Sermon from November 11, 2001
I do not remember many Sunday School lessons from my days as a high school boy, but I remember one vividly. Mr. Wheeler was teaching us a lesson about Jesus, and he pointed out something that connected with the life of us teenae boys. He pointed out that Jesus and His disciples walked a lot, and he said, "You know, Jesus was a real man." To high school students, who were nearly obsessed with sports and physical fitness, Mr. Wheeler brought the relevance of Jesus home to us with unexpected power.

I would like to add to Jesus' physical strength – another, easily overlooked trait. He was smart. Perhaps more accurately, He was wise, wise in His way with people and wise with words in dicey situations. Even grudging admirers would say He was quick on His feet. We will see that again in His encounter with smart people, who had no use for Him at all. Take a look at Mark 12:13-34.

For Jesus' part He was pressed an agenda that was inflammatory. He rides into Jerusalem in such a way as to declare to those in sympathy with Him that He is the rightful king of the Jews. He goes into the temple the next day and in a most politically incorrect way disrupts the temple routine of selling animals for sacrifice in the temple. In a symbolic miracle He curses a fig tree for bearing no fruit, a sign that He found the center of Jewish faith to be dying on the inside. He embarrasses a group of His accusers and then tells a parable that serves as an invitation to Israel in the persons of the chief priests, teachers of the law and elders who had come to accuse Him. It serves as an invitation to receive Jesus into their counsels and heed His message. The parable was, as they said, against them only if they persisted in rejecting Jesus.

Verse 12 exprersses their reaction and the bind they find themselves in. Then they looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd; so they left him and went away. They did not go away to stay away. They went away and licked their wounds and made their plans to silence this Troublemaker once and for all. That brings us to verses 13-17.

Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. The last time in Mark that we saw Pharisees and Herodians together was in Mark 3:6, when they tried to figure out a way to destroy Jesus. Here they are more open and subtle. Verse 14 begins with cock-and-bull flattery, and verse 15 sets the trap.

They came to him and said, "Teacher, we know you are a man of integrity. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn't we?"

But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. "Why are you trying to trap me?" he asked. "Bring me a denarius and let me look at it." Jesus saw their flattery for what it was: a bright lure on a deadly hook. If He says to pay Caesar taxes, ordinary people will look on Him as sympathetic to the Romans and question His loyalty to Israel. If He says not to pay Caesar taxes, the authorities, Jewish and Roman, will look at Him as a political revolutionary, who is a threat to Roman interests. One way or they other, they were going to get this guy.

In verse 15 Jesus does something that initially seems lame. They brought the coin, and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?"

"Caesar's," they replied. Does He not even know who Caesar is? But think for a minute. Jewish coins did not have the likeness of a person on them, because that violated their belief against making images of any living thing. It was idolatrous.

By getting one of His fellow Jews to produce a Roman coin, is Jesus raising the embarrassing possibility that a Jew has capitulated to the Romans by engaging in idolatry? We can't prove that, but it is not beyond reason to imagine any number of pious Jews being shocked, especially if the coin came from the pocket of the one of the elders. That is only a sidebar to the main action in verse 17.

Then Jesus said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. And they were amazed at him. Let's see why He amazed them. Look again at that first line: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's." Let me put that in street language. "Give to Caesar what is coming to him." Can you hear the double entendre there?

Those words can be understood to uphold law and order, and they can also be understood as a call to revolution. "Give to Caesar what is coming to him." That is, "Caesar has the right to collect taxes, so pay them." Or, "Give to Caesar what is coming to him." That is, we Jews, who are sick to death of being oppressed by the Romans, know what is coming to him, and we're going to give it to him."

But which did Jesus mean? Jesus doesn't explain, except to go on to say, "Give to God what is God's." Did He mean that pious Pharisees and Herodians shouldn't be walking around with idolatrous, Roman coins in their pockets, or did He mean that giving to God what is God's refuses the way of political revolution and allows God to liberate Israel in the way that Jesus has come to show? He doesn't explain.

He does not explain anything, but on the face of it, His words seem so simple that anyone listening should be able to understand them. I think His adversaries were amazed, because He escaped their trap with simple words that had uncertain meanings. They did not question him, because they might end up on the wrong side of the crowd again, and they did not want that.

Just for the record, I think He meant, "Caesar has the right to collect taxes, so pay them, and giving to God what is God's refuses the way of political revolution and allows God to liberate Israel in the way that Jesus has come to show." The next group to try and trap Jesus were the Sadducees.

Verse 18 says, Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. Think with me for just a minute. If a person says there is no resurrection from the dead, that person is saying that this life is all there is. If you are going to do something, you had better do it now, because when you die, there is no more. That belief can have definite political consequences.

If this life is all there is, and you are a Jewish authority living under the heel of Rome, you may hate the Romans, but things could always get a lot worse before they get a lot better; and you want to prevent things from getting worse, especially if, like the Sadducees, that would mean loss of personal privilege and influence. You also see religious talk about the kingdom of God and the age to come as sometimes politically useful, sometimes politically dangerous. You want to head off anything that is politically dangerous.

As far as I can see, the Sadducees posed their riddle to make Him look bad and undermine any political influence He might have with Jewish crowds, who might be incited to revolutionary violence. The impact of their riddle depends on their not saying in public that they do not believe in the resurrection. The Pharisees knew that of course, but in their mutual dislike for Jesus, they would be willing to keep their mouth shut, if the Sadducees succeeded where they failed. Here is their riddle in verses 19-23.

"Teacher," they said, "Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?"

Jesus replied, "Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When the dead rise, they will neither marry  nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven." The Sadducees might sneer at that answer, but they would have no comeback, except to call it another piece of foolishness that people believe, who believe that God will raise the dead. But of course, if they say that, then the crowds, who did believe in the resurrection, would hoot them right out of the temple. But Jesus has more to say.

"Now about the dead rising – have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the bush, how God said to him, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!" Once again, Jesus shows that He loves and knows the Torah, and to use it to reaffirm popular belief effectively silenced the Sadducees. Their concerns about Jesus' political motives found no relief.

Verses 28-34 continue this amazing exchange in the temple, but it begins to travel in deep waters. One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" This is not a trick question, but if Jesus stumbles, it will harm Him greatly. He does not stumble.

"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'" This is a quotation of Deuteronomy 6:4-5. Technically, this is called The Shema. It gets that name from the Hebrew word, Hear (shema), which begins verse 4. It has been the quintessential Jewish confession of faith for thousands of years.

Jesus added one thing to it. "The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." No Jew, friend or foe, would disagree with Jesus at this point, but the teacher of the law, who had raised the question, himself takes the conversation in a radical direction.

"Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices." Do you think he meant to say that? Do you understand what his words mean?

"More important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices" means that loving God and your neighbor is all one needs to be a pious Jew. The temple is helpful but dispensable. The brillian Jewish theologian, Michael Wyschograd, reflecting on what it means to be a Jew, writes, "The people of Israel becomes a people before it has a land, a location ... The God of Israel is not a God whose jurisdiction is defined by territorial boundaries," (Bader-Saye, 36). Few Jews in the first century found that easy to believe.

But Jesus did, and that explains verse 34.