Mark 12 Dancing Around the Issue

Your kid wants to go to a party but you know, because of your access to an incredible mom grapevine, that the parents of the kid giving the party won’t be there, the kids that this kid attracts are into drugs and alcohol and your kid has absolutely no idea what he’d be getting into although he is 16 going on 25. He throws the last heated dart, “You won’t ever let me do ANYthing!” He never addresses the main concerns you have with the party itself.

So with the religious leaders. Jesus tells a parable about a man who planted a vineyard, put a wall around it, dug a vat under the wine press, built a tower….did a lot of work to make it one of the finest…then leased it out. After the harvest, he sent a servant to collect the rent. They beat him up and sent him home empty handed. This happened multiple times until he sent his son, thinking they would honor him. Nope, killed him.

The interesting thing about this story is that the religious leaders knew he was talking about them. They weren’t scratching their beards like the disciples often did, wondering who and what in the world he was talking about. It says they knew he was talking about them. So did they rethink the issue, thank Jesus for bringing this to their attention, repent for being such sorry tenants, change their ways, honor the messenger, pay their dues?

They did what your kid did, they changed the subject and asked two totally unrelated questions. To whom should we pay taxes, Caesar or God? And if one woman marries a brother and he dies and she marries the next and he dies and so on until the eighth brother dies, in heaven, whose wife will this poor, exhausted woman be?

Only one religious leader asked a reflective, thoughtful question. “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”

Jesus said in response, “The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. Love Him with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. The second command is equally important, love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these.”

Jesus then tells the people to beware of religious leaders who act like they are pious, sweep around in long robes, commanding respectful greetings, chief seats, places of honor but devour widows’ property. Almost on cue, he sits and watches people put money in the temple treasury. The rich walk by and throw in large sums. A poor widow puts in two small coins amounting to a cent. Jesus’ comment was that the poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury. They put in out of their surplus. She gave all she had.

The religious leaders who knew so much scripture, danced around the issue. They missed the point. God had provided a wonderful land, a fine vineyard as it were, for them. They forgot who owned it…that they were just the leasers. As a result, they set themselves up as gods…owners of the vineyards and rejected anyone who told them otherwise, including God Himself.

They threw inane little questions at Jesus whose answers left them speechless except for one man who asked, “Of all that God said, what is the most important thing he wanted us to know and do?”

The answer motivates everything you do and everything you say.

God doesn't want us to just try to act like Him or talk like Him or give like Him. He wanted us to love Him with all our heart, our soul, our mind and our strength. Love Him so much, every fiber of our being is affected. As a result, nothing we do is without Him in mind. Everything we say, every decision we make is run by Him first because we want to know what He thinks, what He has to say about it, His take on the matter. Then I obey Him, not because I'm supposed to, but because I want to.

This is demonstrated at the treasury because often our security is in our possessions. The religious leaders gave out of their surplus. The widow gave….all she had because she, not the religious leaders, loved the Lord her God with all her heart and soul and mind and strength. There was no show. No one noticed her but Jesus. No one knew what she gave but him. He knew.

The problem was not that Jesus didn’t answer their questions satisfactorily. He may have answered all their questions satisfactorily and even all our questions satisfactorily. It’s not the questions, the questions aren’t the issue. The issue is how are we responding to the most important thing he had to say to us, which was to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength?

That’s what we ignore. We’ll give our money, volunteer, sit in places of honor at the dinners for the poor but that’s dancing around the issue. The issue is he wants us to love him with our entire being, and he sent his son, Jesus, to tell us that in case we missed it the first time we read Deuteronomy 6.

Affects everything doesn’t it, starting with your neighbor whom you’re to love just as much as you love yourself.

This is no longer sweet baby Jesus in a manger. This is God grown up….challenging us to commitment, a way of life focused on a person….whom we love deeply, who will revolutionize our lives, our thinking, our habits, the way we do business, our outlook on the future…everything.

But he is so worth it. We are talking about God Almighty who had such an incredible message to give us, loved us so much, he sent his son to earth to make sure we heard him.

There is everything to gain….nothing to lose.