 Richard and I discuss the Gospel of Mark, chapter 12, verses 35 to 44. Hi, this is Mark Boulos. And this is Dr. Richard Benton. And you are listening to episode 191 of the Bible as Literature Podcast. We left off last week with Jesus effectively washing his hands of both the wicked student and the diligent student. The wicked students were the ones who were not interested in knowledge and wisdom or truly seeking the meaning of scripture. They were interested in themselves and their own agenda. The diligent student, the lowly scribe, was the one who had the correct priority, asked the right question and received his answer, which was keep reading Deuteronomy. There's no more time to waste asking Jesus questions. The best teachers I've ever had didn't have time for my questions because when you teach the student that there are bad questions or that there are questions that are a waste of time because you can figure out the answer yourself. When you teach this, which is what Jesus is teaching, you set people on the path for wisdom or if they're never going to be on the path for wisdom, you settle the matter quickly so that you don't waste time. You can ask a good question, but the need to build up one's ego can corrupt the question itself. So the problem with the scribes and the Pharisees is that they would ask a question of Jesus but it was always in order to make their own point, which ultimately is a question not to learn something but to prove one's own point. And this is what the scribes and the Pharisees have done. The one scribe who sets himself apart takes what the teacher says Aha! This is corroborated by Scripture. This is correct. And Jesus wishes him well as he tries to take it further and actually live accordingly. The point is, are you submitting the knowledge to Scripture and not to your ego? That's the difference. If the one scribe went to Jesus and said, Jesus really appreciated that conversation we had about Deuteronomy. That was really something, Lord. So just to recap, what you're saying is that we have to love the Lord. The response of Jesus would have been, didn't we cover this already? Come on! At that point, you're just ingratiating yourself. You're either trying to stroke the ego of the teacher or, conversely, show that you get it and you're knowledgeable. I have one word for you. Invalid. Because at that point, you go down the same path as the wicked students and you start pursuing your own agenda. And Jesus began to say, as he taught in the temple, how is it that the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? Before Jesus' time, there's already been a big discussion. What is the Messiah going to be like? What is the Christ going to be like? They are using their theology about the Messiah to evaluate Jesus whether he is valid or not. And so now what Jesus needs to do is emasculate their approach and emasculate their question by how else? Using Scripture. When these teachers talk about the question of the identity of the Messiah, their frame of reference is no different than that of a jihadist. Because they are interested in political advancement and they are bringing together political ideology with religion because, as we've said many times, their reference is not Torah. Their reference is the temple and Caesar. So for Jesus, the question is an irritant because they are interested in political ascendancy and that is the heart of his critique of the scribes and the Pharisees in Mark specifically. Remember that Mark is dealing with the destruction of the temple. The destruction of the temple is a political problem in Palestine in late antiquity. And it bears out in subsequent Gospels this tension over what to do about Roman tyranny. And the majority opinion then is the same as the majority opinion today. If they blow up your building, bomb them out of existence. If they occupy your land, fight them until they leave. If you don't like your king, try to find another king you can put in his place because that's your reference point, is that king, that earthly power and this is what corrupts their idea before we were talking about the Herodians. Well, what's the history of the Herodians? It shows this very clearly because at first there was a Maccabean revolt saying, hey, we need to follow Torah more. We need to get rid of our Seleucid overlords. They got rid of the Seleucid overlords. They took over and then they became just as corrupt rulers as the Seleucids before them. It didn't help that they had Torah as the root of their rebellion because the aim of their rebellion, the reference point of their rebellion was just the Seleucid emperor anyway. And so their idea, their theological concept of David is not scriptural because it uses Caesar as the reference point and not the one who spoke Torah. What Jesus does in the next verse is what the prophets do. He doesn't come in and argue that you really shouldn't be interested in political power. You should be following God. He doesn't do that. That's what pastors do and it doesn't work. Don't you understand that really interesting, exciting thing that you're fascinated with power? Why don't you instead come and be fascinated with our small group meetings? It doesn't work. That's not how Scripture functions because it doesn't work. What Jesus does is what every good father figure does is what God does in the Old Testament. You're impressed with that dictator? I'm a bigger dictator. You're impressed with his power? I have more power. And he doesn't just say it. He demonstrates it. Now you ask, how does that align with the crucifixion, Father Mark? It's the mechanism of Scripture. Ultimately, the power that Jesus is talking about is manifest as weakness in human terms. But that's his power because remember, the trick is that you're crucified but your enemies conquer and when they conquer you, that is real power. And the proposition of Scripture is that it's God's power. So you cannot play games with Scripture the way people do because if that's the proposition of Scripture, that means that Roman power is God's power and that is a very uncomfortable point for people who are seeking power. David himself said in the Holy Spirit, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies beneath your feet. Now Paul of course picks up on this in 1 Corinthians that the power of the judgment in the resurrection is that everything will be handed over to Jesus Christ and put under his feet. And that is not a beautiful poetic expression of weakness. That is a statement of fact for Paul, that Jesus Christ will conquer, that the kingdom will be handed over to him and it's not a fake power. Again, remember that you might be defeated as Jesus was but in his defeat and in your defeat, the Father is victorious and has over the earth our favorite word, hegemony. It reminds me of the passage we had before. Caesar is just another worker of God's land. He's not the owner of the land. He's not the possessor of the land. The land only belongs to God. He lets Caesar use it. Here, David even is not the head of the army. He's a part of the Lord's army. It sets up the correct hierarchy. You keep wanting to make your president, your king, your Caesar, whatever you want to call him, the head of power. You want him to own the land. You want him to possess the land. You want them at the head of the army in order to fight against your enemies. But the problem is that he becomes your reference point. God alone is the reference point. And when Jesus does this, you cannot accuse him of being political as people accuse scriptural people of being political. Why is Father Mark talking politics? I'm not talking politics. I'm smashing your gods. I'm smashing your political ideology. Liberal or conservative. I'm not saying, oh, I'm not talking politics. I'm talking about the gospel. That's not what I'm saying because that doesn't work. I'm telling you, this is the gospel and this is the metaphoric foot of the gospel. Look under that foot for your politics because that's where they belong because all authority is due to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a very important fact of Scripture. Even if David wins in the battle, it is the Lord who put his enemies under his feet. It is not David who put his enemies under his feet. So whatever your political persuasion, if you hear the gospel and you find yourself offended, it's a good sign. Don't run away from that and don't say, oh, I disagree because I'm conservative or I'm liberal. Don't do that. Don't cling to your gods. Put yourself under the difficulty of the teaching. Submit to it and trust in the Lord and see what his teaching produces in you by smashing the things that you cling to that cause suffering. And I can prove to you mathematically, Richard, that whether you are a liberal or a conservative, the fruit of your ideology will cause suffering. There are endless examples in American history alone of where good intentions go based on people's ideological beliefs. One of the most important realizations of my adult life is that people who commit evil almost always really believe they're doing the right thing. It's insane. And I have to have people put socrates in my face. I'm supposed to believe that knowledge is good and ignorance is evil. All I see are knowledgeable people doing evil things constantly and believing in it because of their knowledge. So for scripture, it's not knowledge that's good. It's knowledge of God in Hosea that is correct. David himself calls him Lord. So in what sense is he his son and the large crowd enjoyed listening to him? Jesus is making fun of them. He's undermining human logic and the crowd's getting a kick out of it. It could not be clearer that he's going against this idea of David being the reference point or Caesar being the reference point because he said, how can he say that the Christ, the Messiah, is the son of David? In other words, how can they make David slash Caesar slash king the reference point of who the Christ is because they want Jesus to be how they imagine David to be. How do they imagine what David should be? It's not by looking at the scriptures. They've proven that. It's how Caesar is. They want their own Caesar. You know, one time I heard recently a political Kurd in Turkey who said, we don't want our own Kurdistan because if we make our own Kurdistan we're going to become just like Turkey who excludes the Kurds then we're going to have a Kurdistan that's going to commit the exact same atrocities the exact same crimes. This is the problem here. They want to replace their Caesar with a new Caesar but history through the Herodians has already shown where that leads to the exact same situation. Time and time again they don't understand the correct reference point. In his teaching he was saying beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and like respectful greetings in the marketplaces and chief seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets who devour widow's houses and for appearance's sake offer long prayers. These will receive greater condemnation and here I must insist that you call to mind once again one Corinthians because what Paul does in one Corinthians is he reverses the paradigm of the symposium in which the one who had power the patrician would ridicule the weak and he instead ridicules those who have power. He flips it, but he's exercising power. It's so important. We've hit this so many times in earlier episodes of the podcast and it always comes full circle because people try to emasculate God by making him into a Midwestern dad who holds your hand in a hallmark or a credit card commercial. But that's not how Scripture works. Paul ridicules the mighty and agitates them and that's why he's abused in one Corinthians and here Jesus is now ridiculing the powerful. Jesus is shaming the scribes and the Pharisees. This is the same Jesus who is flipping tables in the temple who is the son of his father who is the toughest bully in the Old Testament above all the other bullies and kings. Now he is taking on the scribes and Pharisees and bullying them in order to undermine them. So he's not playing politics. He's coming out in a full open assault. These guys are hypocrites. They're interested in themselves. They want you to pay homage to them. They are not interested in paying homage to my father. This allows your point to stand about how this understanding about Caesar necessarily leads to actual violence because what happens with these scribes that he's discussing is that they take Caesar as a reference point. So David has to match this idea of Caesar and how do they know that they themselves are great? Because they themselves act like Caesar. They dress like Caesar. They pretend they're Caesar. They like to get panegyrics like Caesar likes to receive. Oh, and by the way, they devour widows' houses, which is the ABCs of Torah. You don't devour widows' houses. You take care of widows. And they love to offer long prayers to ask for God's acceptance of this action. What God are you talking about? The God who spoke Torah cannot approve devouring a widow's house. He can't. So why are you asking him? Because you're asking your God. Baal can accept that. You can get Baal's blessing for that. You can get Zeus' blessing for that, but not the one who spoke Torah. Now, no matter what your denomination, no matter what your tradition, no matter what your prayers, no matter how clergy function in your particular church, whether you have a clear hierarchy or it's very egalitarian, whether your prayers are long or short by your standards, however informal or formal your worship is, you are under condemnation. And once again, if we sat down and discussed your situation and your community wherever you are, I could prove to you mathematically that you're scribes and Pharisees and that you handle Scripture and the way you deal with church life. This is a very harsh condemnation and I'm pointing this out because it's very easy now to look at just traditional religion as though it only applies to traditional religion. It most certainly applies to traditional religion, but it also applies to people that don't wear long black robes. There is no escape from this judgment. If you have a church community that has a capital campaign because you need to repair your roof, you're devouring widow's houses. Get over yourself. If you feel you need to make an argument against another denomination, you want someone to pay homage to you. Your God is Caesar. Caesar knows that he is successful when he is expanding the territory of the Roman Empire. He knows he's unsuccessful when the territory gets smaller. You know that you're successful when you have a church with more square feet than you had before. More citizens of your kingdom that you're building. What is the difference? But with Jesus as you were mentioning at the very beginning of the episode, Jesus shows that defeat is the actual victory. So let me ask you this. Who is your Lord? The David of your imagination? Or the David whose actual reference point is the Lord. The Lord who allows David to be victorious. Not according to what David wants. It's a model that David was able to conjure up saying, I want my enemies at my feet. No. He is his Lord who says, I will make you victorious. But it's going to be on the Lord's terms. Not on David's terms. Verses 35 to 44 are a perfect snapshot of how the Bible works. Why? Because Jesus comes in and he shames and smashes the Pharisees and puts under foot and runs through your false gods. He emasculates Caesar. He emasculates the temple. He emasculates the scribes and the Pharisees. And now everything's been decimated. What does he do next? He presents you with the mashaal of the teaching. He's going to tell you a story now. He's going to teach. But before he teaches, he's going to tell you a story. This is an important lesson that people have to understand. Teaching, as they say in the martial arts, is combat. And there's no question about that. You cannot tweak someone's idol. You have to remove it. It has to be eliminated. There's no middle ground. It's zero sum. It's black and white in Scripture. There's only one God. And he sat down opposite the Treasury and began observing how the people were putting money into the Treasury and many rich people were putting in large sums. Again, he is opposite the Treasury, Richard. He is setting himself in opposition to the wealth of the temple. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins which amount to a cent. Now, with that cent, you can't fix your leaky dome. With that cent, you can't buy new icons for the iconostasis. With that cent, you can't sponsor a mission trip to Uganda. It's just a cent. And the rich people and the poor widow, of course, what is the here naturally going to think about the reference point is going to be the victory of Caesar over his poor, weak enemies. And no matter who you are, no matter what you think you believe about this example that the Lord is giving, in your heart, you value the wealthy donor over the widow's might. In your heart of hearts, you cannot escape it because no matter what you say you believe, you know if you're on the parish council there's a bill to be paid every month. So don't tell me, oh, I really like what Jesus said. You don't like it because you refuse to live it. And that is a universal refusal. I don't need to know you to know that you reject it. That's why I get frustrated with preachers who try to figure out what I should say to this audience. You don't need to figure it out. Just say the parable because we all know that human beings have to pay the bills. So how could they possibly not I'm even going to go below the level of the heart of hearts to your DNA. Your DNA. Your biological imperative, according to Darwin, is to kill or be killed, survival of the fittest. And of course rich people are fitter than poor widows. So your own biology cries out Hosanna to Caesar because he is the fittest of the fit. He is the manliest of the manly. He's the strongest of the strong, that's who you hold up as the image that you strive for. And here, you see a poor widow, you feel sad for them because they're weaker than you because they're not able to do what they want to do. They're oppressed, they're dirty, they're dishonored and you push them away. You don't embrace them. You don't hope to be like them one day. Any Roman hearing or story Richard in late antiquity would think Jesus a fool. Not just because of his stance that he sat in judgment opposite the treasury because everybody knows you need money, but just the idea of this rabbi who has no status in Roman society or in the temple ridiculing those with status, it makes no sense. But to a Roman, the natural response would be the same as the scribe in the Pharisee. Who does this guy think he is? On what basis does he talk this way? If you're reference a Caesar, it's a valid question. That's the point we've been making. But scripture is showing us that we have an incorrect reference. Calling his disciples to him, he said to them, truly I say to you this poor widow more than all the contributors to the treasury for they all put in out of their surplus. But she, out of her poverty, put in all that she owned all she had to live on. And in Hosea, which you referenced before, God is looking for faithfulness for loving kindness and for knowledge of God. One offers to God everything you have to live on. This is the ultimate show of faithfulness to God. That God is the only one who provides, God is the only one who is the possessor that God gives according to what he believes you need. And it's always up to him, not up to you, and it's up to you to simply submit to his will. And here, the other thing that's so difficult that this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury, what this means is he's saying to his disciples, you could never, ever offer what this widow can. And he's trying to reverse this understanding of what honor, what wealth, what prestige mean. And he's saying you could never attain the level of the widow. Liberal or conservative, you believe in scale. Which is why liberal or conservative, whatever your cause or your activity, when someone writes you a check for a million dollars for your cause, you can't help but lob them and talk about how wonderful it is that they gave a million dollars. But if that person's a billionaire, the million in God's eyes amounts to a big fat zero. Now, people who believe in this new social justice born out of neoliberalism that the millennials have embraced in economics set themselves in opposition to this teaching of Jesus Christ. You miss the whole point. Ascribe to the level of the widow not someone who's rich who gives a lot. And that's why your social justice will cause as much suffering as the conservatism you criticize because it is selfish. Ideology is selfish. The human being is self-loving. You even write books about them and they end up on the best-sellers list. Self-help. Love yourself. Lift yourself up. Self-empowerment. It's all from the devil. The social justice wants to remove the poor widows. They want to get rid of the poor widows. When here, Jesus is saying you need to aspire to be like the poor widow. If you ever can possibly attain it. So why would you be aspiring to remove the very bar to which you have to aspire to? Because it's too painful to see that defeat according to your biological, worldly, fleshly standards. You want to get rid of that. You want to allow the widow to win. But win in what sense? Not in Jesus' sense. In Caesar's sense. She has already poured her life out as a libation to the gospel by giving everything. And short of dying on the cross she's done what is required of Scripture. That's the point. Thanks very much, Dr. Bentu.