Where the Jewish leaders of Jesus' day stood was so very far removed from the original ground of Moses, they would have been foreigners to him. Their religious views and practices bore at best a superficial resemblance to what Moses taught, and built on none of the ancient Hebrew conceptual framework. With such a handicap, it was no surprise they could not recognize the Messiah when He appeared.
Jesus took His next parable from rabbinical sources, a story line He used more than once. The Parable of Prince's Wedding recalls well established ancient customs. Many kings would vest the heir to their throne on the prince's wedding day. It was the duty of every vassal to appear and swear an oath of fealty to the royal heir. Failure to do so was treasonous, deserving of death and worse. It implied the vassal had chosen to serve some other ruler. For such a grand occasion, the king would spare no expense. He would calculate the length of time required for his messengers to arrive at the various vassals' locations, plus the time it would take each guest to make their way to the royal palace. Each messenger was sent with a sizeable honor guard which would then escort the guest's entourage back to the palace. This marked the caravan as being on the king's business. Let no one seeing them pass doubt the importance of the persons, nor the mission! All Jesus' hearers would have recognized the imagery.
The response of the various nobles in the story would have horrified anyone listening. The second round of urgent messengers, it is implied, would have actually carried fresh samples of the food prepared. It is ready now; come immediately! The response was beyond scandalous. Sending an army to execute the scornful vassals and destroy their noble cities would have become a legend repeated far and wide for centuries to come. Lacking proper nobles to attend, the king called for any stranger to take their places, not just at the wedding feast, but as his new vassals and lords. And since the king always provided festive wedding garments as gifts to his guests, there was no excuse for the one who failed to wear it. It would be an inexcusable breach of protocol, a grand insult. Such a one would be tossed into the dungeon.
Jesus makes the clear case He is the Prince Regent of Heaven. The Jewish leaders had refused to acknowledge Him, in spite of numerous heralds sent before to warn them. Like nobles who could no longer recognize their Lord's coat of arms, the Jews had as a nation rejected their Messiah. Their city, Jerusalem, was to be destroyed, and they would be killed. Their place in God's Kingdom plan would be taken by others. Further, any who seek to enter later must accept the Lord's garment of holiness, something they did not yet possess. As they were, they would hardly be welcome in the Kingdom. Jesus makes this all so plain, ordinary bystanders would have understood it completely.
Now the different political groups in the Jewish leadership prepared to ensnare Jesus in something He said. From ancient times, the prophets had used parables presented as court cases for their target's judgment. It was designed to catch them in their own sins (2 Samuel 11-12). The structure of such exercises were designed to highlight moral culpability. Hellenized Jews of Jesus' day practiced a rather cheap form of such debate, based more on words and cold logic, lacking the moral depth of the Hebrew style. Unable to match Jesus on His own terms, they sought to catch Him on theirs.
For once, the Pharisees actually worked with their erstwhile enemies, the Herodians (Jewish partisans supporting Herod's dynasty, whose Jewishness was in serious dispute). The point of debate would force Jesus to choose either the Pharisaical position that it was a sin to pay taxes to a pagan usurper on behalf of evil Rome -- giving God's blessings to sinners -- or to support the Herodian position of paying taxes which were pragmatically legal. Jesus bluntly calls them hypocrites for their fulsome speech and asks for the coin of the realm. The denarius, was a Roman coin with images Jews considered idolatrous; the shekel was without such imagery. However, the tax was paid to Rome in denarii. Since the Pharisees consented to use Roman money, they had to recognize Rome could take it at her whim. Whether a denarius or a shekel, mere material possessions hardly matter among the more important things to which we owe God.
The Sadducees fared no better. Materialist and secular to the core, they utterly missed the point of marriage laws. The stern command from Moses was a man must raise up heirs on behalf of a deceased brother to prevent greed from displacing God's provision. A man's estate should support his widow, but given she was most likely from a different clan or tribe, she could not inherit her husband's property, lest it pass illegally to another clan or tribe. Tribal boundaries were sacrosanct, and ultimately no clan or tribe could hold land inside another's grant from God. Should the man simply take his brother's estate for himself, it would be a sin. Thus, he was to, if necessary, impregnate his brother's widow to give a reasonable chance there would be sons with his brother's name. The Sadducees' story makes a mockery of the sharp divide between worldly material concerns, and spiritual moral concerns. We note in passing Jesus points out angelic beings are without human sexuality. But the heart of the question was the Sadducees' rejection of Scripture. If there is no afterlife, there is no God, so what's the point of having priests such as they?
The Pharisees took another turn, sending Scribes who would have a precisely memorized catalogue behind their question. Of the 600 or so specific laws noted in their Talmud, which would Jesus favor? They were ready with a hundred different ways to catch Him wrong no matter what He answered -- or so they thought. Instead, Jesus based His answer on the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-5), which summarizes the First Table of the Decalogue regarding duties to Jehovah. He added a summary of the Second Table, which sums up the responsibility to fellow humans. They could hardly object to this, and it clearly implies they had all failed to observe it.
While the council of Pharisees yet stood nearby, Jesus offered His own question to show they would never be ready to face Him in debate. He notes the Messiah is called "Son of David," yet David called the Coming One his Lord. How could a descendant be Lord over the quintessential King of Israel? He would be God in the flesh. Any further questions?
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Ed Hurst
15 December 2007
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