Theological Journal – April 7: Toward the 8th Day: A Journey through Holy Week (Tuesday)

Tuesday of Holy Week finds Jesus engaged in conflict with Jewish religious leaders and teaching his disciples about the destruction of the temple and the “end” (11:27–13:37).
 

His war of actions entering the city and in the temple spurs the reaction of those he attacked and they are quick to launch a counter-offensive to discredit him. Mark records these attacks and Jesus’ responses:

-attack on Jesus authority (11:23-27)

-Jesus strikes back with a parable against the Jewish leaders (12:1-12) wicked or better greedy tenants - they want to possess the produce of the vineyard for themselves.

-attack on Jesus’ credibility and popularity with the people (12:13-17)

-Jesus’ and the Sadducees spar over the resurrection (12:18-27)

-Discussion on the great commandment (12:28-34)

-attack on Jesus’ lordship (12:35-37)

-Jesus denounces the scribes (12:38-40)

-the widow’s offering (12:41-44)

Following all this back and forth and controversy Jesus responds to a question from his disciples about the temple with a lengthy discourse concerning the “end” (ch.13).

Perhaps no episode better captures the tone and tenor of this section than the well-known exchange over paying taxes to Caesar. The Pharisees and the Herodians, strange bedfellows, collaborate in this sortie. Pharisees were religious traditionalists zealous for the Mosaic covenant and opposing accommodation to Hellenistic culture. The Herodians, as the name suggests, supported the Herods, Nonetheless they worked together here against Jesus (as at other points, Mark 3:6, 8:15).

“Ever since the Jewish homeland had been added to the Roman Empire in 63 BCE, Rome had required a large annual “tribute” from the Jewish people. Rome did not collect tribute directly from its individual subjects. Rather, local authorities were responsible for its payment and collection (and in our passage, it is they who send the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus)” (Borg, The Last Week: 1029-1031).

They posed Jesus a question to which they believed however he answered it would get him in hot water. If he opposed paying taxes to Caesar he would be in good with the people but at odds with Rome. If he agreed with paying taxes it would be just opposite. He’d lose the people but ne in good with Rome. They undoubtedly hoped he would answer the latter way and alienate the people.

It’s a well-laid trap. But Jesus’ uncanny knack at thinking on his feet is on full display here.  He turns the tables on his interlocutors when he asks to see a denarius (a day’s wage). Promptly his opponents produce one and step right into the trap Jesus has set for them. “Whose head is this, and whose title?” he asks. Everyone there knew the answer: “The emperor’s.”

In that moment Jesus’ opponents are had. By possessing a coin with an idolatrous image and inscription (Caesar as Son of God and divine) they reveal themselves as collaborators with the people’s oppressors!

“Give to the emperor the things that are the emperors,” Jesus says. he first half of the saying means simply, “It’s Caesar’s coin—give it back to him.” Borg and Crossan note:

“This is in effect a nonanswer to the larger question, ‘Should we pay taxes to Caesar?’ It cannot be seen as an endorsement of paying taxes to Rome or of Rome’s rule. If Jesus had wanted to say, ‘Pay taxes to Caesar,’ he could simply have answered yes to their question. There would have been no need for the scene with the coin, the central element of the story. The nonanswer is not simply a dismissal of the issue, however. The second half of Jesus’s response is both evocative and provocative: ‘Give to God the things that are God’s.’ It raises the question, ‘What belongs to Caesar, and what belongs to God?’ For Jesus and many of his Jewish contemporaries, everything belongs to God. So their sacred scripture affirmed. The land of Israel belongs to God—recall Leviticus 25:23, which says that all are tenant farmers or resident aliens on land that belongs to God. To use Tuesday’s language, the vineyard belongs to God, not to the local collaborators, not to Rome. Indeed, the whole earth belongs to God: ‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof’ (Ps. 24:1). What belongs to Caesar? The implication is, nothing” (Borg, The Last Week: 1056-1062).

Thus Jesus confutes his opponents and at the same time keeps open the question he wants to keep pressing on the people, the question that lies at the very heart of his mission: who do you serve?

After these many exchanges, Jesus leaves the temple with his disciples. One of them remarks on the size of the stones of the temple edifice. Jesus’ response must have left them flabbergasted. Remember, the temple was the center of everything for Jews. Their life, the life of the world, the life of the cosmos! The place where heaven and earth intersected and God and humanity encountered one another. Yet Jesus tells them the whole place will be flattened.

The disciples, understandably, want to know when this catastrophe is going to happen. Jesus gives them a series of signs of various trials and difficulties we usually interpret as signs preceding Jesus return at the very end when he returns forever. If we think about this for a moment, though, what sense does that really make? Telling them signs of an event so far in advance they cannot possibly imagine it? Their concern is far more existential than that. What will this tragedy mean for us? And Jesus answers their concern directly by applying all this to “you” (vv.9ff.). Not someone else. Someone far in the future. But “you” – the people standing right before him!

Further, Jesus tells them, “But be alert; I have already told you everything” (v.23). And, “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place” (v.30). This can hardly mean other than that all this will happen to them and in their time! The destruction of the temple, this catastrophic, unthinkable event, will occur within their generation. We now know that it did. In 70 a.d. the Roman army did just that.

But what about all that talk of the “end”? How does that square with something that happened in 70 a.d.? Such language and the vivid imagery that goes with it:

 “But in those days, after that suffering,

the sun will be darkened,
    and the moon will not give its light,

 and the stars will be falling from heaven,
    and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.” (Mark13:24-27)

is stock prophetic imagery for great, epoch-changing, social and political upheaval, “the end” of the way of life, or the rule of a nation or power. The war with Rome and its consequent destruction of the city and temple were certainly the “the end of the world” for Israel! And the “Son of Man” an image of God’s rule would be seen by Jews in this catastrophic crisis as the victory of God’s long-threatened word of judgment on a incorrigibly disobedient people.

All of this anchors Jesus’ discourse around the destruction of the temple squarely and terrifyingly in world of Judaism of that time! He’s not taking about a rebuilt temple at a time still future for us, already some 2000 years and counting distant from his time. Not at all! The disciples got that. It’s many of us who haven’t yet caught on!   

At any rate, such teaching and disputing constitute Tuesday of Holy Week for Jesus. He does all he can to prepare his disciples for the difficulties coming their way as the Jewish nation continued on its collision course with Rome.