As the Jews living outside Jerusalem crowded the city in preparation for the Passover, the most common pastime was listening to various popular rabbis who gathered an audience, often in various parts of the Temple complex. Jesus was more popular than most simply because of the healing, but all the more so after His dramatic entrance into the city, and the cleansing of the Temple entrance.
In doing all this, Jesus presented a very potent threat to the established order among Jews. He flatly rejected all the oral traditions outside the Torah by which the Pharisees maintained their dominance. The Sadducees were more strict about adhering to Moses only, but in the process rejected the underlying spiritual reality. Neither were popular with the majority of Jews, who were merely peasants. The idea of a rabbi who challenged the political order within the nation was just too entertaining. With the claim He was the Messiah, it was irresistible. The crowds Jesus drew were impossible to ignore in the close quarters of Jerusalem.
It comes as no surprise the Chief Priests and other dignitaries attempted to get Him to say something which would discredit Himself. No doubt these word games had been used before with good effect. The first attempt Luke records during the days of preparation for Passover was to get Him to say something about authority. They made reference to the cleansing of the Temple foyer and the healings, among other things. On whose authority would He claim to do these things?
While it might appear Jesus was being coy about proclaiming Himself the Son of God, which could net Him a charge of blasphemy, it was more important He point out the bigger picture. His authority was directly connected to that of John the Baptist, His cousin and Herald. Was John's ritual cleansing and call for repentance a fraud? Since many of the Pharisees had gone to participate (and many were rebuked for being phony about it), they could hardly repudiate him. Besides, they knew the crowd pressing about them viewed John favorably as a genuine prophet of God. For the Priests to say John was anything less would discredit them, not Jesus. To say John was from God meant they should have done more to meet his demands, and would have been obliged to try to prevent his execution.
The Priests waffled. This gave Jesus grounds to deny their demand. He then turned and told the crowds a parable about the leaders of their nation. The arrangement of tenant vineyard keepers was common enough. The owner would send an agent to collect some third of harvest, which usually left more than enough for the tenants to make a good living. But few people who attended synagogue would have missed this reference to Isaiah's tale of the Vineyard of the Lord (Isaiah 5). In this case, the nation was the vineyard, but the keepers were folks like the Priests. There was no fruit for the Lord because all the strength of the people was consumed by the leaders; God got nothing. They came from a long line of those who rejected the prophets until long after they were dead. Jesus was saying these Priests were no better. And if the Son should arise to proclaim Himself, surely the Priests would kill Him to make sure they kept their control of the nation.
What got the strongest reaction was the declaration the Master of the Vineyard would turn the nation over to "others" -- Gentiles. At this, the Priests objected loudly. The notion anyone else but Jews could be God's People was just too much for the racist leadership of the Jews. Yet, this is precisely what happened, as any reference to "God's People" after Christ would mean those who follow Christ, regardless of their DNA or cultural background. The death of Christ was the door to the nations to enter the Kingdom.
The death of Christ was also the death of the Covenant of Moses. To the Priest's vociferous response, Jesus asked what was the meaning of Psalm 118:22, where David prophesied man would inevitably reject what God had prepared for His People, as the foundation for His Kingdom. Anyone who stumbles over Him would be broken, but could then be remade into stones of God. Those on whom the guilt of His rejection fell would be doomed. None of this was lost on the Priests. They would have killed Him there with their bare hands, but the crowd would have risen up against them. Having no power in themselves to harm Him, they decided to trap Him in ways that would mark Him as a rebel against Roman authority.
Surely a real Jew, even Jesus, would not support Roman power over His nation? He would, in the sense such power never mattered. It was mere earthly politics, and had no bearing on the Kingdom. The Priests sent agents to approach Jesus as fans with difficult questions. The first was a query about taxes to Rome. Under the Law of Moses, little was said about tribute to pagans, but Moses had warned it would happen if Israel disobeyed. However, under the Pharisees' teaching, it was an abomination, a form of unfaithfulness and treason. Jesus ignored all that and pointed out the hypocrisy of the question. The most common coin in use at that time was the Roman silver denarius. It was about the price of one day's labor from a peasant. The coin in question bore the image and Latin inscription about Caesar. That was specifically against Moses' Law. Yet the Jewish leaders carried them along with everyone else. Where the ruler's coin was accepted was his realm.
More important was the underlying issue of material and worldly treasure versus the spiritual. The Jewish leaders seemed to have no grasp at all of spiritual and moral issues. They gave nothing of that part of themselves to their own God. Meanwhile, they fussed over a host of tangibles as if it really mattered. The authority which made the coins can take them back when they like. God had an equal claim on the power of His revelation and His blessings, and His nomination of His People. The Jews were denying God by denying His reign in their hearts, let alone their pockets.
Taxation was a Pharisee issue, but the Sadducees had their own ways. Using an old shop-worn tale of seven brothers in sequence attempting to raise up offspring to their eldest, the first born, in order to obey Moses, they asked who would be her husband in the Resurrection -- if there were such a thing. This story was used to ridicule the notion of an afterlife not mentioned in the Torah. How could these men obey the Law if there was a resurrection? Jesus pointed out they had no comprehension of Eternity. The afterlife was not more of the same that we have here, but something utterly different. Angels are eternal and sexless. In a spiritual realm, there was no need for procreation, so no need for marriage. Their question was silly.
To rub it in further, Jesus attacked the underlying assumption there is nothing beyond this life. Using the same Hellenistic nit-picking which had corrupted the Jewish religion, Jesus pointed out Moses, whom the Sadducees considered themselves his champion, referred to his forefathers as living still. If those men were dead and gone, He could not be their God.
The Lawyers, who considered themselves non-partisan, had to admit Jesus was the sharpest debater they had ever heard. It was clearly futile to approach Jesus in public and hope to discredit Him that way. Meanwhile, Jesus continued poking holes in the Jewish leaders' teachings. Under the laws of all nations then, a man was always superior in authority to his sons and their descendants. If the Messiah, not yet born in the time of David, is a descendant of David, how could David himself call that descendant "Lord"? This is more than merely an entertaining riddle. It points out the Messiah would come according to the Covenant of Moses, but would end that covenant by carrying a higher authority. By that authority, He would abolish the old forms and institute a new Kingdom of a far higher order. The only solution to the riddle was to think spiritually, which few Jews even understood at that time.
But even the non-partisan Scribes could not claim God's blessing. Like the rest of the Jewish leaders, they lived for the trappings of honor and authority on this earth, yet clearly cared nothing for spiritual things. Oh, they knew the Law in all its stipulations and hidden meanings, but knew nothing about why there was a Law. Why did they command so much respect, when it was they more than any other class who would violate the spirit of the Law? Making long and flowery "prayers" in public, they would then proceed to foreclose on a technicality and confiscate a widow's property.
Jesus' reference to Isaiah's Song of the Vineyard was a dire warning. The Lord had promised to destroy that vineyard, to let it return to its natural state. The leaders would be killed. This prophecy came true shortly after Luke published this Gospel. It was a prolonged agony over a century, which ended with horrific loss of life on both sides. Rome decimated the Jewish leadership, and eventually forbid any Jew from coming within 10 miles of Jerusalem. The unrest in Palestine itself drove many Jews out to Jewish communities around the region. God's plan for Israel as an earthly entity was gone. The only Israel He recognized was that of Heaven.
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By Ed Hurst
18 October 2008
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