Powerful nutrients for Lenten preaching
Sunday, February 4, 2007
After reflecting upon the two episodes in Matthew 22:15-33 (the question about Caesar and the challenge from the Sadducees), N. T. (Tom) Wright says this:
“…We find Jesus, on the way to the cross, drawing together upon himself the great evils of the world, the imperial systems with their financial demands, and the great hopes of the world, hopes for God to release the slaves, to raise the dead, to set the world to rights. The scriptures give us the grounding for this hope: the power of God assures us that it will come. That message provides both the deeply personal meaning of Holy Week for each one of us and the deeply political meaning for today in a world that still groans under the slavery of the empire’s financial demands. But the way to the Resurrection is precisely through death, the death which Caesar demands as the price for declaring a different empire, the death through which Jesus offers to God that which is God’s, his own life, his own obedience, his own Image.”
(from The Scriptures, the Cross, and the Power of God–Westminster John Knox, 2006) Emphasis added.
