Sermon: Wittenberg Academy – Tuesday of Lent 4, 2024

12 Mar 2024

Text: Mark 12:13-27

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Various factions hated Jesus and sought His destruction.  They tried to trap Him and get the people (and the authorities) to turn against Him by asking Him controversial questions: questions that were not really questions.  Our Lord knows their malice, hypocrisy, and ignorance of the Word of God.  He not only answers their “questions” in such a way as to outmaneuver them, He does so in a way that teaches those who will be actually taught.  Jesus tells the truth – even knowing that He would be lied about.  Jesus knew that He was going to be arrested, condemned, and crucified by the guile of these very plotters and enemies. 

And in the words of the sixteenth-century hymn: “A Lamb goes uncomplaining forth, the guilt of sinners bearing.”  Jesus even dies to cover the sins of His enemies, though few of them will receive it in their malice, hypocrisy, and ignorance. 

The conservative Pharisees and the Herodians attempt to entrap Jesus on the thorny issue of taxes.  Nobody likes taxes, and the Romans went beyond paying for government services.  They used taxes to extort and control their captive populations, employing collaborators and thieves among the people to oppress them.  Of course, even the suggestion of a tax revolt would have brought the wrath of the Empire upon anyone suggesting such a thing.  “Knowing their hypocrisy,” our Lord replied with His famous dictum to “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

The liberal Sadducees try to trap Jesus into denying the resurrection with a hypothetical about remarriage after the death of a spouse, concocting a ridiculous thought-experiment.  But Jesus rebukes them: “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God,” teaching us that marriage is an institution for this life, not the life to come.  And there will be a resurrection, led by Jesus Himself.  For God “is not the God of the dead,” says our Lord, “but of the living.  You are quite wrong,” Jesus tells them.

We see this very thing today, dear friends, as people with political agendas from all sides use false narratives and compete with each other in destroying one-another’s reputations.  It is a good thing to argue about theology and current events, and to do so vigorously, making one’s case based on Scripture and natural law, but it is an entirely different matter from seeking to destroy people through intimidation, to get them fired from their jobs, or even subjecting them to violence.  We are not to join in the world’s malice, hypocrisy, and ignorance.  And certainly not in their lies.

The solution to living with integrity in a culture such as this is to indeed give both Caesar and God their due, and to know the Scriptures and the power of God.  And in following Jesus, we know full well that we must bear crosses of our own.  As the heroic dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who bore the cross of the malice, hypocrisy, and ignorance of the Caesar of his own time eloquently summed it up: “Live not by lies.”

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.  And we must be willing to confess the truth before both friend and foe – and do so without becoming like those who seek to trap us in our talk. 

Amen.

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