Luke 20
Priests demand to know his authority, a vineyard owner's son is killed by its tenants, and a coin is used to outmaneuver a trap.
Summary
The temple provides the setting for a sequence of adversarial exchanges that characterize the final Jerusalem section of Luke's gospel. When the chief priests and scribes challenge Jesus's authority on the day after the entry, he refuses to answer without first posing a counter-question: was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? They confer: if from heaven, he will ask why they did not believe; if from man, the people will stone them since they hold John to be a prophet. They answer that they do not know, and Jesus declines to reveal his authority. The parable of the wicked tenants follows: a vineyard is planted, walled, and leased to tenants who beat three successive messengers sent by the owner to collect the fruit and finally kill the owner's son, calculating that the inheritance will then be theirs. The owner's response — coming to destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others — is met with protests of God forbid. Jesus cites the cornerstone psalm and adds the ominous warning about crushing. The parable is understood as addressed to the authorities, who look for a way to arrest him.
The tax question sent by spies pretending to be sincere is a trap: if Jesus answers yes, pay taxes to Caesar, he alienates the people; if no, he is liable to Roman authority. He asks to see a denarius, asks whose image and inscription it bears, and answers render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. The answer satisfies no one as a doctrinal position and satisfies everyone as a refusal to be trapped. The Sadducees, who do not believe in the resurrection, present a logical puzzle: if a woman married seven brothers in succession by levirate law, whose wife is she in the resurrection? Jesus answers that the resurrection is not an extension of the present order — those accounted worthy of it neither marry nor are given in marriage, and they are like angels. He then argues from the burning bush narrative that the dead are raised, since God declared himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and God is not the God of the dead but of the living. Some scribes acknowledge the answer. A final riddle: David in Psalm 110 calls the Messiah Lord — so how can the Messiah be David's son? The question is unanswered.
- Luke 1Chapter 1 opens with a formal literary preface — Luke addresses a certain Theophilus and claims to have investigated everything carefully, setting himself apart as a self-conscious historian among the gospel writers.
- Luke 2Chapter 2 contains the nativity scene that dominates Western cultural memory of the gospels: the census under Quirinius, the journey to Bethlehem, the birth, the manger, the swaddling cloths, the angels appearing to shepherds in the fields at night.
- Luke 3Luke situates John's ministry with extraordinary chronological precision — the fifteenth year of Tiberius, the governorship of Pilate, the tetrarchies of Herod and Philip and Lysanias, the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.
- Luke 4The Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness for forty days, where the devil offers him bread, political authority over all the kingdoms of the world, and divine protection — and is refused at each turn with a quotation from Deuteronomy.
- Luke 5By the Lake of Gennesaret, the crowds press against Jesus and he steps into Simon's empty boat to teach.
- Luke 6The chapter opens with two Sabbath controversies: the disciples pluck grain as they walk through fields, and Jesus defends them by citing David's eating the showbread when his men were hungry.
- Luke 7Three distinct episodes give chapter 7 its range.
- Luke 8Chapter 8 moves quickly across a range of narrative modes.
- Luke 9Chapter 9 is a turning-point chapter.
- Luke 10Jesus sends out seventy (some manuscripts say seventy-two) in pairs ahead of him into every town and place he intends to visit, with instructions similar to the twelve's but addressed to a larger group and a longer journey.
- Luke 11The chapter opens with Jesus praying in a certain place; when he stops, a disciple asks him to teach them to pray as John taught his disciples.
- Luke 12With ten thousand pressing around him, Jesus addresses the disciples first: beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
- Luke 13Some report to Jesus about Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.
- Luke 14Jesus goes to eat at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees on the Sabbath, watched carefully by those present.
- Luke 15The Pharisees and scribes grumble that this man receives sinners and eats with them.
- Luke 16Chapter 16 contains two of Luke's most difficult parables.
- Luke 17The chapter opens with warnings about causing stumbling — better to have a millstone around your neck and be thrown into the sea — and the obligation to rebuke and forgive a brother who sins seven times in a day and repents each time.
- Luke 18Jesus tells the parable of the persistent widow to teach that they ought always to pray and not lose heart: a widow in a city where a judge neither fears God nor respects people keeps coming to him demanding justice against her adversary; he eventually grants it not because of justice but because she is wearing him out.
- Luke 19Jericho contains the Zacchaeus scene, unique to Luke: a chief tax collector who is wealthy and short climbs a sycamore tree to see Jesus over the crowd.
- Luke 20Chapter 20 is a series of confrontations in the temple.
- Luke 21Looking up at those putting gifts into the treasury, Jesus observes that a poor widow puts in two small copper coins — the smallest unit of currency — and says she has put in more than all of them, because they gave from their abundance and she from her poverty gave everything she had.
- Luke 22Satan enters Judas Iscariot and he goes to the chief priests to discuss how to betray Jesus.
- Luke 23The assembly brings Jesus to Pilate, accusing him of perverting the nation, forbidding tribute to Caesar, and claiming to be king.
- Luke 24Very early on the first day of the week, the women — Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and others — bring spices to the tomb and find the stone rolled away.