The blessed servant or the righteous king lineage. When these two stories compete, which wins? And what does this say about us?
Jesus and our backwards authority
Proper 25A | Matthew 22:34-46
This is the kind of reading that reminds us that we’re hearing a story. These two encounters sit next to each other in the narrative, but have little rhetorical connection. So if you were asked to cut up the Bible into chunks to be read in church, this isn’t simply a single nugget of wisdom we’re engaging with here. This is a portion of a bigger story.
As a preacher, this doesn’t make my job easier. But as a priest, I absolutely love it. Because we all need these bits to remind us of the bigger story.
We get to remember that the religious leaders have been asking trick questions of Jesus for awhile. We’ve wrestled with them for the last several weeks! They question his authority, then Jesus compares them to killers, then killers a second time. Then they ask about taxes; which we know isn’t really about taxes.
Then the Sadducees ask about a resurrection they don’t believe in. This is the ultimate dishonest question time. It’s kind of like a group of skeptics saying to him “prove you’re not a liar.” When either way they won’t believe him.
That’s when the Pharisees huddle together. After they have been silenced. Their students have been silenced. The Sadducees have been silenced. After Jesus has schooled all comers. What’s the plan now. Nothing is working! You can almost hear them try to work it out.
These leaders, who all the way back in chapter 12 started scheming “to destroy him.” The playbook is nearly empty. Nothing has worked.
Then a lawyer volunteers. And asks simply:
“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
Love God with everything you have.
As a response, it is curious. It echoes the first of the Ten Commandments. But through a prayer they all know, called the Sh’ma. It’s essentially the one prayer all Hebrew people are taught. In that way, it is a little like The Lord’s Prayer, Our Father in Heaven… A prayer everyone knows.
It’s also the prayer they all prayed daily. So Jesus’s words aren’t just familiar. They direct us to the prayer itself.
Jesus doesn’t respond with a textbook answer, but a prayer book one.
His second commandment, to love our neighbors as ourselves, comes from Leviticus. As a summary of the Law, Jesus probably couldn’t have done it better. Even the Ten Commandments are summed up nicely here, as the first half are about loving God and the second half about loving neighbor.
In other versions of this story, there is a response from the lawyer. But not here. Matthew doesn’t allow us to delight in their agreement or awe. There can be no reaction shot for us. We simply have the idea that Jesus said it and that it sounds right.
Then he turns.
“What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?”
What a strange question. And awfully convoluted. Chances are we’re all asking the same question: who cares?
It has the ring of riddle to it. If the Messiah is Lord and the son of David, and given that David would be his Lord, then how can David call his son Lord and still be Lord? It almost makes you think the English royals stole the idea. Who gets to be king? Well it depends on whose son dies and in what order…
But I it seems to me like Jesus bringing the question of authority around full circle. Even blessed David bends the knee to God. And as much as we chase the tail of authority, drawing up lines and rules all around us, we must still come back to God’s sovereignty.
And this is the intense beauty of this reference. Because David was the Great King, writer of psalms and uniter of people. His reign was the golden age for the Hebrew people. Everything, everything goes back to that. Everything about human glory and supremacy that is. All those desires for victory and rule.
Drawing the Son of David back to David is a way of connecting to the earthly king and conqueror. Not an objectively good ruler, but a precious vision of autocracy serving their interests.
Never mind the centuries of chaos and dysfunction that followed. Let alone his wise, arms-dealing son who did the things God told them not to do.
The tricky thing about blessing.
There’s another thing to drawing the line back to David. We’re also trying to draw a line back to God. A line that goes through David. And this puts two competing narratives in common and constant contact.
The other line is about divine blessing. A promise long, long ago to an old couple, when God named them Abraham and Sarah. You will have children. And I will stick by them forever.
The divine lineage wound its way through generations; not through the best, the strongest, most skilled, or even the most devout people. In fact, our Scripture paints the utterly opposite picture, ultimately. That God’s promise to be present kept going to people who totally didn’t deserve it.
So we have this lineage of Jesus that goes all the way back through conflict and tragedy. Through scandals and the saving grace of women. Some of these stories are really NSFW (Not Safe For Work).
That is the lineage Jesus comes from. As well as this righteous king lineage. But when these two stories compete, which wins?
In Scripture, the answer is obvious. But our desire for power likes to put a thumb on the scale.
anti-empire
Jesus draws their attention to David to point not to conquest and supremacy, but to fealty, his belowness in relation to God.
When Jesus talks about the Messiah, who they call Son of David, he draws them not to the highness of a human above other humans, but the highness of God’s interest above the rulers of our world.
And that reveals the lie of empire and any human supremacy. Of any belief that God would bestow the kingdom to exploit others or enrich the powerful on the backs of the poor. That is incompatible with the gospel.
Jesus reminds us that even the Great King is servant to God, not a divine instrument of God. That’s what the messianic narrative would have us believe—that God ordains supremacy and justifies violence in the name of a “good” victory.
But the other lineage, that draws us back, not to the glory days, the boom times when everyone went to church, but to the beginning so that we can see all of the twists and turns and mistakes and confusions along the way.
We are living in unprecedented times, and yet we can draw our line through thousands of years and see lots of precedents. Lots of times worse than this and better than the glory days.
If we go all the way back, we can get some needed perspective for what we’re dealing with.
But more importantly, we can get a better perspective for what God is dealing with in us. And what our love of God can look like.
Like following a teacher, not a general. A healer, not a king. Son of David AND Child of Humanity. Following his way of love into the eye of the storm. Even when it is scary. Not for greatness. But as lovers of God and our neighbors. As much as ourselves. So all may be fed. All may be healed. And all may be set free.