The Jesus of popular piety is an attractive figure—forgiving, loving, compassionate, life-giving. But the Jesus of history we encounter in the Gospels is complicated and in many ways unfamiliar to us. It is this Jesus that we want to get to know in this series. One simple way to plot his career path is by telling three stories about a “son”: the Son sent to Israel, the Son of Man who suffered many things, and the Son of God who reigns. We begin with the story of the Son sent to the badly managed vineyard of Israel.

The church believes that Jesus is the answer to the world’s problems. That’s a big claim to make, and we will try to make good sense of it as we go through this series. But first, we need to ask: which Jesus are we talking about?