“… I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.” ~Luke 19:40
Stones speak. That is not the fanciful imagination of authors who personify non-human creatures. The Scriptures reveal that stones talk. Stones aren’t the only non-human creatures that speak. The entire non-human creation speaks. Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” So, when Jesus responds to the Pharisees’ command to quiet his disciples from declaring him king, his response of the “stones crying out” is not telling the Pharisees that the speechless stones will, all of a sudden, be able to speak. He tells them that the stones will use their voices to declare him king. At that moment, the disciples give voice to the creation, but the creation will continue to declare, “Jesus is King,” even if the disciples are silenced.
Stones have a long history in Scripture. Stones, like the rest of creation, reflect God’s glory, and God is a Rock (Dt 32:4; Ps 18:2). When the door to heaven is opened in Revelation 4, the one who sits on the throne has the appearance of jasper (possibly diamond) and carnelian. God is the Rock from which all rocks derive their rockness. God is infinitely more rock than the rocks, but he reveals himself in rocks.
God’s Word is a Rock. When God delivered his Word to Israel at Mt. Sinai, he did so on two tablets of stone. These stones sat in the ark of the covenant and cried out day and night before God and to Israel concerning the covenant. The Rock speaks.
When Joshua renewed the covenant with Israel before his death, he set up a large stone that heard all the words of the covenant and would bear witness to Yahweh (Josh 24:14-28).
God talks to all of his creation, and all of creation talks to him. He understands the language. Stones recognize the Great Stone and do his bidding. They will cry out and proclaim his glory.
At Jesus’ Royal Entry into Jerusalem, he was proclaimed king from Psalm 118, the Psalm that speaks of “the stone that the builders rejected” becoming “the head of the corner” (Ps 118:22). From this point through the resurrection, the stones will answer the Stone, vindicating him as God’s Messiah, the King.
While all of this rocky biblical theology is brought into Luke’s context, Jesus’ words are a little more pointed to an event. Jesus’ words echo the woes God pronounces upon the wicked through the prophet Habakkuk: “For the stone will cry out from the wall, and the beam from the timbers will answer it” (Hab 2:11). The Babylonians are coming as God’s instrument of discipline for Judah. They will destroy the temple that Israel corrupted. This corruption, according to Ezekiel, was in its stone walls (cf. Ezek 8). The scribes of Jesus’ day “devour widow’s houses,” taking the last bit of money from widows (21:1-4) so that they can enrich themselves. Jesus proclaims that Jerusalem will be besieged and not one stone of the temple will be left upon another because they did not know the time of their visitation (Lk 19:44); they did not acknowledge their king when he came. Because of this, the stones of the temple will be destroyed, and in that destruction, Jesus’ kingship will be vindicated.
Jesus’ kingship is an unalterable cosmic reality. Creation can’t deny reality. Creation will always work with God’s truth, reality, and punish those who seek to defy it. The stones, along with the rest of creation, will cry out that Jesus is King. They are in the service of the King. We will either join creation’s song, or we will be destroyed by crashing against the rocks of reality.
