those trials and tribulations for his good purposes, and for our own spiritual and moral benefit.
In the clarity of this hindsight, we know that God is not to be blamed or accused for having broken us. He is to be thanked for letting us take those falls onto the hard cornerstone that is his Son.
And even now, we are still willing for God to let us fall upon Christ, and to be broken in that fall; so that we can then be forgiven in the mercy of Christ, and be reconstructed and renewed in the likeness of Christ.
When God tears apart those aspects of our life that are not what they are supposed to be, some human pain will result. And in the moment, our flesh will resist.
But a true joy and contentment will come when God then puts us back together again in the right way, by the power of his gospel in Word and Sacrament. And we will wonder why we had ever resisted or feared the gracious work that God, over the long term, was doing: for us, and in us.
We read in the First Book of Samuel:
“The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor.”
And Jesus said:
“Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’? Therefore I say to you, …whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.” Amen.