Chapter 206 of 404

Relationship to Jesus’ Kingdom Message

What sorts of behavior might Jesus specifically have in mind when he denounces Pharisees and scribes (scribes in Mk 12:38-40)? He denounces vices such as economic injustice (Mk 12:40), hypocrisy and misplaced priorities (merely outward righteousness; Mk 12:40; Matt 23:23-28//Lk 11:39-42, 44), and seeking one’s own honor (Mk 12:38-39).¹⁵⁰ Pharisees would in fact have largely agreed with Jesus’ principles here, even if not all lived up to them (just as not all religious people today who agree with them live up to them).

In view of Jesus’ end-time kingdom ethic, he may have demanded more than many teachers in his day, however. He apparently believed that the urgency of the kingdom demanded priorities different from those of most of his contemporaries; secondary issues of uncleanness and even some aspects of sabbath observance could be suspended in light of the urgency of the hour. Most Jews agreed when they regarded a situation as a matter of life and death;¹⁵¹ some Torah teachers allowed a prophet to temporarily suspend even a duty in the Torah for the sake of an emergency.¹⁵²

Most teachers apparently did accept marks of their status,¹⁵³ as Jesus implies in this denunciation. But as we noted earlier, Jesus emphasizes that the time of eschatological inversion has come, and it will overturn even the marks of religious and intellectual honor in which people boast. The right way instead would be the way that he would model: absolute trust in, dependence on and submission to the will of God, depending on God’s power to bring life even from death.¹⁵⁴ That Jesus would be martyred through the agency of the world’s elite was itself a sign that God’s kingdom would favor not the elite of this age but the broken who depended solely on God.

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