Verse-by-Verse Comments:
38As he taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, 39and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets!
(1) As I've indicated time and again in these "passes," the context--I should say contexts, whether historical, cultural, theological, or within the particular Biblical book, can be critical in understanding a specific passage of Scripture. In the first pass, I pointed out that this lesson comes immediately after a confrontation/conversation Jesus has with a scribe which was the last time any of their number dared to ask Him a question.
It was clear from that confrontation that Jesus understood God's Word as presented in the Old Testament. They couldn't hope to trip Jesus up for deficient or heretical teaching. Instead, they would, with other religious elites, resort to political manipulation to have the Roman occupiers of Judea kill Jesus.
Jesus fuels this fire by emphatically condemning the scribes. They--or at least some in Jerusalem, apparently--were motivated not by a love for God and neighbor, a desire to explain His word in accessible terms, or with the aim of helping people experience the liberation that comes from a relationship with God. Rather, they liked being seen "in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets." Any follower of the God revealed to the Old Testament people and ultimately seen in Jesus Christ is, above all, a servant. And those called to be leaders within God's servant community are called to be servants of servants. The scribes Jesus condemns were far from being servants!
(2) Who were the scribes? The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible (IDB) says that:
The original scribe, or sopher, was a person able to "cipher" (saphar), and from this came the meaning of "secretary" or "scribe." At [Jeremiah] 36:26, the term is applied to an official who had charge of legal documents, such as deeds of purchase...and who had a special chamber in the royal palace...At II Kings 22:3ff, Shaphan the scribe appears to have been a kind of minister of finance...It was when the Greeks ruled Judea:
There was another class [of scribes, in this Old Testament period], however...this was the priestly caste, the first specialists in, and guardians of the [Biblical] law...[these] spiritual ancestors of the scribes of later Judaism [in other words, of first-century Judea where Jesus lived] were the pre-exilic priestly exponents of the law...
that an influential group of lay scribes succeeded in forming a popular, democratic political party...[which included representation from the Pharisees]...IDB goes on to say that references to the scribes in the four Gospels and in Acts in the New Testament:
...show clearly that they [the scribes] represented [by Jesus' time] a distinctive class in the community. They practiced their legal profession throughout Palestine...They were associated with the Pharisees, apparently employing their expertise in the law to maintain religious and legal dominion over others. They also were active members of the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of the Jewish faith that would play the major role in having Jesus executed.
The scribes, like their Pharisaic allies, basically saw religious faith as a set of legal transactions. They were backers of the religious status quo and, according to Jesus, at least some of them used their knowledge and status to make themselves wealthy at others' expense.
It should be pointed out that not all scribes were evil, as the earlier encounter Jesus had with one in Mark 12, underscores. Gamaliel was part of an apparently rather large group--a scribe who was also a Pharisee, who counseled his fellow members of the Sanhedrin to not go after the Christians, believing that persecution would give them credibility among the masses and that if the Christian movement grew in the face of being benignly ignored by the powerful, it would prove to be a movement from God. (Gamaliel was the rabbi/mentor of a student who would prove to be sort of important to Christians, Saul of Tarsus, who later changed his name to Paul.)
40They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
(1) The cynics, exponents of a particular brand of Greek philosophy, apparently saw similar practices among a group like the scribes operating in the religious-cultural world of the Greeks. In every religion, in every time and place, there is a class of people prone to fleecing the innocent, who like to look innocent and devoid of fault.
41He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.
(1) Having set up the object lesson He is about to present, Jesus stations Himself close to one of the offering receptacles set up around the Temple. One such receptacle was the place to leave their tithes, the most basic offering all the faithful were expected to leave. A tithe amounts to the first 10% of one's income. No believer was to give any less than that. And the tithe was never to be the leftovers of one's income. The 10% was to be set aside first. According to the Old Testament book of Genesis, the first murder occurred after Cain, who had given God his leftovers, noted that his brother Abel had pleased God by giving his offering off the top. Resentful, Cain killed Abel.
(2) There were a number of other receptacles, the offerings in which supported other ministries: people in need and such.
(3) The rich are putting in big sums. But wonders how much they're really putting in, relative to their incomes, and whether they're giving their leftovers.
42A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny.
(1) Is this one of the widows whose living is devoured by the scheming or even by the teaching of the scribes? Is this woman's living being devoured because of a religion of obligation? We all are called to give our whole lives to the God we know in Jesus Christ. That's an appropriate response to the grace of God.
But with her sacrificial gift, isn't she the victim of scribes? Haven't the scribes effectually perpetrated a grave injustice against her?
The scribes have the capacity to be helpful to the poor--and because they had virtually no property rights, widows, as was true of this one, were almost always poor.
The scribes could have dumped a lot more money into the receptacles earmarked for the poor, with no harm to their own finances. That widow might have been helped through their offerings. Instead, the scribes give their leftovers and the widow faced almost certain death. She was faithful, to be sure. But were it not for the greed of the scribes into self-glorifying greed rather than godly faith, she would not have put her life on the line!
43Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. 44For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”
(1) There is, as I suggested in my first pass, a lament in this. Jesus laments legalistic religion. He laments the lack of generous love that consigns this woman to apparently certain death...or, to perhaps the only viable option for widows those days, prostitution.
(2) Versions of this sort of tale and the teaching Jesus gives are found in the literature of the ancient Greeks and of the Buddhists, among others.
This points to an important element of Christians' understanding of Jesus: What makes Jesus important and unique is not what He taught. The Bible makes clear that the truth about God and about life is plain to everybody, no matter how we may try to deny it. God's law--His will--that we love God and love neighbor is written on every human heart. (That's why I find the recent discussion of a biological basis for human moral codes so fascinating.)
But the Bible teaches that we are incapable of keeping God's law because of our fall into sin, our common, inborn condition, a condition of alienation from God, from others, and from ourselves. Jesus gives Himself on the cross, dying in our places, bearing our punishment so that all who renounce their sin and believe in Him see the walls brought down and have life with God forever.
What makes Jesus important and unique is not what He taught, but what He did.
What makes Jesus important and unique is that, unlike any other person to walk this planet, Jesus kept the law written on all of our hearts.
And what also makes Jesus important and unique is that He was not just a man, but also God.
With the sacrifice of her whole living, the widow, in this incident recorded by Mark just before Jesus' sacrificial death on a cross, foreshadows and showcases Christ's offering of Himself.
The scribes demanded that others adhere to a religion of law; Christ gives Himself so that we can be ushered into His Kingdom of grace.
I'll see you in worship on Saturday or Sunday.
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