Cornerstone

ByCarolyn E. Jacobs

A stone which the builders rejected

Has become the chief cornerstone. – Psalm 118:22

Jesus, the Cornerstone on which our faith, our hope, our salvation, and our very existence depend, was rejected. He knew full well everything he would suffer and the slap in the face he would receive from those who should have recognized him, yet he endured it all for us.

You may have noticed a pattern in this study – many of the names we studied in the Old Testament have parallels in the New. Such is the case today, and we have more to come.

Back in April, we studied The Lord is My Rock as well as A Stone of Stumbling and Rock of Offense and Simon, the Rock, Peter. Today, we’ll look at Jesus as the Cornerstone, or, as dictionary.com says:

cornerstone

  1. a stone uniting two masonry walls at an intersection.
  2. a stone representing the nominal starting place in the construction of a monumental building, usually carved with the date and laid with appropriate ceremonies.
  3. something that is essential, indispensable, or basic:

    The cornerstone of democratic government is a free press.

  4. the chief foundation on which something is constructed or developed:

    The cornerstone of his argument was that all people are created equal.

Luke 20, Matthew 21, and Mark 11-12 all record a contentious encounter Jesus had with the chief priests, the elders, and the scribes just days before he was arrested, tried and crucified. The religious leaders questioned Jesus’s authority.

Take a moment to read the chapter and reflect on the injustice and the absurdity of their inquisition. I don’t know about you, but it makes me want to go all Sons of Thunder on them.

But Jesus doesn’t do that.

In response he tells the parable of the vine-growers. By way of the parable, Jesus accuses them of killing the Son of God. The consequence?

“He will come and put these vine-growers to death, and will give the vineyard to others.” – Luke 20:16a

Do the religious leaders, the ones who, of all people, should have known the truth, repent? No. They doubled down. Here are a few of the translations of Luke 20:16ff:

May it never be!

That must never happen!

Certainly not!

God forbid!

Can you imagine telling God, “God forbid?” Yikes.

Then Jesus, in essence, holds up a mirror to them. He quotes Psalm 118:22.

17 But Jesus looked at them and said, “What then is this that is written:
‘THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED,
THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNERstone’?
18 Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.” Luke 20:17-18
We can build our lives on the Chief Cornerstone, as we’ll explore in the next post, or we can be scattered like dust.
This blog series is inspired by Ann Spangler’s Praying the Names of God for 52 Weeks.

 

 

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