“He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.”
Matthew 22:3 (NIV)
Along my journey, I have experienced many meetings in which what is really going on is not apparent to the casual observer or to those who might read a transcript of the meeting. What is really going on is happening in the sub-text of the words and the passive aggressive interplay between conflicting participants within the meeting. It happens in business. It happens in family. It happens in church. It happens in politics. It happens in community organizations. It’s part of any human system.
In Jerusalem, it is the biggest week of the year. It’s Passover week. The city is packed with Jewish pilgrims from all over the world who have come to celebrate the biggest festival of the year at the Temple, the epicenter of Judaism. Every day the courts of the Temple are packed with crowds. This year, everyone is buzzing about this preacher from the sticks, up north in Galilee. There was a big parade on Sunday when He came to town. Some say He’s the Messiah. He raised a guy from the dead just a week before in Bethany, just a few miles away.
This is the scene of today’s chapter and tomorrow’s. This is the final week of Jesus’ ministry. We’re in the home stretch and everything in these final chapters leads to the cross and the empty tomb. It’s important that I ponder all of the words and events of these next few chapters in this context to get at what is really going on. There is a conflict brewing between Jesus and the religious, political, and commercial power brokers in the Temple.
In today’s chapter, Matthew shares five episodes:
Jesus tells a parable that points a finger at the religious leaders and their ecclesiastical forebears throughout history. The parable is fascinating because it sums up the relationship between God and His people through the entire Great Story to this point, and it foreshadows what is about to happen as Jesus’ Message expands beyond the boundaries of Judaism and to all peoples and nations. What His enemies hear is Jesus’ sharp criticism. It is truth, but it is offensive. Jesus takes the opening round. His opponents are 0 and 1 and it prompts them to counter.
The next three episodes Matthew shares are different constituencies of Jesus’ enemies coming to debate Jesus and trap Him into saying something they can use to dismiss Him, criticize Him, and tell the crowds why He is wrong. Matthew is careful to point out that these constituencies, though rivals within the religious power structure, are working together behind the scenes against Jesus.
First, it’s the most popular and powerful political party within the religious power structure: the Pharisees. They try to play on people’s hatred of Rome and Roman taxes. They ask Jesus about paying taxes. Jesus famously asks whose head is on the coin and then says, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Ouch 0-2.
Next, it’s the rival political party in the religious power structure: the Sadducees. They are a smaller faction, but the High Priest is from this faction. It’s the old guard, the conservatives, who wield power and hang their hats on a religious belief that there is no life after death. They try to trap Jesus in a doctrinal debate about resurrection. Jesus responds with a scriptural argument for which they have no answers. His rivals are now 0-3.
Finally, they send a hot-shot lawyer to argue a legal matter of religious Law. Jesus handles the question easily.
Jesus deftly navigates every one of the their three (there’s that number again) argumentative mine fields. Adding on Jesus initial critical parable, His enemies are 0-4. They’re humiliated in front of the biggest crowds the Temple will see all year on their home court. They’re pissed off.
The chapter then ends with Jesus going back on the offensive. He refuses to let His enemies lick their wounds. He throws out a debate question of His own to which they have no good answer. They finish today’s chapter 0-5.
In the quiet this morning, I find myself reminded of my observation that most people take the episodes in any given chapter and focus on them individually. Even teachers and preachers do this regularly in messages. Just yesterday I gave the first of three weekly messages that I was assigned. Each week I’m assigned one episode from Luke’s version of Jesus’ story. It’s like looking at one of the five episodes in today’s chapter under a microscope to find the lesson within. There is a lesson there, of course. Metaphor is layered with meaning. For me, however, the most powerful spiritual lesson in today’s chapter is not under the microscope but in the wide-angle lens.
Jesus is touching on historic themes and realities that are rooted in Genesis, present in God’s relationship with the Hebrew people from Exodus through Malachi, and are foundational to the very conflict in which He’s engaged. The humiliating defeat is going to ramp up His opponent’s hatred of Jesus. Jesus is pushing all of their buttons.
Let me clue you in on tomorrow’s chapter. Jesus is not going to relent. He’s going to double-down.
He’s going to seal His own fate.
But there is something larger going on in today’s chapter that did begin in Genesis and will end with a new beginning at the end of Revelation. If I miss this, then I’m missing a major spiritual lesson. It is the spiritual lesson I find that I perpetually need on a Monday morning as I look at the task list for the coming week on my earthly journey. I can focus my spiritual microscope in on this week, this life, these current circumstances as if it’s the most important thing or the only thing. Or, I can look at this week with a wide-angle lens and understand that this week is part of a larger story of what God is doing in me in my life, and my story’s role in the larger story of what God is doing in the Great Story.
Suddenly, I see my week with a renewed perspective.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
