What convinces?
Matthew 22.34-end. (Proper 25A, Last Sunday after Trinity)
It’s a test again. Those who think religious wisdom and authority belongs
to them, and to them alone, can’t help themselves. Like the teenager who can’t
help but keep testing the boundaries at home, causing one confrontation after
another, the Pharisees and their allies have Jesus constantly in their sights.
They just won’t let up—one more challenge, one more question, one more attempt
to wrong foot him. That he has so often got the better of them in their
arguments only spurs them on: he had silenced the Sadducees. All the more
reason that the Pharisees should have another go at him. The lawyer amongst
them asked a testing question. ‘Be intimidated Jesus, this guy is an expert.’
That’s the thing about the power challenge, the teasing question that’s designed to put someone else on the spot: it always has a barb hidden somewhere. A lawyer pressing a case doesn’t ask innocent questions. The question has been carefully weighed; the possible answers have already been considered. There is a point to made, and this is the question that will make. The lawyer thinks he knows where this is going—the riposte or the judgment is already in his mind. At the least Jesus will look foolish; at the best, he will condemn himself from his own lips.
It’s hard to imagine what that planned riposte will be. Surely they can’t imagine that Jesus will speak out against the law in some way? They certainly don’t know their enemy as well as they think they do if that’s a possibility they’ve considered. Or do they think that he will show his ignorance of the law in the way that he will answer? If that’s in their minds, then they are fooling themselves. In every encounter previously he has shown himself to be well acquainted with the intricacies of the laws of his faith. Or is it that they think he will undermine his own authority by the way he will respond? Do they think he will elevate some laws whilst dismissing others—confusing the issues and making his opinions laughable by the weakness of his argument?
Can they really think that his answer will finally uncover him as a faithless rebel, an ignorant poser, or a shallow arguer? Well, yes they can, because that’s what bitterness, anger and resentment does to your discernment. The other you loath is inevitably the faithless rebel, the ignorant poser, the dim-wit, because bitterness, anger and resentment twists what you see and hear into nothing more than what your prejudice wants to see and hear. So easy to see in other people: so hard to admit in ourselves. The lawyer calls him ‘Teacher,’ but it’s sarcasm. The question doesn’t seek an answer, it seeks another’s hurt and shame and downfall.
How galling it must have been then that Jesus came straight back at them with an answer that was the answer of a genuine teacher—a teacher profoundly faithful; a teacher knowledgeable and wise; a teacher skilled in the arts of speaking deeply but simply. It was a teacher’s answer without a doubt. A synthesis of two texts—brilliantly put and profoundly resonant of the best in the Jewish laws of faith.
Here’s a way of summing up the law in two aspects that was recognizably a respected part of genuine faithfulness. The great Rabbi Hillel (1st century BC), when challenged to recite the whole of the law (Torah) whilst standing on one foot, said: “What you hate for yourself, do not do to your neighbour. This is the whole of the Law. The rest is commentary.” (Babylonian Talmud) And later the first-century teacher Philo was to say that love of God and love of neighbour fulfilled the whole of the Law. Jesus wins by a summing up that all his hearers understood to authentic and true. A summing up that goes to the core of the whole of human existence—heart, soul and mind. These are without doubt the words of a worthy teacher. They cut through all that’s superfluous, all that diverts, all that obscures the essential points. Truly a teacher who can teach: but more than that also.
That Jesus makes a counter challenge to the Pharisees underlines to the onlookers that day that Jesus is every bit as much an honoured teacher as the Pharisees were. He had the authority. The authority, indeed the right to make a counter challenge. Such a challenge in public was a matter of honour; it could only be made between equals. The fact that they are prepared to answer him made the point. In face of the crowd they had to concede he was their equal as a teacher. How their testing had back-fired, but things are going to get even worse for them.
As they had asked him a supposedly simple question, so too Jesus asks them a simple question: “Whose son is the Messiah?” Now that’s an easy one. “He’s the son of David,” they say. They haven’t conceded the point that Jesus is a son of David, though maybe those looking on made the connection. But what they have made explicit is that the awaited Messiah is somehow under the authority of the Davidic inheritance that they think themselves the guardians of. Get out of that one Jesus, if you reckon yourself to be the Messiah!
And he does. He quotes back at them a verse from a Psalm of David, Psalm 110: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.”’ Or to phrase it more easily: God (the Lord) said to the Messiah-King (my Lord), sit beside me in the place of power and blessing until I put your enemies under your feet. If David the Psalmist calls the Messiah his Lord, how can he be his son? The Messiah is of the Davidic line but he is far greater than even David.
The Pharisees are stumped for an answer. From that day on no more tricky questions—they have been out-witted. And, of course, the encounter is more than an idle debating sparring match. The Pharisees and those watching know this is about who Jesus is. It’s all been camouflaged in theological argument—but everyone knows what it’s really about. After all, the crowd had gone wild and acclaimed Jesus as Lord as he came into the city on Palm Sunday. The crowd, the poor, the sick, the widowed; they recognized him. But the Pharisees, the ones versed in the law and the traditions of faith, they could not, would not, recognize him. Arguments wouldn’t sway them. What do you expect when they refused the evidence of actions?
That’s the thing about the power challenge, the teasing question that’s designed to put someone else on the spot: it always has a barb hidden somewhere. A lawyer pressing a case doesn’t ask innocent questions. The question has been carefully weighed; the possible answers have already been considered. There is a point to made, and this is the question that will make. The lawyer thinks he knows where this is going—the riposte or the judgment is already in his mind. At the least Jesus will look foolish; at the best, he will condemn himself from his own lips.
It’s hard to imagine what that planned riposte will be. Surely they can’t imagine that Jesus will speak out against the law in some way? They certainly don’t know their enemy as well as they think they do if that’s a possibility they’ve considered. Or do they think that he will show his ignorance of the law in the way that he will answer? If that’s in their minds, then they are fooling themselves. In every encounter previously he has shown himself to be well acquainted with the intricacies of the laws of his faith. Or is it that they think he will undermine his own authority by the way he will respond? Do they think he will elevate some laws whilst dismissing others—confusing the issues and making his opinions laughable by the weakness of his argument?
Can they really think that his answer will finally uncover him as a faithless rebel, an ignorant poser, or a shallow arguer? Well, yes they can, because that’s what bitterness, anger and resentment does to your discernment. The other you loath is inevitably the faithless rebel, the ignorant poser, the dim-wit, because bitterness, anger and resentment twists what you see and hear into nothing more than what your prejudice wants to see and hear. So easy to see in other people: so hard to admit in ourselves. The lawyer calls him ‘Teacher,’ but it’s sarcasm. The question doesn’t seek an answer, it seeks another’s hurt and shame and downfall.
How galling it must have been then that Jesus came straight back at them with an answer that was the answer of a genuine teacher—a teacher profoundly faithful; a teacher knowledgeable and wise; a teacher skilled in the arts of speaking deeply but simply. It was a teacher’s answer without a doubt. A synthesis of two texts—brilliantly put and profoundly resonant of the best in the Jewish laws of faith.
Here’s a way of summing up the law in two aspects that was recognizably a respected part of genuine faithfulness. The great Rabbi Hillel (1st century BC), when challenged to recite the whole of the law (Torah) whilst standing on one foot, said: “What you hate for yourself, do not do to your neighbour. This is the whole of the Law. The rest is commentary.” (Babylonian Talmud) And later the first-century teacher Philo was to say that love of God and love of neighbour fulfilled the whole of the Law. Jesus wins by a summing up that all his hearers understood to authentic and true. A summing up that goes to the core of the whole of human existence—heart, soul and mind. These are without doubt the words of a worthy teacher. They cut through all that’s superfluous, all that diverts, all that obscures the essential points. Truly a teacher who can teach: but more than that also.
That Jesus makes a counter challenge to the Pharisees underlines to the onlookers that day that Jesus is every bit as much an honoured teacher as the Pharisees were. He had the authority. The authority, indeed the right to make a counter challenge. Such a challenge in public was a matter of honour; it could only be made between equals. The fact that they are prepared to answer him made the point. In face of the crowd they had to concede he was their equal as a teacher. How their testing had back-fired, but things are going to get even worse for them.
As they had asked him a supposedly simple question, so too Jesus asks them a simple question: “Whose son is the Messiah?” Now that’s an easy one. “He’s the son of David,” they say. They haven’t conceded the point that Jesus is a son of David, though maybe those looking on made the connection. But what they have made explicit is that the awaited Messiah is somehow under the authority of the Davidic inheritance that they think themselves the guardians of. Get out of that one Jesus, if you reckon yourself to be the Messiah!
And he does. He quotes back at them a verse from a Psalm of David, Psalm 110: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.”’ Or to phrase it more easily: God (the Lord) said to the Messiah-King (my Lord), sit beside me in the place of power and blessing until I put your enemies under your feet. If David the Psalmist calls the Messiah his Lord, how can he be his son? The Messiah is of the Davidic line but he is far greater than even David.
The Pharisees are stumped for an answer. From that day on no more tricky questions—they have been out-witted. And, of course, the encounter is more than an idle debating sparring match. The Pharisees and those watching know this is about who Jesus is. It’s all been camouflaged in theological argument—but everyone knows what it’s really about. After all, the crowd had gone wild and acclaimed Jesus as Lord as he came into the city on Palm Sunday. The crowd, the poor, the sick, the widowed; they recognized him. But the Pharisees, the ones versed in the law and the traditions of faith, they could not, would not, recognize him. Arguments wouldn’t sway them. What do you expect when they refused the evidence of actions?
