TGBC Wednesday, 3 Feb 2021. Mark 12:35-44
Whose Son is the Moshiach?
(Matthew 22:41-46; Luke 20:41-44)
35 And answering, Jesus was saying, teaching in the temple, “How do the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? 36 David himself said by the Holy Spirit:
‘The LORD (יְהוָ֨ה y'hVah) said to my Lord (לַֽאדֹנִ֗י laAdoni)
“Sit at My right hand, until I place Your enemies as a footstool under your feet.”’ (a)
37 David himself calls the Messiah Lord. So how is the Messiah David's son?”
And the great crowd was listening to Him gladly.
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Remember that Jesus has just come from a confrontation with the Sadducees posing their sarcastic question on Levirate law, seven brothers having the same woman as wife, and the scribes more subtly testing him. They're on Jesus' mind and he's talking about them and saying things to discredit them with the crowds. The crowds are delighted but it obviously stirs the authorities' hostility toward Jesus and ramps up the tension leading to Jesus' arrest, trial, and crucifixion.
Here, Jesus uses Psalm 110 verse 1 to create a puzzlement! Every time this comes up I try to explain it and I fail to get it right or make it clear, but I'll try again. When it was written, likely in the time of David about a thousand years before Jesus, Psalm 110 (introduced in Hebrew as “of David”) was a royal court song to be sung by a cantor in a festival or anniversary celebration, or maybe a coronation and anointing ceremony, in the throne room of the king’s palace, in the king's presence, to the king. The psalm praises the king, saying that the LORD (Yahweh, Adonai, haShem, God) speaks words of assurance and promise to the Lord (the king, David, the anointed one, moshiach, messiah). David did not write the psalm, the psalm was written to David, for David, about David, and is meant to please/flatter him, which is not uncommon with the royal court psalms. (Don't think naively that all the psalms were written to praise the LORD God, some of them were written to praise the Lord Anointed King).
So, Jesus works a play on words with Psalm 110:1 to make a riddle in which not the cantor but David himself as the narrator outside the psalm, says that God spoke to his (David’s) Lord the Messiah. And Jesus smirkingly says “if David thus calls the messiah 'Lord' (which David does not!), how can the messiah be (merely) David’s son?” (because no father calls his son "Lord"!).
Jesus has cleverly twisted words and meaning to poke fun at the authorities who hate him (and whom Mark the evangelist means for you and me to hate), and gives them a trick question as they have just tried to trick him with questions! I keep trying to explain this riddle and never get it right or clear, but anyone who doesn't get it may bring it up in Sunday School.
We can’t tell how well the scribes, or the people whom Jesus delighted with his word games, or even Jesus himself, really understood the psalm, which without punctuation marks could have been ambiguous anyway. Some NT scholars have suggested that Mark just picked up a riddle that the early Church was playing with.
Warning against the Scribes
(Luke 20:45-47)
38And in His teaching He was saying, “Beware of the scribes, desiring to walk about in robes, and greetings in the marketplaces, 39and first seats in the synagogues, and first places at the feasts; 40 those devouring the houses of widows, and praying at great length as a pretext. These will receive greater judgment.”
The Widow's Offering
(Luke 21:1-4)
41 And having sat down opposite the treasury, He was watching how the crowd cast money into the treasury; and many rich were casting in much. 42And one poor widow having come, cast in two lepta, which is a kodrantes. (b)
43And having summoned His disciples, He says to them, “Truly I say to you that this poor widow has cast in more than all of those casting into the treasury. 44For all cast in out of
that which was abounding to them, but she out of her poverty cast in all, as much as she had of her whole livelihood.”
(a) 36 Psalm 110:1. Cited in Matthew 22:44, Mark 12:36; Luke 20:42–43, Acts 2:34–35, and Hebrews 1:13
(b) 42 A lepton was a Jewish copper coin worth about 1/128 of a denarius. The top picture above is supposedly two lepta, (pl).
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This entire reading lesson for today is Jesus getting the best of the authorities and showing them up as pompous, arrogant, self-satisfied fools and hypocrites.
Most folks will recognize the story of the widow's mite when it shows up again in the Sunday lectionary Proper 27, which will be November 7, 2021, precisely timed to make it available for preachers to use in their Fall stewardship sermon.
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