His Last Day as a Street Preacher

Tuesday of the Last Week

 Jesus, again, wakes up in the Jerusalem suburb of Bethany. After a short walk, he is at the Temple mount once again. This was Jesus’ last working day. This day ends his public ministry. After today, there will be no more preaching to the crowds, nor healing the sick, nor publicly debating the religious leaders. This last day presents the nastiest conversations with his detractors. It is clear that the Sanhedrin arranged for their best debaters to be where Jesus was teaching. There goal was to demonstrate how foolish our Lord’s teachings were and to trap him into saying something so wrong they could arrest him.

One question they introduce dealt with the controversy of paying taxes to Rome. If Jesus is to be a revolutionary leader and crowded the new King, surely he would support a tax revolt. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Jesus asks for a Roman coin. On it was an image of the bust of Caesar. Jesus looks at it and says in effect, “Since his image appears on it, I think this coin must belong to Caesar, give it back to him.” This might have brought smiles to the faces of those who supported Jesus and to all who were irritated by the smug Scribes.

Then the Sadducees took center stage. They had their own disputes with the Pharisees and the Scribes over the resurrection of the body. The Sadducees believed that when you die, it’s over; you’re just gone. Since they thought the resurrection was absurd they tried to show it as such through using an argument about marriage and the afterlife. They told Jesus as ridiculous story about a bride and seven brothers. The woman was widowed by all seven. Each brother married her after the death of another brother. They asked Jesus, “Whose bride will she be in the afterlife?” Jesus addresses the false assumption behind their question. They assume wrongly that there is marriage in heaven. Then Jesus addresses their basic error, which was the fact of the resurrection itself. He tells them they are in error because they are ignorant of the Scriptures and fail to understand the power of God. Is it any wonder why they hated him?

There must have been a lull in the debate because another Scribe asked Jesus which of the Commandment is the single foundational Commandment on which the other nine must rest. This question was hotly debated among the Pharisees. Jesus departs from the Ten Commandments to speak of the necessity to love God (first tablet) and to love others (second tablet). The obedience to the law of God rests on our capacity to love God. This was a strange answer, but one that this Scribe understood to be a true and wise answer.

Jesus turns the tables on them and begins to ask them hard questions. Was John the Baptist sent by God or merely appointed by the popular voice of the people? If they said, “By God,” then Jesus would asked them, “Why didn’t follow him?” If they said, “By a popular voice,” then the crowds would have been stirred up because they understood John the Baptist to be a prophet of God. They squirm a little and say, “We don’t know.” Then he asked him about the Son of David. This goes right to the heart of his claims to be the Son of God, the Messiah. If the Messiah is David’s Son, why does David call him “My Lord”?

His day was filled with trouble and debate. It is a sweet relief that our Lord leaves the hostility of the temple courts to a place that was quieter but still on the Temple grounds, “The Court of Women.” There he sits and watches the people bring their offerings. He notes a poor woman who gave all she had, just two small coins. This must have given Jesus reasons to hope. Two signs finalize the day. One is the Gentile world is reaching out to him, then there was the tree he cursed the day before – it had lost its leaves and was withering.

 

So ends his last day at work. His popular ministry is over. Now he turns to his disciples and to cross.