Unsettling our judgements about status and desert

The Gospel reading this morning from Mark 12 about Jesus sitting around in the Temple observing who was giving and how much they were giving to the Temple collection raises some interesting issues.

One of them is the simple fact that Jesus was just sitting around observing what was going on. He was interested in what people were doing and how they were relating to this central institution in Jewish life.

Jesus made the observation to his disciples following his observation of rich people putting in a lot of money and a widow putting in a couple of low value coins. "I tell you this widow has put in more than all the others. Everyone else gave what they didn't need. But she is very poor and gave everything she had. Now she doesn't have a penny to live on."

What is Jesus up to here? Is he commending what the widow has done? After all she is someone with no status, no access to economic resources and totally dependent on the community provision through the laws related to gleaning and provision from the harvest leftovers.

What right did she have we might think seeing that she is dependent upon the limited social welfare system to go giving away what little she had? Is she moving herself out of the ranks of the deserving poor into the undeserving poor because of her extravagance on the religious front? I can imagine that there were those in the Temple hierarchy who would have assented to this judgment.

Was Jesus commending the widow? The text isn't clear but there is no doubt that her generosity is acknowledged by Jesus and her status is elevated compared to that of the rich people who give what is left over. It's a commendation of some sort with the implication that.


But think about the equivalent scenario today. It is as though a single Aboriginal mother on Centrelink benefits has gone and given away her last $10 to a World Vision appeal for victims of earthquake in Indonesia and will have to go to the Salvation Army for food for the next couple of days till her next payment is due.

Is she still one of the "deserving poor" or has she removed herself from that category because of her extravagance in giving away what little she had and increasing her reliance on the generosity of the community?

There is something unnerving and unsettling about Jesus and the observations he makes here.  Our easy certainties about status and desert are brought into question. There is a further sting  which we miss because the chapter division used by the lectionary cuts off the reading at this point.  Immediately afterward at the start of the next block of readings as Jesus leaves the Temple he speaks of the edifice being torn down, a judgment on the entire Temple system. Whatever our assessment of who is or is not deserving we are all subject to the questioning of God's justice.

Street Theatre on the way to Jerusalem, or Palm Sunday revisited

The hymns on Palm Sunday are a bit of a mixed bag.

The closing hymn this morning - "Hold high the Cross" while paying lip service to "servants of the crucified" has a strongly imperial tone with images of the cross being waved as part of the crusades came irresistibly to mind. I had to remain silent and that is hard because I enjoy communal singing.

Palm Sunday does bring the political dimension of Jesus and his movement firmly into view. the difficulty is not that the hymn has a political ring to it, it's the character of the politics that it suggests that silenced me.

So what are the politics of Palm Sunday?

Let me give you my take on what is at stake by taking a look at Mark's account of Jesus’ approach to Jerusalem. The nuances of using either Matthew's and Luke's accounts instead of Mark's would not change my argument very much. In the account of all three Gospels we are up to our neck in a very surprising account of a politics that is at the heart of Christian theology and practice.

Mark's gospel was probably written just before or perhaps even during the uprising of Jewish nationalists against the imperial power of Rome in 66 AD. In a conflict that lasted till AD 70, Jewish forces sought to regain political and religious control of their nation in a bitter guerilla war that raged across Galilee and Judea ending in defeat following the Roman siege of Jerusalem. It was a time of struggle for survival by peasant farmers with guerillas raiding the countryside making up for their lack of numbers and limited military resources by their tactics and their willingness to give their lives in God’s cause.

Mark recorded the story of Jesus for a church that was asking questions about what faithfulness to Jesus as the crucified and risen Messiah meant during a time of war and conflict. Should they support their fellow countrymen? Should they join the military struggle against Rome?

The way Mark tells it, Jesus approaches Jerusalem not on a war-horse as a conquering military figure, but on a colt, not a form of transport normally associated with royalty. No Jewish king or roman emperor would choose to ride such an animal when entering in triumph into a conquered city.

Yet that is what Mark is hinting at. Here is the conqueror, the Messiah. But after all the build up of having got to Jerusalem Jesus does not make a triumphal entry. He simply looks around and then wanders off to supper with friends. It is a total anti climax – the scene is set by Mark you would think if not for a coup, at least for a confrontation with the authorities – but nothing happens, at least not yet.

Mark drops clues all the way through that point toward a warrior Messiah but he doesn’t follow through to provide a stunning political conclusion in the way that his hearers would have expected. Sure we have the reference to David - the warrior king par excellence in Jewish history. Mark does not deny the political dimensions of Jesus as messiah but instead challenges the accepted conventions as to what the politics of the Messiah will be. He presents a Jesus as a messiah who does not take up the role of warrior.

Jesus procession to Jerusalem is a form of street theatre which signals his claims as messiah, while at the same time pointing to a very different understanding of the character of the messiah from that which was commonly held. This odd messiah embodies a politics that challenges three groups:

➢ Those committed to getting rid of the Romans by military means.
➢ Those who withdrew into a response of ritual purity that avoided issues of economic injustice and Roman imperialism.
➢ Those who simply wanted to get along with business as usual, whoever was in charge.

Jesus in Mark's account rejects the politics of violence, the politics of withdrawal and the politics of accommodation lives out a politics of affirmation of life, of prophetic engagement and rejection of business as usual along with a practice of making time for meals with friends.