Reader’s Guide: “The Word for Today” Monday, March 25, 2013 Read – Luke19:45-20:47 Luke continues to use Mark as the skeleton of his story. What one notices is that Luke has made significant changes to the details of these stories. All four gospel writers tell the story of Jesus driving the sellers from the Temple. John places this episode near the very beginning of his gospel (John 2:13-17). That has led some to suppose that Jesus did this twice. That judgment is based on the belief that the gospel writers are really attempting to record the “history” of Jesus much like a news reporter. If it is true, as I have argued, that we really don’t know the exact ordering of things and that each gospel writer has created their own “storyline” the need to claim that Jesus must have cleansed the Temple twice disappears. I hope that our observation that Luke has significantly reordered Mark at times presents convincing evidence to support my view. Perhaps it doesn’t really matter – however I think that forcing the gospel writers to act like news reporters and holding them accountable to present chronological facts in proper order does violence to the word of scripture. We end up making writers say what they did not say in order to satisfy our preconceived notions. Better thinking about what the inspiration of scripture really means would be helpful. In this section Luke significantly changes Mark. The actual telling of the driving of the sellers from the Temple takes one verse for Luke – at most two (Luke 19:45 or 19:45-46) Mark takes three verses (Mark 11:15-17) and besides that Mark surrounds the episode with the strange story of the cursing of the fig tree (Mark 11:12-14 and 11:20-21). The whole episode of the fig tree is missing in Luke – he simply drops it out. Mark had also separated Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem from his cleansing of the Temple. Mark says Jesus entered Jerusalem and the Temple and then went to spend the night and return on the next day to cleanse the Temple (Mark 11:11). Luke compresses the entry into Jerusalem and the driving out of the sellers to one event – Jesus enters Jerusalem and goes directly to the Temple and drives out the sellers (Luke 19:45). You may have noticed that I have been referring to Mark’s version as a “cleansing of the Temple” and simply reported that Luke says Jesus “drove out the sellers.” Mark’s version is far more violent – Jesus overturns the tables of the money changers and sets the birds loose. Jesus does not even let anyone carry an item through the Temple area (Mark 11:15-16). Luke doesn’t mention any of this – only that Jesus drove out the sellers. Each looks at this episode with a different point of view. For Mark this is really a cleansing – in fact a destruction of the Temple – the episode of the withering, dead fig tree highlights that view. For Luke, all that is needed is a purification of the Temple – the Temple itself remains precious for Luke. The followers of Jesus will end Luke’s gospel daily in the Temple and the book of Acts will begin by being centered on the Temple. Luke knows the Temple will eventually be destroyed but for him that is a tragic occurrence. Luke began his gospel with faithful Zechariah in the Temple. Mary and Joseph went to the Temple to have Jesus circumcised and to offer the proper sacrifice for Mary’s cleansing. Jesus went there as a twelve year old and called it his Father’s house. The Temple is not a negative thing for Luke. Mark sees things much differently – the Temple must go because it has become a perversion of God’s way in the world. Both Mark and Luke have their reasons for their point of view – and we need to let each speak. Luke does retain Mark’s words of Jesus combining Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11. And Luke is well aware that Jesus’ actions lead the chief priests and the scribes – Luke adds to Mark “the principle men of the people” – to decide that Jesus must be killed (Luke 19:46-48). Luke does not dispute the fact that Jesus’ actions are the cause of the rejection he will now suffer – but remember, Luke sees this as the visitation of God to his people and the tragic mistake that they make in not welcoming God. Malachi 3:1-3 echoes in the background of Luke’s story as we noted earlier. Following the strange episode of the disciples asking Jesus about the withered fig tree, Mark tells his readers that Jesus avoids answering their question and instead tells them that if they have faith they can tell a mountain to be taken up and cast into the sea. We noted earlier that Luke had related a somewhat different version of this episode (Luke 17:6) and he omits it here. Following Mark, Luke now relates the struggle that unfolds as the Messiah comes to the Temple. It is really important that we notice that all of the episodes in Luke take place within the Temple – Jesus has purified it and claimed it! Luke does not make significant changes to Mark in any of these stories – with one exception – in Luke the Pharisees are never mentioned! The first episode addresses the heart of the matter – who is in authority? This is a question of turf – whose turf is it? In one way this is clearly the turf of the chief priest and elders since they run the place. But in a real way Jesus is reclaiming the turf. The tactic used by the chief priests with the elders and their scribes is to ask Jesus a question in hopes of getting him to convict himself before the Roman law. Jesus skillfully avoids the trap and the question with a question of his own about John the Baptist. Round one goes to Jesus. Now Jesus tells the parable of the wicked tenants. This is another of those places where Luke may have been “playing” with a parable to let it say something quite different from the intention of his source, Mark. Jesus is telling this parable to the people in Luke’s gospel. It’s a story about an absent landholder who seeks to get his money from the tenants. The story reflects a real situation of that time. Absentee landlords had swallowed up most of the land. Tenants had once held that land but had been forced through corrupt practices to lose it to these absentee landlords. So, the hearers of the parable may well have sided with the tenants in the story – very different from us who naturally side with the landlord. When the question is asked what the landlord will do to these tenants and the verdict is delivered that he will destroy them and give the vineyard to others, the crowd cries out, “God forbid!” (Luke 20:16). What a strange response! Only Luke has this response in his gospel. It does make one wonder. If Luke was in fact “playing” with the parable he likely was not fully successful. The allegorical interpretation simply demands that God is the landlord, Jesus is the son, and the tenants are the villains. There is just no other way to hear the story – so perhaps Luke wasn’t “playing” after all. It is at least interesting to ponder whether Luke has a double meaning going on, though. One can imagine the hearers thinking one thing – that Jesus is going to justify the tenants – only to have it suddenly dawn on them that the parable works in a completely different way – and they will need to adjust their thinking to fit that interpretation. At any rate, as in Mark, the religious leaders, who are apparently overhearing the parable, get that its meaning is directed against them. Psalm 118:22-23 echoes in the background of this parable as does the famous story in Isaiah 5 where Israel is compared to God’s vineyard – a vineyard that does not produce good grapes. Psalm 80 also echoes the story of the vineyard and we ought to read all of these verses in this context. The battle is engaged again as Jesus is confronted with the question – “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Mark had said that it was the Pharisees and Herodians who asked the question (Mark 12:13). Luke does not mention the Pharisees and identifies the questioners as spies (Luke 20:20). As with Mark, Luke knows that these questioners are not sincere – they are attempting to trap Jesus. They think they have the ideal question – if Jesus answers, “Yes, it is lawful to pay taxes to Caesar” the whole nation would have been against him. Had Jesus answered, “No, it is not lawful to pay taxes to Caesar” the spies would have had evidence to hand Jesus over to the Romans as an insurrectionist. Jesus avoids the question, turning it back on those who ask it. And we are left to think for ourselves – what does it mean to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s? Round two goes to Jesus. Luke agrees with Mark that the questioners in the third encounter are Sadducees – those who do not believe in the resurrection of the dead. That the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead is well verified from other historical sources such as Josephus. The Sadducees were of the wealthy class of people and those who ran the Temple. From their members came the high priest and all the other priests. The Pharisees were laymen. Historically there was a constant battle between the Pharisees and Sadducees – they did not like each other. The Sadducees were the ones who collaborated with Rome in order to maintain power. They had much to lose if violence broke out against Rome and they would have been desperate to have Jesus handed over to the Romans. In fact, when the Jewish War of 66-70 AD ended, the Sadducees disappear from history – they lost everything. Only the Pharisees continued and they went through a major transformation following the war. Actually, the Christians were also a Jewish “sect” at their beginning so one might say that only Pharisaic Jews and Christian Jews survived the war. As in the previous story, the Sadducees think they have the perfect case with which to ridicule Jesus. They suggest a ridiculous case of a woman who winds up being married to seven brothers, following the law of Levirite Marriage (Deuteronomy 35:5-6). Jesus’ answer is more straightforward this time – using the scriptures of the Sadducees, Jesus argues that the resurrection is not simply a continuation of this world but a whole new world and that God has shown himself to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who are all understood to be still alive in God’s kingdom though they have all died in this world. Round three goes to Jesus. At this point Luke omits Mark’s story about the man who comes to ask Jesus what is the greatest commandment. Luke has already told that story (Luke 10:25-28) and does not repeat it here. Once again we see Luke’s freedom in reordering Mark. Luke picks up Mark again with the next story of controversy – Jesus initiates this conflict. The issue is how the Messiah can be both David’s Lord and David’s son. We have lived so long with the thought that Jesus is the Son of God that we have a difficult time perceiving the conflict in this story. The issue was important in that time since some thought of the Messiah as only a human agent of God. Therefore it would be easy to think of the Messiah as David’s son – but not so easy to think of the Messiah as David’s lord. Yet, Psalm 110, which was thought by everyone to have been written by David, has the words, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand…” Christians over time reinterpreted much of the scripture hearing it is light of the Messiah Jesus, the Son of God. Don Juel has written an excellent book regarding this reinterpretation titled, “Messianic Exegesis” for those who would like to read more about this. It will be better if we comment about the last few verses in our reading today in connection with the story of the widow who put her whole living into the Temple treasury.