Em-pha’-sis on the Wrong Syl-la’-ble
5th Sunday of Lent March 17, 2024
7th in the Gospel of Mark: 11:1-13:2
The week following Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is an incredibly busy and dramatic week.
Today, we call this interim of time Passion Week: the span between Palm Sunday through to Easter Sunday.
Chapters 11 through 13 of Mark’s Gospel tells the story of what takes place the early part of that week. It begins of course, with what we call the Triumphal Entry when Jesus arrives and enters into Jerusalem on a donkey to shouts of praise. We’ll recall that event on Palm Sunday but we’ll fill in a few details about it now.
Jesus tells his disciples to borrow a donkey--an unbroken young donkey, a never-been-ridden donkey. They bring it to him, throw cloaks over it and Jesus rides into Jerusalem on its back…quiet as you please. He’s making a point of entering the city in a humble fashion but even though the crowd that gathers doesn’t realize he’s riding on an unbroken colt, Mark makes sure we the reader knows -- as do the disciples, demonstrating yet again in a quiet way, Jesus’ authority over the created order. People who believe Jesus to be the Messiah are thrilled and greet him with shouts of Hosanna, welcoming him as a king by laying foliage and their cloaks on the ground before him.
He gets to the Temple Mound dismounts and goes up to the Gentile court, the outermost court surrounding the Temple building where he looks around and then leaves to continue on to the small town of Bethany. En route to Bethany, feeling hungry, Jesus looks to a fig tree and finds no fruit. He says to the tree: May no one ever eat that fruit from you again. (11:14) Now this episode not only represents a departure from his earlier miracles, it is also puzzling because it’s too early in the season for there to be any fruit. (I sometimes wonder if maybe this tree didn’t even exhibit buds that would later become fruit.) The disciples and we for that matter are left to puzzle why Jesus did this. That becomes clearer later.
The next day, Jesus returns to the Gentile Court where he confronts the money changers and merchants. They were there to provide a convenience to pilgrims seeking to make a Passover sacrifice but to do so they needed to exchange their roman currency for Temple currency so they could purchase a bird or animal certified as pure and appropriate for sacrifice. It makes sense, but Jesus is so outraged by this that he overturns the money-changer tables and scatters the merchants. He read the situation for what it really was--commercial extortion on a space reserved for Gentile worshipers. He shouts: My House shall be called a house of prayer for all nations! you have made it a den of thieves. (11:17) He goes so far as to bar any merchandize from entering the Gentile Court; all of which angers the priests and scribes.
Jesus returns to Bethany and the next morning on the way back to Jerusalem Peter remarks on the fact that the fig tree Jesus had spoken to was withered down to its roots. Jesus still doesn’t explain but instead gives a lesson on prayer. Withering was connected to the lack of fruit (timely or not) and Jesus connects this equation to prayer. He says that prayer founded on unwavering faith is always answered, however ‘impossible’ the request may seem. He says that believers are to believe they have received their answer. (Notice the verb tense: have already though not yet in evidence.) He says that a believer’s prayer is to be accompanied by forgiveness. (Think of the Lord’s Prayer: forgive us as we forgive.) If a believer holds anything against someone else, they are to forgive them. Jesus links this forgiveness to the nature of the Kingdom of God, wherein mutual love and forgiveness abides. Now in light of other scripture texts we understand that Jesus isn’t talking about a Christmas wish list kind of prayer. He’s talking about prayer that first and foremost seeks the heart of God, is in keeping with the heart of God.
When he again visits the Temple Courts, the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders come to him and ask By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority? (11:27,28) Jesus responds with his own question: Was John’s baptism from heaven or from earth? They can’t answer because if they say heaven, why didn’t they heed him? If they say from earth, they feared what the people would do. So Jesus doesn’t answer their question.
It’s at the point that Jesus tells the parable of the vineyard tenants, a parable that lays a judgment on the religious authorities. They have been plotting how to kill Jesus and the parable centers on the murdering response the tenants undertake against their landowner, including the land owner’s son. These leaders rightly discern that Jesus is telling their story. They would have arrested him then and there if hadn’t been their fear of the crowds.
So while they retreat, the enlist surrogates to go back to Jesus to try to discredit him. Some Pharisees and Herodians ask him if it is lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not? Saying no, would put Jesus in jeopardy with Rome and saying yes would put him jeopardy of the people. We know what Jesus does, he makes them show him a Roman coin (the kind of coin the people had to use to pay the poll tax levied by Rome, bearing Caesar’s image) and tells them to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God. (12:17) They walk away, amazed.
The Sadducees then come and pose a theological question: At the resurrection whose wife will she be? for seven had married her? (12:23) Jesus dismisses them saying they are ignorant of both the scripture and the power of God. Yet again, the entire cadre of priests, scribes, teachers, Pharisees, Herodians and Sadducees are thwarted, their hypocrisy exposed.
But one of the teachers came with an honest question: Which of the commandments is the most important one? Jesus recites what was known as the Shema (Deut 6:4): You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength. And Jesus expands it by adding: The second is that you shall love your neighbor as yourself. (12:29) The teacher responds in agreement adding that all of this is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. (12:33) Jesus commends him: You are not far from the Kingdom of God. (12:34)
The authorities will bring no further challenges. Instead, they retreat to devise a plan to kill him.
Jesus continues to teach. Because the disciples and crowd of the triumphal entry called him “Son of David” Jesus knew they thought him to be the promised heir of King who would claim David’s throne, defeat all enemies and re-establish David’s earthly kingdom. To try to correct their thinking, their misunderstanding, he asks them to recall Psalm 111:1. Their teachers had taught them that David’s psalm said that the Messiah (or Christ), is the son of David--concluding wrongly, that the Messiah would reestablish the Davidic kingdom. So Jesus says, why do you think David, who was inspired by the Holy Spirit, calls the Messiah ‘Lord.’ If Messiah is David’s lord, how can the Messiah be David’s son? In other words, Jesus is telling them that the Messiah’s mission has nothing to do with reestablishing an earthly kingdom. Messiah’s identity and mission are not defined by narrow interpretation or long-held interpretations and ideas.
He goes on to warn them about the teachers who are aligned with wealthy patrons, who are self-satisfied, power hungry posturers who oppress the poor and vulnerable.
It is at this juncture that Jesus, sitting in treasury with his disciples, notices that among the rich people putting in large sums, is a widow who offers but a penny. Jesus draws his disciples’ attention to her, telling them that she has offered far more than all the other contributors because she has given everything while they have given from their excess funds. The disciples would have caught the connection with his warning about the teachers who ‘devour’ widows’ houses. She also stands as a contrast to the wealthy young man who couldn’t give up his wealth and what it looks like when one loves the Lord God first and foremost and with all they are and have.
We are not going to address the entire apocalyptic passage within 13:1-37 in this series because it deserves more attention than we can give it. It opens though with the observation one of his disciples utters in praise of the beautiful temple. Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings! (13:1) Jesus answers in effect, Yes a great building, but not one stone will be left upon another; everyone will be thrown down. (13:2) This would have been something unimaginable to those disciples. And I can attest from my own experience with what remains of that wall, that it would indeed be hard to imagine anything, in that day, capable of causing them to fall. They are huge. Jesus is again, trying to draw them away from placing confidence in wealth and grandeur, kingdom restoration, enemies quashed and the like and recall instead his teaching about the Syrophoenician woman, the young child, the widow and the meaning of worship, the power of prayer and his declarations about his own suffering and death.
In all of these exchanges, we find the disciples and people surrounding Jesus enamored by, invested in, all the wrong things: a physical kingdom, victory over enemies, lifeless traditions and teaching, a grand Temple. We would do well to ask ourselves if we live into Jesus’ teaching with enough openness, humility and eagerness, enough whole-hearted love of God to discern hypocrisy (our own and others), eschew the seduction of wealth, power, privileges and grand edifices of mistaken ideas, and admit that like them, we too can put the em-pha’-sis on the wrong syl-la’-ble.
These texts speak to us as individuals and our own personal relationship with God and, to us as a community. This is an invitation to me, to you, to us together to walk in the light of the Word of God for the people of God. Yes?