Jesus’ manner of arrival has put a cat amongst the pigeons. Ther authorities are increasingly determined to have him killed but also fear the crowds, so they seek ways to catch him out and either bring Roman justice or the wrath of the crowds against him.
Read Luke 20:1-8
Jesus spends his time during the festival in the temple courts. He is described as teaching and proclaiming or preaching good news. We are probably not meant to think of two different activities here as though there is a sharp distinction between teaching and preaching. This is not about stylistic choices. Rather, Jesus teaches the people God’s word as a means to proclaim the good new of his kingdom (v1).
He is approached by representatives from the Jewish leaders, some from the chief priests and some of the scribes or law teachers. They engage in debate with him and demand to know the authority he has for his teaching (v2).
Jesus responds with a question. “What about John’s authority? Where did that come from?”(v3-4) They are left speechless. They surely know that John’s authority was from God but dare not answer. To deny it would both be wrong and would make them unpopular with the people. However, to acknowledge John’s authority as from God would be to recognise Jesus’ authority too (v-6)). They simply say “we don’t know” (v7). Jesus says that he won’t answer their question about him either. The point is that it is their moral weakness rather than intellectual incapability which puts up a barrier to them knowing the truth (v8).
Read Luke 20:9-19
Jesus tells another story. A man plants a vineyard and lets it out to farmers. . The arrangement seems to have been that they could enjoy the fruit of their labour in return for giving him a share. The time comes and the owner sends his slave to receive his share but instead the tenants beat him (v9-10). This happens three times (v11-12). So, eventually, the owner sends his beloved son, hoping they will respect him (v13). Instead, they kill the son, presuming foolishly that they will get to share his inheritance (v14-15).
Jesus asks what the owner will do, surely he will come to punish the rebellious tenants (v16a). For some reason, Jesus’ interlocuters struggle to accept this (v16b). Jesus’ response is to quote Scripture, specifically the words that describe the rejected stone which has become the corner stone (v17-18). The parable is clearly telling the story of Israel figuratively. The tenants represent the Jewish leaders and the slaves who are killed, the prophets. Jesus is the son sent by his father. The authorities are now determined to kill Jesus and so increasingly look for a pretext to do so. We will continue to see how some of those attempts play out.
Read Luke 20:20-26
The way that the authorities seek a pretext to arrest Jesus is to send people to try and catch him out by pretending to ask sincere questions. Luke however identifies them as spies, those coming with a hidden agenda, pretending to be something that they are not (v20).
Jesus sees through their game. So, when they ask him whether or not they should pay tax to Caesar, he immediately sees through the trap. If he says “yes”, he will make himself unpopular with the people, if he says “no”, he will be in trouble with the Roman authorities for sedition (v21-23).
Jesus gets them to bring him a coin and to acknowledge that it is marked with an image of Caesar. Every day, they trade under Caesars authority. They owe their day to day lives to him and already acknowledge that in their compliance. So, Jesus says to them that they should give the emperor what belongs to him. The sense might well be “why are you trying to hold onto the pagan money of your oppressors?” Or, “Better get rid of the stuff.”[1]However, Jesus adds that they should give to the Lord what belongs to him. There is the challenge, don’t they in fact owe everything to the one true God (v24-25). Jesus’ authority silences their questions. They are unable to catch him out (v26).
Two Kingdoms
This parable is sometimes used as the basis for an approach to Public Theology referred to as “Two Kingdom Theology.” Under this approach, two spheres of influence or rule are envisaged. On the one hand, you have God’s Kingdom and on the other, you have secular, worldly authority. The two are seen as having nothing to do with each other and therefore Christians should not seek to engage with political matters. However, that isn’t what Jesus is saying here. The point about rendering to Ceasar and God is that they have already obligated themselves to Caesar when they should recognise God as the true and rightful king of kings to whom all us due. As Tom Wright puts it:
“the challenge to Jerusalem, the Temple, its rulers and their hypocritical underlings, are all concentrated in the second half of the command. ‘Give God back what belongs to him. Jesus’ own accusation against his contemporaries is that they have consistently failed to worship their true and living God.”[2]
Read Luke 20:27-40
The Sadducees make another attempt to catch Jesus out with a complex theological and ethical case study. They imagine a scenario where a husband has died leaving his wife a widow. The Torah provided for something known as a levirate marriage where the husband’s brother or close relation steps in to marry her and provide offspring for the deceased. So, supposing that not only does her original husband die but each of her brothers, whose wife will she be in the coming age?
Their aim seems to be to catch him out by setting an unanswerable theological conundrum but the problem was rooted in their own theology, the Sadducees did not believe in the general resurrection of the dead. It seems that their intent was to attack and disprove the idea of resurrection itself. Of course, Jesus was soon to deal with their theological problem In a full and decisive manner. Here, his response is to first argue that life will be different in the age to come, marriage is for this life here and now but in eternity we are not given and taken in marriage. Jesus gives a specific reason for this, it is because in eternity, we too will be eternal and will not die, just like the angels. It’s important to observe here that Jesus is not saying that we will be like the angels in every respect. The focus is on the absence of death. This does place an emphasis on offspring as a central good of marriage, though I would see that in the wider remit of marriage arising in the context of mankind’s mission to fill and subdue the earth.
We might observe that this does not treat marriage as a negative thing but rather is a natural consequence of New Testament eschatology. If we will enter our sabbath rest, then the need for a marriage “helper” to fulfil humanity’s mission is no longer there.
Secondly, he takes them to the Torah. The Sadducees were scriptural minimalists, not accepting the prophets. However, Jesus insists that the Torah itself, one of the few parts of Scripture they accepted points to resurrection and eternal life. At the burning bush, God declares himself to be the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The suggestion is that this is intended to be taken as a present tense, rather than a historic identification. If he is their God and he is God of the living, then they too must be alive and worshipping him. In Matthew’s Gospel, we see Jesus pushing the point even harder insisting that the Sadducees don’t get it because they are ignorant both of God’s Word and God’s power.
The Sadducees
There were a number of sects and groupings within Judaism including the Pharisees, Essenes and Zealots. The Sadducees held significant influence among the ruling elite on the Sanhedrin. They accepted a restricted version of the Scriptures as inspired, primarily the books of the Law, hence Jesus focuses on the Torah when countering their beliefs with Scripture. They also were sceptical about the supernatural and did not believe in the resurrection of the dead and that influences their questioning here. Unfortunately we are dependent on hostile witnesses concerning them, including Josephus, and that creates a challenge when seeking to build up a full and accurate picture of the sect.[3]
Read Luke 20:41-44
Jesus throws a question back to his interrogators. The Messiah was believed to be David’s heir but Psalm 110:1 suggests that David looked to the Messiah as his own lord and master. This must either mean that the Messiah was not a descendant of David (but that would mean going against the rest of Scripture), or something bigger was going on so that the Messiah could be both David’s heir and Lord.
Read Luke 20:45—21:4
Jesus addresses his disciples but with the crowds overhearing. He warns them that the scribes, or teachers of the law might give an appearance of piety but they are not to be taken in, their true priority is their own advancement in status and wealth. They will stop at nothing to achieve it, even taking advantage of devout widows, exploiting them to defraud them of their property. They may have put on lengthy prayers but it was just for show (20:45-47).
It is no accident them that Luke follows these comments up with an account of Jesus in the temple, observing the wealthy make a show of bringing their offerings. These would have included some of those that Jesus warned about. They will have got their wealth through exploitation. Then a widow comes along who has presumably been so exploited leaving her with little. What she has, she gives, not just a part of but the full amount, all she has. Jesus says that she is the one who is blessed. The implication, if blessed is that she is one of the happy people of the Sermon on the Mount. She is vindicated or justified (21:1-4).
Jesus the effortless master
It’s often assumed that Jesus’ response to his interlocutors is to evade their traps by responding with questions to side step them. This risks making Jesus sound evasive. However, whilst he uses the technique of answering questions with more questions, a form of Socratic method, this is not to avoid direct and authoritative answers. And the answers are not to avoid controversy. Jesus is happy to be overheard critiquing and challenging his enemies’ authority. His response to the question about taxes is an obvious rebuke to those who fain religious purity but are in fact already compromised. What we see is that both in his debating victory and in the content of his responses, Jesus establishes his authority. He is the one that David called Lord, he is “great David’s greater son.”
[1] Tom Wright, Luke for everyone, 241.
[2] Tom Wright, Luke for everyone, 242.
[3] JD Douglas (Ed), New Bible Dictionary, 1123-24.
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