Mark 12:1–34, 14.1-2
Jesus spoke to them in parables. “A man planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a pit
for the winepress, and built a tower. Then he rented it to tenant farmers and
took a trip. 2 When it was time, he sent a servant to collect from the
tenants his share of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 But they grabbed
the servant, beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Again the
landowner sent another servant to them, but they struck him on the head and
treated him disgracefully. 5 He sent another one; that one they killed. The landlord sent
many other servants, but the tenants beat some and killed others. 6 Now the landowner
had one son whom he loved dearly. He sent him last, thinking, They will respect
my son. 7 But those tenant farmers said to each other, ‘This is the
heir. Let’s kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.’ 8 They grabbed him,
killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.
9 “ So what will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and
destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Haven’t you read
this scripture, The stone that the builders
rejected has become the cornerstone. 11 The Lord has done this, and it’s amazing in our eyes? ”
12 They wanted
to arrest Jesus because they knew that he had told the parable against them.
But they were afraid of the crowd, so they left him and went away.
13 They sent
some of the Pharisees and supporters of Herod to trap him in his words. 14 They came to him and said, “ Teacher,
we know that you’re genuine and you don’t worry about what people think. You
don’t show favoritism but teach God’s way as it really is. Does the Law allow
people to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay taxes or not? ”
15 Since Jesus
recognized their deceit, he said to them, “ Why are you
testing me? Bring me a coin. Show it to me. ” 16
And they brought one. He said to them, “ Whose image and
inscription is this? ”
“ Caesar’s, ” they replied.
17 Jesus said
to them, “ Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to
God what belongs to God. ” His reply left them overcome with wonder.
18 Sadducees,
who deny that there is a resurrection, came to Jesus and asked, 19 “ Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies , leaving a widow but no children, the brother must marry the widow and
raise up children for his brother. 20
Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman; when he died, he
left no children. 21 The second
married her and died without leaving any children. The third did the same. 22 None of the seven left any children.
Finally, the woman died. 23 At the
resurrection, when they all rise up, whose wife will she be? All seven were
married to her. ”
24 Jesus said
to them, “ Isn’t this the reason you are wrong, because
you don’t know either the scriptures or God’s power? 25 When people rise
from the dead, they won’t marry nor will they be given in marriage. Instead,
they will be like God’s angels. 26 As for the resurrection from the dead, haven’t you read in
the scroll from Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God said to
Moses, I am the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob? 27 He isn’t the God of the dead but of the living. You are
seriously mistaken. ”
28 One of the
legal experts heard their dispute and saw how well Jesus answered them. He came
over and asked him, “ Which commandment is the most important of all? ”
29 Jesus
replied, “ The most important one is ‘Israel, listen! Our God is the one Lord, 30 and you
must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all
your mind, and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this, ‘You
will love your neighbor as yourself .’ No other
commandment is greater than these. ”
32 The legal
expert said to him, “ Well said, Teacher. You have truthfully said that God is
one and there is no other besides him. 33
And to love God with all of the heart, a full understanding, and all of one’s
strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself is much more important than all
kinds of entirely burned offerings and sacrifices. ”
34 When Jesus
saw that he had answered with wisdom, he said to him, “
You aren’t far from God’s kingdom. ” After that, no one dared to ask him
any more questions.
It was two days before Passover and the
Festival of Unleavened Bread. The chief priests and legal experts through
cunning tricks were searching for a way to arrest Jesus and kill him. 2 But they agreed that it shouldn’t happen
during the festival; otherwise, there would be an uproar among the people.
Through
the centuries since the death and resurrection of Jesus, there have been many
competing theories of atonement.
“Atonement” is a word used to describe a re-connecting and reconciling
between two parties – it literally means “At-one-ment.” For Christians, “atonement” refers to
the way that human beings are reconciled and re-connected with God,
particularly through the crucifixion of Jesus.
The
earliest theory is Moral Influence, taught in the early church, suggesting that
the example Jesus sets in his life, teachings, submission to death and
resurrection compels us to improve ourselves, thus making us one with God. Another is Ransom theory, in which
Jesus submits himself to Satan as a ransom to pay for the sins of
Christians. A close relative to
Ransom theory is Christus Victor, in which Jesus fights, and wins, a spiritual
battle with Satan for humans of all time and places. Satisfaction theory was taught by the 11th
century theologian Anselm of Canterbury – satisfaction theory suggests that sin
is such an offense against a sovereign God that some punishment must be meted
out for God’s honor to be satisfied.
The reformers taught that Jesus died as a penal substitute for God’s
people; Jesus took the punishment for sin upon himself rather than allow us to
bear it.
There’s
a problem with all of this, of course.
The problem is that it hoists the blame for the cross on powers outside
of ourselves. As my Lutheran
Confessions professor Gerhard Forde once wrote, “the fatal flaw in most thinking about the
atoning work of Christ is the tendency to look away from the actual events,
translate them into “eternal truths,” and thus to ignore or obscure what
actually happened and our part in it. We interpret Christ’s death as though it
were an idea, a necessary part of a logical scheme of some sort, as though God
were tied to a scheme of honor or justice making him the obstacle to our
reconciliation. We exonerate ourselves, so to speak, by blaming the necessity
for the cross on God.”[1]
Look
at our gospel readings for tonight and this is evident. We often pass over the readings
following the triumphal entry as if they matter little, when actually they tell
us much. In Mark’s gospel Jesus
spends the days after Palm Sunday teaching about love, about forgiveness, about
the impermanence of human institutions and the worthless nature of sacrifice
without repentance, of sin without confession. Jesus attacked the powers that be: Caesar, the church,
legalistic self-righteousness, and insisted that in the kingdom of God, love,
mercy and forgiveness matter far more than purity, exclusion and
self-righteousness. He offended
many. He comforted many more. But the simple fact of the matter is,
when Jesus ended up on the cross a few short days after the triumphal entry, it
wasn’t God, Satan or his moral excellence that put him there: it was sinful
humanity rejecting his authority to actually do what he taught.
Again,
Forde:
“But why did we kill him? It was, I
expect we must say, a matter of “self-defense.” Jesus came not just to teach about
the mercy and forgiveness of God but actually to do it, to have
mercy and to forgive unconditionally. It is an act, not an idea.
That is his “work.” That is the New Testament. He came to do “what he
sees the Father doing” (John 5:19). Now we are, no doubt, quite open,
generally, to the idea of mercy and forgiveness in God and his “heaven,”
but actually doing it here for God is quite another matter—especially if
it is the absolutely free and unconditional having mercy and forgiving of the
sovereign God who ups and has mercy on whom he will have mercy! How can one
actually do that here? How can this world survive, how can we survive
if mercy and forgiveness are just given unconditionally? The idea is
nice, but what shall we do with one who actually eats with traitors,
whores, outcasts, and riff-raff of every sort and just blows away our protests
by saying, “They that are whole need not a physician. but they that are sick”?
Actually doing it, giving it unconditionally just seems to us terribly
reckless and dangerous. It shatters the “order” by which we must run things
here.
We should make no mistake about it.
One who comes actually to have mercy and to forgive in God’s name is just an
absolute and total threat to the way we have decided we must run things here.
So either Jesus must go or we must. But how can we—mere dying beings—surrender
all our plans and gains to him? So Jesus is “wasted” as an intruder. He is
crucified between two other rebels against the order of the age, a thief and an
insurrectionist. But Jesus is ultimately the most dangerous because his
opposition is total; he gives unconditional forgiveness. He has the crazy
conviction that such unconditional saving mercy is what God and his “Kingdom”
are all about, and that it is the true destiny of human beings which will make
them new and pure and whole and won’t ultimately hurt them at all. He seems to
think that there actually is “a river, the streams whereof make glad the city
of God”! In short, Jesus is most dangerous because he actually believes in God
and his Kingdom, and because he himself realizes it, does it among us. To
consent to that would mean (just as he said!) for us to lose the life we have
so carefully hoarded. So he must go. It is a matter of self- defense.[2]
Why did Jesus have to die? Because he delivered what he
promised. The kingdom of God broke
into the world through him. And through
us, forgiven sinners all, the kingdom continues to break into the world. This building is worthless without a
gathered community in its walls who do their best to love the Lord their God
with all their heart and soul and mind and strength, and their neighbors as
themselves. This ELCA is without
value without the forgiveness and mercy of its Lord Jesus Christ. This body of Christ we call the one
holy catholic and apostolic church matters not one whit without her Lord Jesus
Christ at her head, proclaiming the forgiveness of sins and release of those in
bondage to it.
Hear the truth this week: we killed Jesus because we wanted to be
in charge. The cross satisfies our
thirst for power, not God’s need for satisfaction. Jesus endured the cross as a means of exhausting our sin so
that we would understand that no matter how high our offenses against him might
rise, his love is higher and deeper and wider and stronger, and will not be
denied. God is satisfied when God
has mercy on us – Glory to that God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and
forever, world without end. Amen.
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