Sermon: Wittenberg Academy – Tuesday of Lent 4 - 2021

March 16, 2021

Text: Mark 12:13-27

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

There are honest questions, and then there are trick questions.  Our reading exposes our Lord’s opponents: the Pharisees, the Herodians, and the Sadducees for the hypocrites that they are.  They are not concerned with the truth.  They are concerned with being “right.”  Jesus is a challenge to their authority and way of life, and so they are also concerned with making Jesus look bad.

They are hoping for a “gotcha” moment, to tangle Jesus up in His own words.  They want to win the argument by hook or by crook, and they always underestimate their divine opponent.

And can you even imagine how foolish they are to try to “butter up” Jesus: “Teacher, we know that You are true and do not care about anyone’s opinion.  For You are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God.”  They think that Jesus is subject to the same shallow flattery that they are.  They think Jesus is as much of a hypocrite as they are.  They are in for a rude awakening.

The conservative Pharisees and Herodians hate the Romans.  They hate paying taxes to Rome.  But they also know that saying so would get you “canceled,” and in first century Rome, it wasn’t just a matter of getting your social media account suspended.  They are trying to trick Jesus into capital treason against the Roman government that they themselves hate and would like to overthrow.  Our Lord quickly dispatches this group by turning a Roman coin into an object lesson.  “And they marveled at Him.”

Next up are the Sadducees – the theological liberals who don’t believe in the resurrection.  So they try to trip Jesus up with a hypothetical question about remarriage.  Our Lord scolds them: “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?”  Our Lord quickly dispatches this group by revealing the nature of the afterlife, and then uses their own Scriptures to disprove their disbelief in the resurrection.  “You are quite wrong,” He tells them.

People still argue with Jesus by attempting to put “Gotchas” onto the Word of God, even to this day – as if anything they come up with is some kind of new discovery of something we Christians have never seen before.  Their motivation isn’t truth, but humiliation of those who confess the Word of God, fair or unfair, logical or not.  This is because our Lord’s enemies insist on being “right” – even when they aren’t.  They do not want to submit to His Word nor to Him who is the Word.  Let us always be willing to be corrected by the Word of God, and to submit humbly to Him who is God in human flesh, even Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.