TGBC Caesar

The Good Book Club

Wednesday, March 21. Luke 20:1-47

One day, as he was teaching the people in the temple and telling the good news, the chief priests and the scribes came with the elders ²and said to him, ‘Tell us, by what authority are you doing these things? Who is it who gave you this authority?’ ³He answered them, ‘I will also ask you a question, and you tell me: ⁴Did the baptism of John come from  heaven, or was it of human origin?’ ⁵They discussed it with one another, saying, ‘If we say, “From heaven”, he will say, “Why did you not believe him?” ⁶But if we say, “Of human origin”, all the people will stone us; for they are convinced that John was a prophet.’ ⁷So they answered that they did not know where it came from. ⁸Then Jesus said to them, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.’

9 He began to tell the people this parable: ‘A man planted a vineyard, and leased it to tenants, and went to another country for a long time. ¹⁰When the season came, he sent a slave to the tenants in order that they might give him his share of the produce of the vineyard; but the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. ¹¹Next he sent another slave; that one also they beat and insulted and sent away empty-handed. ¹²And he sent yet a third; this one also they wounded and threw out. ¹³Then the owner of the vineyard said, “What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.” ¹⁴But when the tenants saw him, they discussed it among themselves and said, “This is the heir; let us kill him so that the inheritance may be ours.” ¹⁵So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? ¹⁶He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.’ When they heard this, they said, ‘Heaven forbid!’ ¹⁷But he looked at them and said, ‘What then does this text mean:

“The stone that the builders rejected

   has become the cornerstone”? 

¹⁸Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.’ ¹⁹When the scribes and chief priests realized that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to lay hands on him at that very hour, but they feared the people.

20 So they watched him and sent spies who pretended to be honest, in order to trap him by what he said, so as to hand him over to the jurisdiction and authority of the governor. ²¹So they asked him, ‘Teacher, we know that you are right in what you say and teach, and you show deference to no one, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. ²²Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?’ ²³But he perceived their craftiness and says to them,

 ²⁴‘Show me a denarius. Whose head and whose title does it bear?’ They said, ‘Caesar’s.’ ²⁵He says to them, ‘Then give to the Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ ²⁶And they were not able in the presence of the people to trap him by what he said; and being amazed by his answer, they became silent.

27 Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him ²⁸and asked him a question, ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. ²⁹Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; ³⁰then the second ³¹and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. ³²Finally the woman also died. ³³In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.’

34 Jesus said to them, ‘Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; ³⁵but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. ³⁶Indeed they cannot die any more, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. ³⁷And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. ³⁸Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.’ ³⁹Then some of the scribes answered, ‘Teacher, you have spoken well.’ ⁴⁰For they no longer dared to ask him another question.

41 Then he said to them, ‘How can they say that the Messiah is David’s son? ⁴²For 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.’ ” 

⁴⁴David thus calls him Lord; so how can he be his son?’

45 In the hearing of all the people he said to the disciples, ⁴⁶‘Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets. ⁴⁷They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.’

Comment. Wow, another long one, I guess the folks who set up TGBC are making sure we finish by Easter, eh? Several stories here, printed it with verse numbers to make it easier to work with.

Opening story 20:1-8. Jesus is a gutsy one, takes nothin’ off’a nobody, and as usual he buffaloes and outsmarts the tricksters. You and I know that he’s teaching in God’s temple by authority of Abba which means not Father but Daddy; his nemeses have no idea and reasonably challenge him. They are out of patience with him and are growing furious, which feeds into the plot leading to Calvary.

Parable of the Wicked Tenants in the Vineyard, 20:9-19. This story is in all three synoptics (Luke gets it from Mark) and also in Sayings Gospel Thomas (logia 65), which has the simplest and therefore probably closest to Jesus’ actual words. Mark, Luke and especially Matthew have increasingly allegorized the parable into what it meant to the early church and, for better or worse, to us today: the landowner is God, the heir is Jesus, the vineyard is Israel’s covenantal relationship with God, the tenants are the Jews, and the covenantal relationship will now be given to the gentiles, who accept Jesus as son and messiah. Luke relates the story in the temple situs where it has the greatest possible enraging effect on Jesus’ listeners, the temple authorities. Good one!

As for Lk 20:20-26, the coin with the image of Caesar (disliking the modern revisionist change to “emperor,” I looked up Luke’s Greek and he says Καίσαρ so I changed “the emperor” back to Caesar); yet again Jesus gets the best of his challengers in the verbal sparring match. 

The Sadducees’ wonderful hypothetical question about a childless widow with each of seven brothers as her husbands, 20:27-40, Jesus rejects their denial of the resurrection of the dead, affirms our resurrection (at least for those who are “worthy” he says), and affirms that the patriarchs are alive in the afterlife, where the Lord IS (not was) their God. This word from Jesus himself may be encouraging to many of us who have lost loved ones, and who ourselves, as do we all, are looking death in the face.

At Luke 20:41-44, Jesus makes a riddle from Psalm 110:1, “the Lord said to my Lord.” This seems a riddle when lifted out of context and from the Septuagint, the Greek-language Hebrew bible, where the Greek reads, says “ὁ Κύριος τῷ Κυρίῳ μου.” The Hebrew original reads “נְאֻם יְהוָה, לַאדֹנִי” literally “said YHVH to my adonai (to my master, to my lord).” The psalm itself is quite clear: it’s God speaking to David, not David speaking to the Messiah, nor the Messiah speaking to David. If Jesus said this in the temple it might show that the temple authorities to whom he spoke didn't know Hebrew or that they were used to hearing "adonai to my adonai." At any event it's a chortling mindbender for the early church Greeks, gentiles who had no idea what the Hebrew psalm actually says.

The closing paragraph to today’s reading, Jesus castigating hypocritical self-important petty officials.