The Questions in the Temple

He was back in the temple the next morning, walking up and down under the great colonnade with people packed around him, teaching. And a delegation came to find him: the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders — the men who ran the temple, all three kinds of them at once. They had a question, and from where they stood it was a perfectly fair one. “By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you the right?” What they meant was: who said you could throw the traders out of our courtyard? Who taught you? Which school? Who put you in charge of anything? Show us. And he said, “I will ask you one question. Answer me that, and then I will tell you what authority I do these things by. John, out at the river, immersing people — where was that from? From heaven, or from men? Answer me.” And they went into a huddle: “What are we going to say? If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Then why did you not trust him?’ But if we say, ‘From men’ —” And they stopped there, because every single person in that crowd believed John had been a prophet, and saying it out loud would have started a riot. So they turned round and gave him their answer. “We do not know.” Which was not true, and everybody standing there knew it was not true. “Then I am not telling you either, by what authority I do these things.”

And then, while they were still standing in front of him, he told them a story. He told it straight at them, and the whole courtyard heard it. “A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall round it, and dug out a winepress in the rock, and built a watchtower to guard it, and then he let it out to farmers and went abroad. And when the season came he sent a servant to those farmers, to collect his share of the fruit. And they took hold of him and beat him and sent him away with nothing. So he sent another servant. That one they hit on the head and treated shamefully. And he sent another, and that one they killed. And he sent more, and they beat some of them and killed some of them. He had one left. A son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, and he said to himself, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those farmers said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come on — let us kill him, and the vineyard will be ours.’ And they took hold of him and killed him, and threw his body out over the wall of the vineyard. Now — what will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come himself. He will make an end of those farmers, and give the vineyard to other people. Have you never read this in the Scriptures? ‘The stone the builders threw away has turned out to be the corner stone. The Lord did this, and it is wonderful to look at.’” Every person in that courtyard had learned the song about the vineyard as a child. Isaiah had sung it hundreds of years before, and it says in so many words who the vineyard is: it is Israel, and the one who planted it is God. So the crowd knew what kind of story this was before he was two sentences into it. The only thing in it that nobody had heard before was the son. They wanted to get hold of him then and there, and they did not dare, because of the crowd. So they left him and went away — and went off to think of something better.

What they thought of was very good indeed. They sent a mixed party back to him: some of the Pharisees, who hated the Romans, together with some of Herod’s men, who worked for them. Those two sorts of people could not stand each other. Anybody watching them come up the temple steps side by side should have known something was wrong. They began with compliments, laid on with a shovel. “Teacher, we know that you are honest, and that nobody sways you, because you do not care who a man is — you teach the way of God truthfully. So tell us: is it right to pay the tax to Caesar, or not? Should we pay it, or should we not?” It was a beautifully made trap and there was no way out of it. If he said pay it, the crowd around him — who hated that tax, and hated worse the foreign emperor they paid it to — would be done with him by lunchtime. If he said do not pay it, Herod’s men would be at the barracks within the hour, and the soldiers would come and take him away. Every man standing there understood that, and they were all watching his face. “Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” Somebody produced one out of his own clothes: they were standing in the temple, complaining about the emperor, with the emperor’s money in their pockets. And he turned it over and said, “Whose picture is this? And whose name?” And they said, “Caesar’s.” And he said, “Then give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar — and give back to God what belongs to God.” And that was the end of that. They stood there with nothing at all to say, and then they went away.

One of the teachers of the law had been standing at the edge of all this arguing, listening. He thought the answers were good ones. So he came up and asked a question of his own, and he was not trying to catch him out — he simply wanted to know. It was the question their schools argued about most: there are six hundred and thirteen commands in the law of Moses, and which one of them holds up all the rest? “Which command is the first of them all?” And Jesus said, “The first is this: ‘Hear, Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and you are to love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind, and with your whole strength.’ And the second is this: ‘You are to love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no command greater than these two.” And the man said it back to him, out loud, standing in front of the chief priests who had sent all the other questions: “That is well said, teacher. You have told the truth: God is one, and there is no other besides him; and to love him with your whole heart and your whole understanding and your whole strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, is worth more than all the burnt offerings and all the sacrifices put together.” And Jesus looked at him — a man who had just said, standing in the temple, that loving people matters more than the whole business of the temple — and said, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that nobody dared to ask him anything at all.

In the evening he went out of the city again, across the valley, and sat down on the hillside where you can see the whole temple opposite, lit up gold by the last of the sun. His followers sat around him. And everything he told them up there was about the same thing: somebody goes away; nobody knows when he is coming back; and what matters is what people did while they were waiting. The first one is about a wedding. A wedding there happened at night. The bridegroom came for his bride when the two families had settled everything, and it could be very late; and the girls of the household went out into the dark street with lamps to meet him and bring him in, and the whole village walked back with them by lamplight, and the door was shut behind them and the feast began. “Then the kingdom of the heavens will be like ten girls who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five of them were sensible. The foolish ones took their lamps and took no oil with them; but the sensible ones took jars of oil as well as their lamps. And the bridegroom took a long time coming, and they all got drowsy, and fell asleep. And in the middle of the night there was a shout: ‘Look — the bridegroom! Come out and meet him!’ Then all those girls got up and got their lamps ready. And the foolish ones said to the sensible ones, ‘Give us some of your oil — our lamps are going out.’ But the sensible ones answered, ‘There may not be enough for us and for you as well. Go to the people who sell it and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they were away buying it, the bridegroom came, and the ones who were ready went in with him to the wedding — and the door was shut. And afterwards the other girls came too, and said, ‘Lord, lord — open the door for us.’ But he answered, ‘I tell you the truth: I do not know you.’ So stay awake, because you do not know the day or the hour.”

Then another one, and it has money in it. A talent was not a coin. It was a weight of silver — about twenty years of an ordinary man’s wages. Five talents is a fortune. Even one is more than most people in that country would hold in their hands in a lifetime. “It is like a man going abroad, who called his own servants and handed everything he owned over to them. To one he gave five talents of silver, to another two, to another one — to each one according to what he could handle — and then he went away. The man with the five talents went straight off and put them to work, and made five more. The one with the two did the same, and made two more. But the man who had been given the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s silver in it. After a long time the master of those servants came home and settled up with them. The one who had been given five talents came and brought five more with him. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you handed over five talents to me. Look — I have made five more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You were faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many. Come inside and share your master’s happiness.’ And the one with the two talents came, and said, ‘Master, you handed over two talents to me. Look — I have made two more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You were faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many. Come inside and share your master’s happiness.’ And then the one who had been given the one talent came, and he said, ‘Master, I knew what you are like. You are a hard man; you reap where you did not sow, and you gather where you never scattered anything. So I was afraid, and I went off and hid your talent in the ground. Here it is. You have got back what belongs to you.’ But his master answered him, ‘You bad, lazy servant. You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I never scattered? Then you should have put my silver in the bank, and when I came home I would have got back what is mine, and the interest with it. Take the talent away from him and give it to the one who has the ten. For to everybody who has, more will be given, and he will have plenty; but from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.’”

And then the last one, and it is not really a story. It is a picture of the end of everything, and of a courtroom, and it is the plainest thing he ever said about what he is going to ask people. Out on those hills a shepherd kept sheep and goats in the same flock all day and put them apart at night, and everyone listening had watched it done. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the messengers with him, then he will sit down on his throne of glory. And all the nations will be gathered together in front of him, and he will separate them from one another the way a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and he will put the sheep on his right, and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to the ones on his right: ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Take the kingdom that has been ready and waiting for you since the world was made. For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I had no clothes, and you clothed me. I was ill, and you looked after me. I was in prison, and you came to me.’ Then the good ones will answer him: ‘Lord — when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink? When did we see you a stranger and take you in, or with no clothes, and clothe you? When did we see you ill, or in prison, and come to you?’ And the King will answer them: ‘I tell you the truth. Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’ Then he will say to the ones on his left: ‘Go away from me, into the everlasting fire that was made ready for the Accuser and his messengers. For I was hungry, and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger, and you did not take me in. I had no clothes, and you did not clothe me. I was ill, and in prison, and you did not come and see me.’ Then they too will answer: ‘Lord — when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or with no clothes, or ill, or in prison, and did nothing for you?’ Then he will answer them: ‘I tell you the truth. Whatever you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me either.’ And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the good ones into everlasting life.”