Jesus is a different kind of religious
leader. With all the other religions in the world, the focus is on the content
of the teaching. With Christianity, the focus is on the person of Jesus. For Jesus
and His disciples, it was a personal matter.
Jesus asked His disciples, not what they
thought of His teaching, but who they thought He was. These are two very
different questions. As I read the Gospels I hear Jesus again and again asking
questions that focus the discussion in this direction.
In Matthew 22:41-46 and the parallels in
Mark 12:35-37 & Luke 20:41-44, Jesus focuses the religious leaders on this
question. They had developed a theology of God that rightly included the
Messiah as the one who would come and again make things right. But they had
concluded that Messiah was just a human king.
Jesus confronts this belief when He
quotes the Old Testament Psalm, and shows that Messiah is more than just a
human king. He is more than a descendant of David. David calls him Master,
something a father would never say to his descendant. Even the original
language of this passage demonstrates clearly that the writer of Psalm 110:1 spoke
of someone to whom David was subject in addition to God, someone with whom God
communicated.
Jesus invites them to examine more carefully
what they believe and why. Jesus says the Messiah is more than just David’s
descendent. This Lord is asked to sit at God’s right hand, the position of
power and authority. He is told that enemies would be subject to his power.
They would be under his feet.
In recent years we in the West have learned
that many modern cultures, especially Muslim cultures, have very different
standards of insult. A shoe-throwing incident with former President Bush comes
to mind. For us a shoe is just a shoe. For them, showing someone the bottom of
your feet is a grave insult. As helicopters flew overhead, they were insulted
by seeing the bottoms of soldier’s feet hanging out of the aircraft.
This practice goes back into antiquity when
defeated enemies were held under the victor’s feet as a way to humiliate them.
The leader of the victor group would often place his feet on top of the loosing
group’s leader. This is the image used in our passage. Do you remember after
Saddam Hussein was defeated and the Iraqi people pulled down his statue and
stood on top of it, or trampled his picture with their feet?
The Psalmist says that David’s master will
sit at the right hand of the Creator God until his enemies are defeated. And Jesus
is recorded as saying that this greater status afforded to Messiah should be
given to Him. Jesus’ questioners are silenced.
What status do we afford Jesus? Just a
really good guy, or something much more? What else does the Scriptures have to
say about the person of Jesus?