WADING RIVER CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

SERMONS IN PRINT

Peter Vibert 1/15/06

Mark 12:1-27 “In This World And The Next”

The week of conflict that followed Jesus’ “triumphal entry” was well under way. Every day the chief priests, scribes and elders either came themselves or sent others to question Jesus as he taught in the Temple courts. They wanted to break the people’s fascination with him, because he represented a major threat to their authority over the Temple.

1) The Vineyard

The threat became obvious when he overturned the tables of the money-changers and drove out the animal-sellers who had turned the Court of the Gentiles into a market. Now Jesus told a parable that further infuriated the leaders.

A man created a vineyard, did all that was needed for its success, leased it to tenant farmers, but was then rejected when he sent his servant to collect the income. Many servants he sent were beaten and even killed, so finally he sent his son, whom he was sure they would respect. Him the tenants also killed. So the owner came, destroyed the tenants, and gave the care of the vineyard to others. The priests and scribes were incensed, because they perceived that Jesus had spoken this parable “against them.” What did they think he meant?

The vineyard, as everyone knew, was a symbol of Israel. God had planted the nation, fenced it around with his love and his Law, provided for all its needs. But in the time of Isaiah, the LORD had complained that “the vineyard he loved” had produce “only bad fruit;” and because of this, he would “destroy the hedge, tear down the wall, trample the vineyard, make it a wasteland” unless Israel produced good fruit (Isaiah 5:1-7). Now, in Jesus’ parable, the fault lies squarely with the leaders of Israel, the “tenant farmers.” They have rejected God’s messengers – the prophets – over and over, and they are now about to reject the owner’s son. The result will be disaster: God will put his “vineyard” in the hands of others, and the old order in Israel will be destroyed. Not only will the priesthood disappear, but even the temple will be torn down.

Here then is the irony: those who have rejected God’s servants, including his Son, will themselves be rejected by God. With such claims, the tension between Jesus and the leaders grows daily! This can only end in trouble.

2) Taxes

So the priests send in another group to see if they can snare Jesus, and discredit him in the eyes of the crowds or of the Romans. The question is well crafted: “Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” Say no, and the Romans will arrest him as an insurrectionist. Say yes, and he will forfeit the support of the crowds who hated Roman taxation.

Like the land-use tax and the produce tax and the tolls, the “poll tax” had been levied on every male resident of Judea since it became a directly-ruled Roman province under a procurator in 6 AD (the year Herod the Great’s son Archelaus was thrown out by the Romans – at the instigation of the Sanhedrin council - for corruption). There were those who acquiesced to tax payments, many who hated them, and some – like the growing “zealot” party - who revolted against them. If Jesus affirms that Jews should pay the Roman tax, he will show he is “no patriot” – which can always get you into trouble!

Jesus calls for a silver denarius, the Roman coin that had to be used to pay the poll tax. It carried the image of Tiberius, emperor from 14 - 37 AD, and said of him “Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus.” On the other side was an image of his mother Livia, and the inscription “Pontifex maximus” – the chief priest of the empire. The cult of emperor-worship illustrated by the Roman coins was considered so blasphemous that no good Jew would even carry the coins on his person - but Jesus’ critics of course have a denarius available!

On hearing that this is “Caesar’s portrait and inscription,” Jesus gives a verdict that stuns and silences his critics: “Give Caesar what is Caesar’s, and God what is God’s.” It is so powerful an answer that whole theologies have been built on it: for example, the view that there are two non-overlapping kingdoms of man and God with distinct spheres of influence, and that you should strive to be a good citizen of each. But that is too neat, and does not answer the crucial question: What do you do when obeying Caesar means disobeying God, and vice versa? Some people in 1^st C. Judea – the zealots, for example – were sure that to obey God meant you must disobey Caesar. Some people today feel the same way. Others claim that obeying Caesar is obeying God; you should “obey the authorities because they are instituted by God,” as Paul says (Rom 13).

Jesus surely did not mean that there is part of the world that is outside God’s ownership. Everything that is “Caesar’s” is ultimately God’s. So when there is a choice or a conflict, obedience to God must come first. Jesus does, however, point out that Caesar has a legitimate area of operation; that “if you take Caesar’s money – and his roads, government, and other benefits – you will also have to pay his price.” That is, I suspect, a principle we still need to think about: it’s easy to complain about taxes, but much harder to decide what services we would be ready to do without. (People who leave LI for cheaper parts of the US often have to wrestle with the lack of many things we here take for granted!). We need to weigh Jesus’ words as we try to live in this world of God and various Caesars.

3) Resurrection

But what about the world to come? The next critics to confront Jesus were a group of Sadducees. They were the priestly class, the aristocrats of Jewish life; and they had made their peace with the Romans. They were despised by the common people as collaborators, and by the separatist Pharisees for their assimilation. They were in some ways very traditionalist: they believed in the old ways, and gave great weight to the 5 books of Moses, and little if any to the later prophets and writings in the Hebrew Bible. So they had no time, for example, for the idea of resurrection, or of angels.

They come to Jesus, trying to ridicule the whole idea of resurrection by composing a story about a woman who was married to seven brothers. Whose wife will she be in the “resurrection”? Jesus responds in two ways: the Sadducees are wrong about the fact and the nature of the resurrected life. The fact of it is plain: God is the God of the living, not the dead. “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” means that the patriarchs are still alive – and not simply as “immortal souls,” because all Jews knew that they lived in a place of “shadows;” to be with God meant to have a resurrected body.

But what about human relationships in the resurrected life? The risen dead will be “like angels,” says Jesus, and no longer “marry or be given in marriage.” This is a strange phrase, and has caused much consternation over the years. Literally it means “there will be no weddings in the new age.” Does Jesus mean that in the new age we shall no longer be married? Or that we shall be so overwhelmed with our relationship with God that spouses won’t matter any more? Or that all relationships will take on a new intimacy and depth that will make even marriage irrelevant? Or that there is no gender difference, no sexuality in the age to come? People have wrestled with these questions for centuries.

What seems clear is that – for example – to be “like an angel” is not to be sexless: the Hebrew Bible certainly never saw angels that way. What is also clear is that to be “changed” and to become “imperishable” (1 Cor 15), as believers are promised they will be, means there is no more dying, and no more need to re-populate humankind by having children. Even in the early church, there were writers who said God will not separate in the next life people he has joined in a holy union in this life (Tertullian). The best we can say is that – as Jesus’ resurrected body shows – we will be recognizably the same people, but changed in dramatic ways, and all our relationships, including marriage, will in some way be transformed.

We cannot let the Sadducees go, however, without noticing what Jesus says about them. They are “in error” and “badly mistaken.” The reason for this is that they do not know “the Scriptures or the power of God.” This is the source of many of our troubles: that we do not know the Scriptures. Every observer of the American church today agrees that Biblical knowledge is at an all-time low. Two whole generations of children and adults know almost nothing about the Bible, do not recognize allusions to it, are ignorant of the book that has shaped our history more than any other. Talk to them about the snake in the garden, a pillar of salt, the parting of the sea, manna in the wilderness, the golden bowl, a chariot of fire, the valley of dry bones, locusts and wild honey, sweating drops of blood, the thief on the cross, tongues of fire, the Damascus road, the seventh seal, and they will not have any idea what you are talking about! What about you?

Listen to the issues of faith that people argue about, and you wonder how they could possibly know so little about the ways of God, and what it means to be a Christian. Talk to people about what God is doing in their lives or in the world, and meet a blank stare. As Jesus said, “You do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.” So forget speculation about what the ways of God might be, and learn first what he has already revealed about his ways and his will in the Bible! So said Jesus then, and so – I suspect – he would say now.

Jesus was being confronted over the issue of authority. That is always a good question, and deserves a good answer. If Jesus was not who he claimed to be, his words and actions were an affront to God and to the religion of Israel. If prophets who claim to speak for God are not in fact doing so, they and their message should be rejected and ignored. If God does not have ultimate authority, you will never know how to serve Caesar and where the limits are. If the Scriptures are not your authority in spiritual matters, you will always be confused, speculating, and groping for the truth.

The conflict stories of Jesus’ “passion week” become more and more pointed, until the final confrontation: “Are you the Son of God?” “I am,” said Jesus. “What more evidence do we need?” cried Caiaphas the High Priest, “we have heard his blasphemy.” In the end, it always comes down to deciding who is telling the truth; who has the authority to pronounce what is right or wrong, what is so or not so.

Do you know the Scriptures, or the power of God?

Let us pray...