…for what it's worth

I’ve only got a few minutes before I go to class and no time to do this later, so I’ll be brief (or at least direct).

Whenever I think that to myself (“stupid Pharisees”), I have to pause and make sure I don’t do the same things they do. That reflection usually ends with the need for my own repentance.

Today’s reading in Luke was mostly chapter 18, in which Jesus is just owning the Pharisees, scribes and Sadducees in arguments. The Jewish leaders are so sneaky in these stories, and Jesus is so not fooled.

They ask him by what authority he (violently) kicks people out of the temple, and he responds with a question about where John’s (the baptizer) authority came from. Of course they can’t say yes or no, or they’ll either be convicted of ignoring God or of rejecting someone the people have already decided is a prophet, so they take counsel together and decide to say ‘maybe’. I read that and get so mad at them. I hate it when people do that – answer an honest question with whatever will be most to their advantage… He tells them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.” Go Jesus! Get ‘em!

He tells them a parable, essentially about how Israel has rejected the prophets God has been sending them and will reject even God’s son, and the Pharisees are shocked and offended. “Surely not!”

“But he looked directly at them and said,

What then is this that is written:

“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”?

Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken in pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.

At this point I’m thinking, “Yeah! Preach it!”

“… So they watched him and sent spies, who pretended to be sincere, that they might catch him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor. ”

Shoot…

An example of that is given, when they ask him if they should pay taxes to Caesar or not. He asks him whose picture is on the coins. They say Caesar’s. He says, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Nice sidestep. They don’t ask him any more questions.

Now the Sadducees come to him, and Luke makes sure that his readers know they don’t believe in the resurrection. They propose to him a supposed problem for people who do believe in the resurrection. More or less, a woman has seven husbands in this life, one after another, and each one dies. Whose husband will she be in the “next life”, nudge-nudge, wink-wink?

Jesus essentially says, “There’s no marriage in Heaven, and by the way, if there’s no resurrection, how come Moses, in the passage about the bush, calls God ‘the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead.”

The Sadducees essentially say, “Touche.” I essentially say, in my head, “GOTCHA!”

Jesus then finishes my reading for today by asking them one more question:

41 But he said to them, “How can they say that the Christ is David’s son?

42 For David himself says in the Book of Psalms, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand,

43 until I make your enemies your footstool.’

44 David thus calls him Lord, so how is he his son?

As a little side-node, notice that Jesus is reasoning with them out of the Scriptures. Reasoning, and especially being able to reason from the Scriptures is important, and biblical.

OK. My point, which I don’t have time to dance around, is that I’m ragging on the opponents of Jesus for things I do, and these stories are in the Bible for my (our) instruction, not merely so we can get a thrill out of divine butt-kicking.

1. I muddle the issue sometimes in an argument so I won’t have to be wrong. Do you?
2. I read the biblical pronouncements of judgement and get excited that the guy who just made fun of me for being a Christian is going to get toasted, without spending any thought on how my own sin should get me toasted. How forgetful. Apart from the grace of God, I would definitely have been among the throng taunting Jesus on his way to the cross.
3. I don’t have my own spies, but I do try to trip my opponents up in their speech so I don’t have to go to the hard work of really, lovingly, gently convincing them. It’s so much easier to just make them feel stupid and move on.
4. I intellectualize the gospel, intellectualize the reality of sin, intellectualize the understanding and conveyance of doctrine. Not to say that we ought not to think hard about these things. It’s essential that we do. But frequently, it’s all just one big game, and I hope I win today. Forget truth, I just want to be right.

I’m out of time. There’s more to this passage I’m leaving out. Praise God for the living Word!