Hilton Head Island, SC – March 17, 2019
The Chapel Without Walls
Mark 12:1-12; Mark 12:13-17
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – And they tries to arrest him, but feared the multitude, for they perceived that he had told the parable against them; so they left him and went away. – Mark 12:12 (RSV)
The Gospel of Mark is the shortest and earliest-written of the Gospels. Whoever wrote it did not know some of the stories that are included in Matthew and Luke. Mark also makes less commentary on what Jesus did and said than do the authors of the other three Gospels.
Jesus had been thinking for some time about what he would do when he came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. He intended to make the dramatic statement of an irrepressible religious reformer. Thus he drove out of the temple the money-changers and those who sold animals for sacrifice. He also overturned their tables in a display of puritanical fury. He was completely convinced this is what God wanted him to do.
In the second chapter of the Fourth Gospel, John says this incident occurred as one of the first things Jesus did in his public ministry. In Matthew and Luke, Jesus had his outburst in the temple immediately after coming into the Holy City on Palm Sunday. In Mark, however, the temple incident happened on the next day, on Monday. If John was correct in his chronology, Jesus managed to continue on before the crucifixion after the temple episode for three full years. If Matthew and Luke are correct, Jesus lived for only five days after what some call “the temple tantrum.” If Mark had it right, Jesus was crucified only four days later.
In all four of the Gospels, there is always a tone of foreboding throughout the entire Jesus story in the background of everything that he said and did. Beyond all of it the cross looms large. “Ah, dearest Jesus, how hast thou offended/ that man to judge thee, hath in hate pretended?” With the coming of Holy Week, however, the nuances of disaster grow in a crescendo of sounds and sights. What Jesus says to the leaders of Judaism fuels the fires of resistance to his teachings. What they say to him guarantees that religiously and politically, Good Friday could never be averted.
The day after the oft-described “cleansing of the temple” was Holy Tuesday, according to Mark. When Jesus and the disciples went back into Jerusalem from the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in the village of Bethany, they returned to the temple. That in itself was a provocative act. The day before Jesus had created what the temple authorities would deem an unholy ruckus, and here he was again. Was he there to make even more trouble?
To test that notion, they asked Jesus a question, hoping to trap him by how he answered it. “By what authority did you drive out the animal sellers and the money-changers? Or who gave you the authority to do that?” Knowing they were trying to trick him, Jesus calmly said, “I will answer your question, if you will first answer my question to you.” Then he made what seemed to be a perfectly innocuous inquiry: “Was the baptism of John the Baptist authorized by God or by his own human authorization?”
This, however, was no innocent inquiry, and instantly they knew it. It was a loaded question, a question intended to silence the priests altogether. Quickly they drew aside to confer. “If we say that John’s baptism came from God, Jesus will say, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ But if we say John’s baptism was of human origin, John’s followers will be furious at us, and we can’t have that!” So, after a few more whispered arguments, they said to Jesus., “We don’t know if John was commanded to do what he did by God or if he just decided to do it all on his own.” With that, Jesus said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I attacked the very concept of what God’s temple has become under your tarnished and tawdry leadership.”
Actually I am embellishing the story a little, but then, Mark also may have embellished the story a little. Who can be historically certain of these things, other than those who believe the Bible is, without question, inerrant and/or infallible? The real point is this: Jesus was an extremely able theological debater. It was very difficult to back him into tight corners.
However this episode actually played itself out historically, by Mark’s reckoning it occurred only two days before Jesus was arrested on the evening of what we call Maundy Thursday, which was three days before what we call Good Friday. The curtain was rapidly descending on Jesus’ final act, and he knew it. The astonishing thing is that he did nothing to detain his dreaded death. Instead, he seemed either to hasten it or to realize that nothing he did now would enable him to detour around it. He was almost already nailed to a cross, and he did not flinch from that.
So, said Mark, as soon as Jesus had eluded the trap so carefully set for him, Jesus told a parable to the temple big shots and the other Sadducees, priests, Pharisees and scribes who were listening to Jesus. No one who heard it could miss to whom he was referring in his story.
“A landowner planted a new vineyard,” Jesus said. After it was evident it would eventually grow to maturity, he went off into another country. When the landowner concluded the grapes would be ready to harvest, he went back to his vineyard.
Matthew and Luke, incidentally, have the same parable at the same point in the Holy Week account, and their words are almost verbatim what Mark says. We may deduce from this that since none of the Gospel writers actually was present during Jesus’ ministry, Matthew and Luke decided what Mark said must be --- you should pardon the expression --- gospel, and so they included the parable in their Gospels.
Continuing his story, Jesus said the landowner ordered one of his servants to go to the tenants of the vineyard to collect his ripened grapes. But instead of giving the vineyard owner what belonged to him, amazingly they beat the servant. He sent another one, and they also pummeled him. He sent others, and they killed some of them. In complete exasperation, the owner decided to send his own son to collect what rightfully belonged to him, Surely they would not dare harm him! But they also killed the vineyard owner’s son.
Often in the parables of Jesus, there is only one or possibly two main points to be gleaned from the story. In this case, and in this context, every detail of the parable has an obvious allegorical meaning. God is the vineyard owner. The vineyard is the nation of Israel. The servants whom the owner sends to collect his harvest (faithful Israelites) are the prophets, some of whom in historical fact were beaten during their lifetimes, and perhaps a few were even killed. The vineyard owner’s son is intended to be perceived as Jesus himself. In just three days Jesus will be dead on a Roman cross, and he sensed that in the deepest recesses of his being. The cross is and always has been the primary symbol of Christianity. That is a theological and Christological irony beyond all ironies, but there is no denying the centrality of the cross in Christian theology.
By means of this parable, Jesus was conveying to his theological enemies that he knew they intended to have him killed. They knew that was the essential meaning of Jesus’ parable, and everyone who heard it also knew it. But for the moment he eluded them.
That wasn’t the conclusion of what happened on Holy Tuesday, however, according to Mark. He notes that some Pharisees and Herodians came to Jesus. They also hoped to trap him into saying something unorthodox or seditious. The Pharisees were a group of Jewish scholars who were strict observers of the Mosaic law. They also were reformers, however, for it was they who were the progenitors of the rabbinic movement within Judaism. They believed Judaism could not survive if it had to depend on worship in the temple as the only proper location for worship.
The Herodians were a pro-Roman political group of fifth-column Jews. They supported the three Jewish kings who had been appointed by the Roman emperor, all of whom were sons of Herod the Great. He had been appointed king by Caesar Augustus before the birth of Jesus.
These men came to Jesus and asked him a question they thought would throw him into a political bind. “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “we know that you are true, and kneel to no one, no matter what his human position may be. Therefore we ask you, is it lawful for Jews to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”
They thought they had boxed Jesus into a corner. If he said Jews shouldn’t pay taxes to Rome, it would anger the Romans, and the Herodians and Pharisees needed Rome on their side against Jesus. If Jesus said Jews should pay taxes to Rome, it would anger most of the Judeans, because they detested their homeland being occupied by the Roman army in the first place and then being forced to pay taxes to their occupiers in the second place.
Rather than answer their question, Jesus asked one of his adversaries to show him a coin. When they did, Jesus asked whose image was inscribed on the coin. “Caesar’s,” they said, meaning Tiberius Caesar, who then was the emperor of Rome. So Jesus breezily told them. “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Once again Jesus eluded the trap his enemies thought they had so shrewdly set for him.
Clever people don’t like being outfoxed by someone who is more clever than they are. Though Jesus came from the region of the Galilee, which the backwoods of Judea, he was no rustic rube. He was an unusually insightful and articulate man, and he had learned how to engage in theological disputes with the Pharisees and Sadducees of Galilee. He knew they opposed him, and they knew he opposed them.
There was a qualitative difference in this opposition, however. Jesus insisted on merely voicing his case with his enemies, but for that his enemies insisted on his being killed. They were so strongly put off by the theology of Jesus that they believed the only way Jesus and his ideas could be silenced was to arrange to have him crucified as an insurrectionist against the Romans. This was why they tried to trick Jesus into saying that Jews should not pay taxes to Rome.
In our time we cannot imagine anyone wanting someone executed over theological differences. To us that would seem totally bizarre. But to people whose primary purpose in life is to maintain theological purity, threats against their positions are tantamount to treason against truth. They think it undermines the very foundations upon which a people base their identity.
An important distinction needs to be made here, though. It was not Jews in general who wanted Jesus to be sent to the cross. It was a very small number of very dedicated theological leaders who wanted Jesus dead. Historically, anti-Jewish animosity evolved because too many Christians were taught by too many Christian clergy over too many centuries that “the Jews” crucified Jesus. “Jews” didn’t crucify Jesus, because Jews couldn’t crucify anyone. Only the Romans had the political authority to execute people they considered to be enemies of the state. During Holy Week some of the most influential Jewish religious leaders conspired with the Roman governor Pontius Pilate to hustle Jesus onto a rough Roman cross. They thought Jesus was too extreme to be tolerated. They convinced Pilate that Jesus was a threat to Rome, besides being a threat to traditional Jewish beliefs.
To Jesus’ followers, the crucifixion would have appeared to be a great miscarriage of justice. They thought Jesus would miraculously elude his enemies, and it didn’t happen. His momentary escapes only further enraged his adversaries. The disciples were both enormously stunned and incredulous that the Roman governor allowed Jesus to be sent to a cross. But also to his followers, the resurrection of Jesus on the third day after the crucifixion shed an entirely new light on the tragedy which Holy Week seemed to be. To them Easter authenticated everything Jesus represented.
Twenty years after the crucifixion, a man named Saul of Tarsus began to designate himself as “the apostle Paul.” Paul paid almost no attention to the life and teachings of Jesus; it was Jesus’ death which captivated Paul. The cross, not the empty tomb, became the centerpiece of his understanding of who Jesus was and what he did on the cross to become our Savior.
In the early Church, there were two Greek words which were used to describe the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The first was kerygma, and the second was didache. Kerygma is usually translated as “proclamation.” It is the enthusiastic preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Didache means “teaching.” It is less spirited, and more pedagogical. It seeks to teach people a reasoned understanding of who Jesus was, and what he did. Kerygma attempts to preach people into an elevated spiritual experience.
These Lenten sermons, based on Mark’s account of Holy Week, are much more didache than they are kerygma. That is unusual for Lent. Jesus could not have been surprised that he was nailed to a cross. In retrospect, neither should the devoted followers of Jesus have been surprised. Because Jesus chose to try to reform Judaism in a hurry with a head-on confrontation of its most powerful leaders, while never clearly denying to Pilate that he perceived himself to be a king, there is little wonder what the outcome would be.
Jesus was so provocative, so reform-minded, so revolutionary, that it became inevitable he would die on a cross. Did God will that? Paul said so. Ever since then, the Church has also basically agreed that the crucifixion was God’s will. However, there is at least one irrefutable instance in which Jesus appeared to take a strong Good Friday exception to that notion. Reciting the opening verse of Psalm 22, Jesus cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” In the agony of his excruciating death (“ex-cruc-iating” --- from the cross), he wondered if he had been mistaken to have been so unbending in his run-in with the powers-that-be of both Judaism and Rome.
But, through Holy Tuesday at least, Jesus managed to elude them. But he most certainly was not going to try to avoid any further confrontations with them, however. Jesus remained God’s theological pit bull terrier to the bitter end.