Now I Have a Question. . .Watch Out!
Matthew 22:41-46, NIV - While the Pharisees were
gathered together, Jesus asked them, “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose
son is he?”
“The son of David,” they replied.
He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by
the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,
“‘The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my
right hand
until I put your enemies
under your
feet.”’
If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” No one could say a word in reply, and from
that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.
For the last few reflections, we
have observed different religious groups taking turns trying to stump and
discredit Jesus with the crowds in the Temple after Jesus’s arrival in
Jerusalem. In three days time, Jesus
will be hanging on a Roman Cross outside the city in part because of the collusion
of these very groups. The questions have
been handled brilliantly by Jesus and if fact, have backfired on His questioners. The crowd is more impressed than ever. It is the religious leaders who are looking
bad about now.
Jesus makes things worse for them
when He turns the tables and asks them a question – a question that they will
not be able to answer. As we will see
over the next few reflections, this is only the beginning of the misery the
religious leaders will endure. In
Matthew 23, Jesus unleashes a torrent of indictments upon them that will fuel their
quest to get rid of Jesus. But for now,
let’s consider Jesus’s question:
“What do you think about the
Messiah? Whose son is he?”
Jesus knows what they will say
because the answer they will give is not wrong.
As expected, they say that the Messiah will be a son of David, meaning that
the Messiah will be a human descendant of David. However, this is only the setup
question.
“How is it then that David,
speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’?
Jesus then quotes the well-known messianic
Psalm 110 to them to support the legitimacy of His question. Jesus then repeats the question. . . just in
case they forgot. David does indeed
address the Messiah as “Lord.” There is
a long silence. The crowd looks over at the
religious leaders, waiting to see how they will answer. A longer silence. Crickets.
They don’t even have a guess.
This is one of those times when the
readers of Matthew’s gospel (that includes you and me) have information that
the people in the story do not have. The
religious leaders don’t have an answer for Jesus’s question and neither does
the crowd. At this point in the story,
even Matthew himself doesn’t have the answer, for He writes this Gospel that we
are reading decades later. But we know
the answer, don’t we?
Jesus is a Son of David. Matthew established that in Chapter 1 with
the genealogy of Jesus. We also know that
Jesus is the Son of God, for that has been established multiple times in the Gospel
though Jesus often tells folks to hold that under wraps. If Jesus is a son of David AND the Son of God,
then David can address Him as Lord. We
know that and Matthew lets us enjoy the fact that the people who should know better
than anyone else do NOT know. Jesus is
now going public with the secret He asked people to keep until now – the secret
that we already know. Jesus is Lord and Messiah
because he is both the human son of David AND the divine Son of God.
The real question for us is not whether
we know the answer to Jesus’s riddle, but do we sincerely believe the answer is
true? And if the answer to that question
is “yes,” then there is an even more poignant question: How then, shall we live?
Question: If you
believe Jesus is the divine Son of God and the promised Messiah of all people,
how does the way you live reflect that belief?
Prayer: Jesus, thank
you for revealing Yourself to us. Help us
represent You to others by the way we live each day. Amen.
Prayer Focus: Pray
for people you know from other faith traditions than yours.
Song: Build My Life -
Michael W Smith
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