There will be no dissidents in heaven. There will be nobody saying, 'Three cheers for Muhammad.' If Jesus is right, heaven is united by a single unanimous verdict: 'Jesus is Lord.' And if that's so, we've got to listen to him. We've got to respect his authority. We have no choice.
But the awful truth is, we didn't. And the extraordinary truth is, he knew we wouldn't.
But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. 'This is the heir,' they said. 'Let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him (Luke 20: 14–15).
There are so many dimensions to the significance of the cross that we couldn't possibly encapsulate its full meaning in a few words. Perhaps that's why we have to make it into a visual symbol. But in this parable, Jesus is focusing down on one element that perhaps we often miss in our theologizing about its significance. The cross, he says, is the ultimate insult. The cross is the supreme gesture of human contempt for the rule of God. The cross is the final snub that puts the lid on centuries of snubs that God has received from the human race. We could not appreciate or even tolerate anyone who challenges us to admit the debt we owe, who calls us to recognize our accountability to our Maker. So we crucified him.
At that point, it's all too easy for you and me once again to shelter behind the fact that Jesus was directly addressing first-century Jews in this parable. 'Oh yes,' we can say. 'It was their fault. The Jews, the Romans, we all know how barbaric they were. The crucifixion was an appalling judicial murder; of course it was. Why, when I watched Ben Hur last Christmas, my eyes were wet with tears at the injustice of it all.'
But no, we cannot isolate ourselves from blame in that way. To do so is not to engage with this parable as Jesus
